Trapped in a trailer surrounded by the dead, Negan and Gabriel come to something approaching an understanding. Rick and Daryl hit the exact opposite as their argument over how to wage the war turns violent. And the Savior lieutenants begin to fight among themselves.

There’s about half a brilliant episode here. The stuff which is just Seth Gilliam and Jeffrey Dean Morgan acting at one another is flat out golden. Gabriel has officially moved now from least useful character to most potentially interesting one, his faith coupled with a jet-black sense of humour and pragmatism that makes him entrancing to watch. The grin on his face when he says he’s there to take Negan’s confession is not fully sane, but comes from the massive well of compassion that this flawed, broken man is built around and, slowly, is healing from.

Morgan for his part seems to relish a Negan episode that isn’t a voyage to crotch-grabbing dudebro king city. Here he shows honesty, fragility, even respect to the priest that he’s possibly sharing his final moments. The swagger is still there but, much like with Carl, Negan doesn’t feel the need to perform with Gabriel. He shows his wounds, as does Gabriel, and the pair of them are stronger for that. There’s no friendship here, that much is obvious, but of all the characters in the show, it’s clear that Negan respects and even likes Gabriel more than anyone else still standing on the Coalition side.

So that’s great. The rest? Not so much. The unusually complex writer credits this episode (Story by Scott M. Gimple, David Leslie Johnson & Angela Kang; Teleplay by David Leslie Johnson & Angela Kang), I suspect, say a lot about why it shakes out like it does. This is another episode defined by the serialised nature of the show these days, the powerful central conceit over-ridden by the need for other plots. One of those is great. The other not so much.

Let’s get the good news out of the way first shall we? The Rick and Daryl conflict explodes way earlier than I was expecting it to and does so in very smart, interesting ways. Both men have excellent points, both men are operating from rock solid evidence. Neither is wrong.

Neither is right enough.

That culminates in a fight which goes exactly the way you might expect. In short, Rick gets his ass absolutely handed to him and while the moral high ground is maybe his, the physical is all Mr Dixon’s. What’s really interesting about this is how little emotion is behind it; as the scene finishes the two men are still seriously pissed at one another but know enough that other things take precedence. There’s still talking to be done and, odds are, punches to throw. But that comes later. After they win. And how they win will pretty clearly dictate the punch/talk ratio.

And that brings us to the Saviors plot. Have you yearned for interminable scenes of Simon, Gavin, Eugene and Regina politicking at one another? Have you wished fervently that an episode would feature a near-worker revolt in a badly lit corridor? Have you just not quite got enough of the Saviors’ one-note, snore-inducing internal power struggles?

Then this is not the episode for me. But it may be for you.

The weird thing about this is that the actors are all rock solid and the scriptwriters for this episode include probably the show’s three best writers right now. However, because we get this stuff jammed into the episode alongside the Rick and Daryl throwdown and the stuff we actually care about, it just doesn’t work. In fact it feels forced, perfunctory and dull. The Saviors’ overwhelming emotional response is annoyance and that’s not exactly something that’s fun to watch especially for this long. It also speaks to a wider problem the show is a season and a bit into not knowing how to address;

The Saviors are boring.

Negan is at least improved now he’s been given some nuance but if I never saw Simon, Gavin, Gregory or, honestly, at this point, Eugene again? It’d be fine. They feel perfunctory, tacked on and they take up way too much space here. Worse, they create too much space, taking what should have been a claustrophobic masterpiece and turning it into another cog in the machine.

Verdict: Alternating between gripping, interesting and boring this episode never quite gets the mix right. It puts some amazing stuff in place (HELICOPTER?!!!!!) but on its own, unfortunately, it doesn’t work well enough. 5/10

Alasdair Stuart