Final Thoughts from The Walking Dead Episode "Start to Finish"

I kind of figured Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh) wouldn't make it through this season. But, her death still leaves a lot of doubt about Alexandria's future. After all, even though she wants Rick (Andrew Lincoln) to take over for her, I'm not convinced the community's citizens are so willing to let that happen, even if he starts treating them as "his people" as she told him. So, while surviving the zombies is the main priority, I'm not convinced saving the town will be worth it.

I was beginning to wonder if that was the case and was actually a bit relieved to see Rick pull that out of his bag of tricks again in an attempt to escape Jessie's (Alexandra Breckenridge) overrun house.

Of course, since he obviously didn't forget this trick, I still can't help but wonder why he didn't just do this in the first place. He could have killed one of the walkers, covered himself in their blood, escaped town and made some sort of noise or other distraction to pull them away from the wall.

I'm not an expert on where, exactly, everything is in Alexandria. But, those walkers were coming through just one relatively narrow hole in the wall and weren't exactly moving at Cheetah-like speeds. It just seems like it would have made more sense for him to make a bee line to the armory right away rather than waiting until the entire town was overrun.

To be fair, maybe that was his plan originally and Deanna getting hurt forced him to change that plan. But, I still think carrying her to the armory would have made the most sense, especially since that is also where all the medical supplies are kept.

These two are actually very similar to each other. Both seem to choose to take their own path whenever they see it as the best course. The only difference is Morgan is against killing while Carol seems to be willing to take that step. And, as I suspected, it was only a matter of time before they ended up clashing.

Now that they have, both are alive and their fight led to Morgan's prisoner escaping and taking a hostage (Merritt Wever) with him, I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of finger pointing going on and I just don't see them working together.

Notably missing from this episode were Daryl (Norman Reedus), Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) and Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and I really can't help but wonder where they are at.

Last we saw them, they had led the zombies away and were, at least from appearances, on their way back to Alexandria. Considering Glenn (Steven Yeun) made it there already on foot and they were in a truck, their absence doesn't make a whole lot of sense, even with their noted detour. Unless, of course, their adventure took place on a completely different timeline, which is possible and one of my biggest complaints about this series splitting episode time between the separate groups like that.

The episode, as is often the case with the mid-season finales, ended on an interesting cliffhanger. However, other than that, I honestly didn't think there was a lot about this episode to be excited about, partly because a lot of what happened was expected and because Rick's poor decisions seem to almost be a deliberate attempt to put them into this situation. It wasn't bad. But, it wasn't anything memorable either.

My Grade: C