User Reviews

Like many, the first half of Season 7 was mostly a disappointment. Although the first three episodes had promise they were still flawed and the rest of the first half mostly didn't go very far, was flawed in writing and had moments of ridiculousness amongst other things. Most of the episodes after "Rock in the Road" also disappointed, making for a season that is considered one of the worst ones for 'The Walking Dead' for good reason.

With "Rock in the Road" however, to me there was a glimmer of hope in the season's first very good episode. Personally don't quite agree with it being a return to form for 'The Walking Dead', but if there was a prize for the best episode of Season 7 "Rock in the Road" is a very strong contender. It wasn't perfect or a show high point, but by Season 7 standards it was pretty darn impressive and it is a shame that more episodes from the season were like this.

"Rock in the Road" isn't perfect. It doesn't start off promisingly in my view, it is a slow starter and will agree that the script is weak early on. Daryl is not well written here, uncharacteristic for him at this point of the show, and his dialogue doesn't make sense.

Perhaps it would have benefitted from having a little less going on, though it may have been trying to make up for how aimless the first half of Season 7 was, as parts were a little rushed and disjointed.

A vast majority of the time the storytelling is fine. There is tension but actually after so much uncompromising intensity and darkness the lighter, sometimes more amusing and more hopeful tone was appreciated and refreshing. It goes at an energised clip, it is great that the season two episodes go and especially so here started to forward the plotting and will agree that the action sequence midway through was thrilling. Although the writing is flawed, it is a lot tighter, more thought-provoking and much more natural than all the previous Season 7 episodes and much of what came after. The direction has tautness and sensitivity.

Characterisation is well done, with Ezekiel being a refreshing joy and the limited use of Negan was appreciated after him dominating so much in the first half of the season (well most of the season overall actually). Characters that had not been interesting for a long time have time to shine in their own way. The episode is stylishly photographed without being gimmicky and the music is haunting. The acting is very good from all.

Summing up, very good and refreshing. 8/10

Boy, doesn't it feel good to have Walking Dead back and no one important die? Heck, even Rick had a smile to end the episode. Although the Alexandrians were denied partnership with Gregory and King Ezekiel, things are on the way up for our favorite survivors.

The cliffhanger from the mid-season finale was not addressed at all as we got no follow up to the creeper in the boots. Instead, yet another mystery was added to the show as Gabriel seemingly left Alexandria and took all the food and weapons without any reason whatsoever. Of course, the team thought he left a clue in his bible to his whereabouts, but it looks more like they stumbled upon a new community altogether. Because of how dire the cliffhanger felt, I'm guessing it will turn out to be just the opposite, but who knows.

I like where this season is heading with presumably the 'March to War' adaptation being the centerpiece for inspiration. There are a ton of communities that can help Alexandria and I have to believe that eventually they will succumb to Rick's pleas. Although he wasn't successful, I thought his arguments to Gregory and the story he told Ezekiel was exactly the way he should go about it. But it does make me wonder, what will it take for the communities to finally agree? Does Gregory have to be taken out of his place of power altogether? Does Ezekiel have to lose someone close to him before he accepts? No matter, I think we're all itching to see a little more of Shiva and Jerry, right?

An extended episode with no Negan meant we needed some sort of Walker conflict, and we got a dang good one. I knew that the team wasn't going to fall at the hands of the herd or be found out by Negan that quick, but the highway robbery of the dynamite was just about as thrilling as I could have hoped. It goes to show you just how desperate the group has become if Rick was willing to risk everyone's lives for the bombs. And watching Rick and Michonne rip hundreds of walkers in half while driving barbwire through them? One of the best stunts in this show's history.

So overall, it wasn't all that eventful, but the group definitely took the next step into taking down Negan. So unlike some Walking Dead episodes, the story is moving forward and not wasting any time. That's refreshing.

+Rick's speech

+Adding more mysteries

+Building the Walking Dead universe

+Highway scene

8.7/10

Father Gabriel brings all the supplies from the pantry to the trunk of his car and leaves Alexandria. Rick, Daryl and their friends meet Jesus and they have a meeting with Gregory in Hilltop to plot to fight the Saviors. Gregory refuses but Enid convinces many people to join their fight. Then Jesus leads the group to Kingdom expecting to convince King Ezekiel to join the Kingdom in their fight and he offers sanctuary to Daryl. On their way back to Alexandria, they find a bobby trap on the road planted by the Saviors with many explosives. What will they do?

"Rock in the Road" is an excellent return of the Seventh Season of "The Walking Dead" to the trail. Rick Grimes now is the leader the viewers used to see in the previous seasons and plots an uprising against the Saviors. The scene on the road with the cars cutting the walkers is very well done. What happened to Father Gabriel and what is his intention is the mystery of this show. Fortunately this time there is no death of any character and Negan does not appear in the show. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Rock in the Road"

What do Rick, King Ezekiel, and Negan all have in common? They all live inside their own reality and interpret the world through filters of their own choosing, unhindered by the world around them. In other words, they are all crazy in their own way. To be an effective leader in an apocalyptic world, you must have a mental resilience of the kind that only a psychopath or insane individual possesses. This episode does a great job of poetically comparing Rick's mental perceptions with Ezekiel's, and by extension, Negan's - our favorite trio of crazy but effective leaders; they are not effective in spite of their insanity, they are effective because of their insanity. For them reality is perception, you are what you believe you are - mind over matter. There is depth, there is meaning, there is metaphor, there is soul brought out in this episode which I greatly enjoyed witnessing on screen. It was pure poetry of the human psyche.

Well, this is once again, the highest ranked episode. I doubt it will last long, but it doesn't matter because this is truly a great episode. There's so much that goes on in all of these that it's great that after each new episode they feature "The Talking Dead" which gives a brief summary of everything that happened. I don't watch the rest of the show, just the brief summary at the beginning. Sue me! Anyway, we get to see most of our favorite characters back doing what they do best. It's just great to see the human dynamics between everyone.

Ezekiel's back and he's such an awesome character it's great to see him anywhere. I especially like the scenes where he's praying. Speaking of which, the priest appears again, but only at the beginning. I admit that I was a tad disappointed that this didn't seem to be an episode that have that many zombies in it. It all wonderfully builds up to the episode's climax as we actually see two cars run a wire through an entire horde of zombies! When there's too many to take them out like that, they simply use dynamite. Yes, this is a very intelligent show, but I love stuff blowing up too. ****

'Rock In The Road' marks the return of The Walking Dead after it's winter break, and offers a great deal of hope regarding the future of the show. The first half of Season 7 was, for the most part, dull, meandering, and miserable. The entirety of those 8 episodes could have easily been fit into 5 - hell, there are whole episodes that didn't need to exist.

But with 'Rock In The Road', the show is hopefully changing course. Although the episode mostly consisted of Rick and his group going from community to community, trying and failing to convince everyone to join them in their fight against Negan, 'Rock In The Road' felt tighter, and seemed like the show was actually building towards something. It can be compared to the early-season episodes of Game of Thrones, where each scene is a purposeful move of a chess piece, the payoff of which will almost always be of epic proportions. Granted, the show can squander it all by returning to it's usual, meandering ways, but it is worth pointing out the feeling of momentum in 'Rock In The Road'.

The dark, dreary tone of Season 7A has been replaced with a more thrilling, fun sort of feel - it even ends with a shot of Rick grinning! About half-way through the episode, there's a fantastic action sequence where the group retrieves explosives from a walker trap set by the Saviors. It might be a dumb, pop-corny sort of set piece, but it was riveting to watch nonetheless - and it's always enjoyable to see the Walkers actually pose a danger to the group. But despite how enjoyable the scene was, it felt like it was just thrown in to give the episode an action sequence. While the dynamite will probably play a role in future episodes, the scene didn't contribute to the immediate plot and wasn't mentioned at all afterward.

The episode also felt very sporadic and all over the place at times, mostly due to the sheer amount of places the core group visited. They're at the Hilltop, now they're at the Kingdom, now they're on the outskirts of the Sanctuary, now they're at Alexandria. It's a lot to fit into 50 minutes, and the pacing was very rushed at certain points in the episode.

Other weakness of 'Rock In The Road' have less to do with the episode, and more of the show as a whole. Dialogue is one place where the Walking Dead can struggle. The show has had no shortage of awesome lines and fantastic exchanges, but there are many instances of the dialogue feeling forced, or just downright stilted and unnatural. For instance, the titular 'Rock In The Road' speech had the potential to be this rousing, inspiring oration, but mostly came off as a semi-desperate ramble said in the hopes of recruiting Ezekiel.

But all that rabble might have been for nothing, as the episode ends with the introduction of yet another community. While the scene ended with that nice shot of Rick grinning like an idiot, the rest of it was just infuriating. The show already has enough characters, many of which don't receive nearly enough screen time, so why introduce a completely different community? Yes, Rick's group needs a source of manpower and weapons in order to defeat Negan. But the writers should have made the Kingdom posses more manpower and weapons, rather than introduce a THIRD community (not including Alexandria or the Sanctuary).

Despite the gaping flaws of the episode, 'Rock In The Road' was something of a return to form for the Walking Dead after a middling first-half of the season. Here's hoping the show will continue this upward trend, and not fall back into the same-old, same-old.

STRAY COMMENTS - It's great to see most of the group back together again. - That steel-wire gag was ridiculous and awesome at the same time. - Assuming Gabriel was taking all those supplies to hide them from the Saviors, it's great to see his character grow and transform. - The show needs to stop with the jangly-guitar music whenever the Kingdom is shown. It doesn't work.

FINAL SCORE: 8.2/10

A lot of the dialogue now is playing off what the audience knows about the characters. But it also means there's nothing left to learn about the characters, we just have to play around with what we've got. Rick makes a joke to Daryl about him 'staring meanly' at someone, because that's how we've come to know them and their relationship. It's like watching a later season episode of Married with Children. Where Al comes out, says his line and tucks his hand in his pants. And what was once a meaningful punchline becomes used as a just reminder of that. And it gets half-laugh where you just breathe out your nose because you recognize the joke. You just don't find it funny.

Long running shows often cross a line where they are no longer as relevant or as fresh and engaging as they once were. But they're still enjoyable because we have reached a point where we believe in these characters - where we engage with them like they are real people. So they are like friends. And you often gives friends the benefit of the doubt when they say things, or let them ramble on about their day much longer than you would tolerate it from a stranger. And that's where we are with The Walking Dead.

The audience is invested but no longer engaged. The characters are likable and familiar but no longer interesting. What was once a show for adults that teens watched has morphed more into a kind of teen drama with an adult setting.

The only thing keeping many clinging on is that there are still some characters they once liked. But each time a core cast member is lost that connection to the show is lost. And it's getting harder and harder to care about anyone anymore.

The dip in quality is probably not noticeable to those wrapped up in the show. But the tone and writing of the show has changed so much from where it started.

I'm not saying the show has 'jumped the shark' (even though it probably did when Daryl lit the lake on fire with a bazooka) but the comparison to Happy Days still works - Where as in the early seasons of Happy Days you'll see a lot of effort made to make the characters, the drama and the comedy feel real and authentic. In later seasons it was just made to entertain. Characters came out and 'did their catchphrase' and they got the laugh. That's where The Walking Dead is. It's just out to entertain now. There's no attempt to draw new audience members in. There's no attempt to make meaningful drama. They're happy just to play it out and give the fans what they want.

Good for them I suppose. I watch it amazed at how much my attitude toward this show has changed. I remember a time when I loved it. And while I'll probably keep putting it on to watch in the background, I'll never love this show again. It's certainly well past the point where I could confidently recommend it to someone as worth watching.

At least we were given a break from Negan for a little bit. What some members of the group should do is take a few trucks on a trip back to Morgan's old apartment & load up all the guns, ammo, and other weapons he has left there, with a scavenging story that they had to go far away to give Negan's people if asked. If I had to guess on who Rick was smiling at, that was Carol. That whole group that showed up seemed to be women & girls: perhaps the group that Tara came across, then Carol did on her walk in the woods; just a thought though.

It is too bad about the Message Boards or comments, but I think behind all this is to make sure that there are fewer places other than social media sites to place comments or views on anything, even sites like Yahoo & others will soon do this I believe so everyone can be watched & monitored more easily. Pretty soon I'd bet everything and every site & place that you can use to comment or offer opinion's on will all be under the jurisdiction of only 1 or 2 places & funneled through those so nothing can be in an anonymous type format.

This is got to be one of the best episodes in the season. The previous episode gave a hope of resurrection, this episode takes it to a new level. This episode becomes my favorite with just that one car scene, that was just super cool. One of the best action set piece in the walking dead franchise. It had everything, danger, time bound mission, lot of stakes and proper writing. Really happy just to see Rick back in form. I think the old episodes in this season just set the stage to establish the super amazing and strong antagonist negan and to push Rick Grimes to his limits. Now we know that he is not against a simple enemy and there are lot of things that could go wrong if he doesn't plays his cards right. Ends the show in a yet amazing cliff hanger (What a smile).

Gabriel packs a car with supplies to hide from the Saviors, only to be kidnapped by a dark figure. Meanwhile, Rick, Maggie, Sasha, Carl, Michonne, Tara, Rosita, Daryl and Jesus meet with Gregory at the Hilltop. He refuses to help them in the fight against the Saviors.

Jesus takes the group to The Kingdom, where they attempt to convince Ezekiel to aid in the fight. Morgan tells the group that Carol's okay, but keeps his promise to not to tell anyone where she is. The next day, although Ezekiel refuses to join the fight, he shows sympathy for Rick's cause by offering Daryl asylum.

On the road back to Alexandria, the group encounters a booby trap strung across the highway, consisting of a long trip wire attached to large amounts of dynamite. The trap is apparently set up to wipe out a large group, whether Walker or human. Rick and his crew defuse and dismantle the rig, as a large herd of Walkers approaches. They then take most of the dynamite for later use, while using the wire, strung between two vehicles, to mow down over half of the Walker herd.

Once back in Alexandria, Rick is confronted by Simon, who comes in search of the escaped Daryl. Knowing that Daryl is hidden safely away at the Kingdom, Rick readily pretends to cooperate with the search. During this process, Rick and Simon are both surprised to see that the community pantry is now almost completely empty.

After Simon's exit, Rick follows a clue left behind by Gabriel, who wanted the group to know where he had headed with the supplies. The group doesn't find Gabriel, but as they follow his trail, they are suddenly encountered by a large group of heavily armed women. Although the group is once again in danger, Rick smiles. He can see that if these supposed enemies can be turned, they will be a great aid to the war effort against the Saviors.

The episode follows Rick and the group as they try to recruit other communities to join their fight against Negan and the Saviors. The episode is notable for its exploration of alliances and diplomacy, as Rick tries to convince the leaders of the Hilltop and the Kingdom to join forces with Alexandria.

One of the most memorable scenes in the episode is when Rick and the group encounter a roadblock set up by the Saviors and must find a way to outsmart them and continue on their journey. This moment highlights the group's resourcefulness and ability to think on their feet in order to overcome obstacles. The tension builds as Rick and the group face numerous challenges and setbacks in their quest to build an alliance against Negan.

The episode is also notable for its exploration of the Kingdom and its leader, King Ezekiel, as Rick tries to persuade Ezekiel to join their cause. Ezekiel's reluctance to get involved in a conflict that could endanger his people adds depth to his character and raises questions about the nature of leadership in this new world.

Fortunately, the first episode of the second half of the season was able to continue the upward progress of the quality of the previous episodes. Episodes 7-8-9 created a solid bridge in this season. The simultaneous advancement of storylines and the design of exciting and beautiful sequences make this episode get 10 points. Well, this is good news and I really want this process to continue. And I also understood that the only reason the previous episodes were one-dimensional was actually to buy time for the creators because they definitely wanted this season to have 16 episodes, so there's no need to insist. It's okay if the number of episodes is short, but it's quality and lovely. Quantity should not be sacrificed for quality.

Not sure why there are so many glowing reviews of this episode "returning to form". Maybe because of the fast pace and the generally positive feel? What people seem to jump over is how terrible the acting was for this episode -- and the dialog was even worse.

I feel like in some places this script was written by middle-schoolers. Or maybe it was poor editing/musical score choices that made the dialog seem bad. I'm honestly questioning continuing the series after this episode. Also, they are completely butchering Carol and Daryl's characters -- Daryl has gotten boring and predictable, Carol has gotten boring and weak.

Other than episode 7.1 this season has been trash. The Walking Dead has gone downhill FAST!

What happened to this show? now Rick and his friends became superheros, even thousands of zombies are too weak now, take from them all the weapons no problem we won't loose anybody... What happened to the writers : Too much 'politically correct', let's be nice people and kill all the imagination of what could happened in this situation.. it's not like we are in a post apocalypse World. The first seasons were awesome it's time to stop the show..

The acting and the script this season has been bad but these last 2 episodes have been unbearably bad and cheesy - also these people now walk around in a group like they are superheroes with dramatic music playing in the background like a Marvel film.

This is a good set of actors so I'm assuming it's bad directing that is the cause of this cringe.