‘Do Not Send Us Astray’ Brings Stupid Characters Doing Stupid Things Back to The Walking Dead

Do Not Send Us Astray Plot Summary:

The Saviors invade Hilltop in order to infect them with walker infused weapons. Morgan (Lennie James) is hallucinating. Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Tara (Alanna Masterson) are at odds over Dwight (Austin Amielo) and his allegiance.

‘Do Not Send Us Astray’ was a return to form for The Walking Dead.

The worst possible form.

The series has been on a massive upswing this year. The second half of Season 8 has been teeming with strong performances, solid scares, and tight action sequence. Logical storytelling has been weaved into the majority of the storylines, and the series finally started to resonate with me for the first time in years.

Then came ‘Don Not Send Us Astray.’

Once again logic was thrown out of the window, had gasoline poured on it, and was set ablaze. Then someone threw a grenade on top of it, and angry feral cat took a pee on the ashes.

Side characters that we have zero investment in it were the lynchpin for all the action. Was any sad that Tobin died? Nope. He’s been this unformed lump of a character for years. Why are we giving this Henry kid all this screen time? Why are we making him Carl 2.0, where he makes the worst decisions at the worst time?

There was nothing good about this episode. If you like people killing walkers, hooray for you. You got plenty of that this episode. But, in all seriousness, was this any different from any other killing of a walker herd? This felt more like the requisite “walker culling” we’ve seen in seasons past, and not something horrifying.

The whole “let’s infect them and then let the walkers kill them” storyline was always okay at best. To make this storyline worse, we have the Saviors basically abort the plan mid-attack and go for a full-on assault…which is in direct opposition of Negan’s orders, and Simon’s whole speech at the beginning. So logic is completely out the window there.

The Morgan hallucinations are stupid. Henry trying to smoke one of the Saviors was stupid. The whole Saadiq can’t help anyone despite the fact he is a damn doctor, is idiotic. Oh, and Tara and Dwight’s flip flopping opinions on Dwight make me want to get bitten by a walker.

There’s a reason the ratings are sinking fast on this series — every time they do something right, they set themselves on fire and make us question why we even tune in.

Rating: 4 out of 10