7 Standout Moments From The Walking Dead's Unnecessarily Long Episode 4
Why on earth did this episode of The Walking Dead need to be 90 minutes long? Generally when you hear that a show is getting an extended episode, you can assume there's a reason for it-a season-ending set piece, maybe, or a midseason finale, or the exit of a beloved character. But Season 7's fourth episode, 'Service,' barely has enough material in it to justify the standard hour-long running time, let alone more.
Negan and his Saviors pay a visit to Alexandria, and it goes pretty much exactly as you expect: Negan has a few wisecracking confrontations with a cowed Rick, wielding his power almost as gleefully as he wields Lucille, and the Saviors clean out the gang's supply of medicine, weapons and even mattresses, because they can. There's very little A to B progression within this 90 minutes; we begin the episode knowing that Negan & co. are bad news, and end the episode knowing they're still bad news.
There's a lot of filler, but there are also a few surprising highlights as the episode goes on. Here are the seven standout moments that make "Service" worth sticking with.
1) The Maggie fake-out.
Maggie is nowhere to be seen, and when Negan asks after "the sick girl," Rick tells him she didn't make it before taking him to a freshly-dug grave. It's a shame, Negan says, because he loves hot widows: "Right after their husbands go, they are just empty inside… but usually not for long." Ugh.
We know from last week Negan's big on what he considers consent; he doesn't have sex with women unless they're willing, but he somehow thinks he has a shot with Maggie despite having just killed her husband. "You'd be surprised," he says, presumably referencing Sherry… but Sherry only agreed to "marry" Negan in order to protect Dwight, whereas Maggie has literally nothing to lose at this point.
In any case, Rick is clearly lying about Maggie, and this is the only glimmer of hope to suggest that he hasn't entirely given up.
2) Dwight takes Daryl's bike.
Because deep down, he kind of wants to be Daryl. Talk about adding insult to injury – especially after Negan has forbidden Rick and everyone else from speaking to Daryl, who shows up with the Saviors and remains silent throughout. He can have his bike back if he "just says the words," Dwight taunts, presumably still trying to get him to say that his name is Negan.
3) Even Negan is scared of Rick's beard.
The really gnarly Season 5 beard, that is. "Is that you, Rick, underneath all that man-bush?" Negan asks, watching footage of Rick circa Season 5. "I would not have messed with that guy!" But of course, what he's really doing is taunting Rick about how far he's fallen; he's not the man or the leader he used to be, and his impotence is highlighted at every possible opportunity by Negan. He's still not wrong about the beard.
4) Rick tells Michonne about Shane.
Seeing Richonne in bed together, albeit briefly, was another hopeful moment, since they've been way too absent of late. They had some conflict this week–Michonne snuck out with a rifle to practice shooting walkers, and though she wanted to keep it hidden, Rick ultimately forced her to hand it over to the Saviors along with the rest of their weapons, because he can't bear the risk of losing her.
"Everything we have, we got from fighting," Michonne argues, but Rick wins the argument with a monologue about the first person he really lost to the apocalypse: Shane. How weird is it to hear him say that name after so long?
5) Judith isn't Rick's biological daughter
Rick's monologue leads into this unexpected revelation, which has never been confirmed before one way or the other. Lori's affair with Shane made it impossible to know for sure either way, since she had sex with both Rick and Shane during Season 1, but now it turns out that Rick has always known on some level that Judith isn't his daughter.
He had to accept it, he says, so that he could keep Judith alive, and though it's not entirely clear how this relates to the Negan situation, his point seems to be about compromise. Rick is a cuckold, biologically speaking, but still chooses to raise Judith as his own, and though Negan is emasculating him at every turn ("I just slid my dick down your throat, and you thanked me for it"), in Rick's mind there's more to gain from surrender than resistance.
So when Michonne promised him "I'm gonna try," does she mean she's going to try and accept their new life like Rick? Or that she's going to keep trying to fight? It's really hard to imagine Michonne rolling over and taking Negan's orders in quite the same way, especially given her history with the Governor.
6) Rosita's secret gun.
Between Maggie's secret plan, Michonne's secret target practice and Rosita's secret gun, the ladies are really shaping up to be the resistance. Despite the Saviors' thorough inventory, Rosita managed to stash one handgun, and at the end of the episode she asks Eugene to make her a bullet. And let's not forget Carol, who's still biding her time somewhere out in the forest with King Ezekiel.
7) The burned supplies.
This was a pretty effective sting in the tail, if unsurprising-Michonne discovers a burned pile of their supplies out on the road, confirming that the Saviors don't even need a lot of this stuff. They just take because they can, and while this isn't really new information, it might be a pivotal moment for Michonne, who seems to be on the verge of complying with Rick's surrender approach. No way that happens now, right?
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