After three compelling episodes of action and one of sincere character development, the writers decided to downshift tonight. And I'll be darned if they didn't completely stall out. As in snoozeville.

The Alexandria safe zone is now under siege by a host of Walkers so we spent our hour on random vignettes with the people inside. These might have worked as asides layered into other episodes. Jammed together so inelegantly in one episode, however, it was contrived and boring, never able to rise above its obvious purpose as filler. 

This is why I watch this show. Every so often it produces some truly great television. Tonight it did so as a fable about mercy and the precious nature of life, right smack in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Go figure.

It's a simple setup, an episode in a bottle. It felt like one of those old Twilight Zone episodes where two people talk a lot. It worked, too, in the same ambling way.