Well, I guess this was the day Jenner was talking about, although Rick’s had plenty of shitty days before this.

“There will come a day when you won’t be.” Thankful, that is, that Jenner let them out of the CDC. Remember that, waaaaaaaaay back in season 1?

Negan is every bit of awful we thought he would be. And he has wrought one craptastic day.

So let’s start at the beginning.

“Why? Was the joke that bad?” Rick, face stained with someone’s blood, kneels stunned but defiant in front of a very dirty, drippy Lucille wielded by Negan. Rick promises-not once- but twice: “I’m going to kill you. Not today. Not tomorrow. But I will kill you.” Considering what we know has just happened, this probably isn’t the most judicious choice for Rick to make. Not that Rick is known for making the best choices…well, ever. At least he’s not hallucinating (yet).  But considering that Rick only knows what he knows- and while he’s met up with opportunists (The Claimers), megalomaniacs (The Governor), and cannibals (Oh Gareth, how we miss you and your simpler time)—he has yet to encounter the creative, innovative persuasion techniques of Negan, and so, shoots his mouth off with Ricktastically breathy threats.

He chooses poorly.

Negan is not amused. In related news, Negan has anger issues.

For 6 months (in real time), we’ve know there’s been a slaughter. We don’t know who and I was left to wonder, “How long will they drag this reveal out?” Given the history of TWD, I figure it’s “As long as humanly possible plus five minutes,” which places us indefinitely in a state of limbo. Honestly, this is the one aspect in which AMC does a fantastic job pissing me off.  It just feels like a cheap trick to get as much advertising revenue in. But I digress. A salty topic for another time, I suppose.

Negan asks his “right hand man,” Simon, what weapons Rick has on him. He drags Rick like a little puppy by his scruff into their RV.  Negan and Rick in an RV with a hatchet. Again, this doesn’t bode well. He drives him off into the fog, where he throws out his ax and commands Rick to go get his ax.

As Rick battles the sea of Walkers, we see him see a barrage of images—memories flashing in front of him, each like a little near death experience: Maggie, Glenn, Michonne, Daryl, Abraham, Rosita, Aaron, Eugene. This is as close as we get to a post-apocalyptic dream ballet without Rick going full “Stuff and Things.”

He fights his way to the top of the RV where he sees a hatchet, the dead are closing in on the vehicle and he collapses. He hears Negan, “Think about what happened,” and he complies. In a flashback, we see Rick’s POV starting with eeny meeny miny mo…

And it’s Abraham. Bummer. He slams him on the head, and he tells him to “Suck my nuts.” (The best exit line EVER!). As he continues to taunt the group with the bloody Lucile, Negan tries to force Rosita to look. Daryl loses his shit and goes after him, which of course we all love, but it’s an awful strategic choice. A grave miscalculation.

Lucille meets Glenn.  And he seems to let him linger because Glenn is trying to speak. With every ounce of strength he sputters “Maggie, I’ll find you.” It’s awful. And heartrending. Negan completely and utterly decimates the group.

And then we are brought back to the first scene, “Was the joke that bad?”

Clearly, Negan is a Sophie’s Choice kinda guy, who is much more interested in psychological breakdown than physical torture, which makes what follows all the more breathtaking. He still sees defiance in Rick’s eyes, looking like “I shit in your scrambled eggs,” so he decides to make Rick cut Carl’s arm off with the hatchet. If he doesn’t he’s going to make Rick watch every single person in the group die, before he inevitably kills him. Rick begs him not to, but Negan replies that, “Indecision is the biggest decision”—he starts to count. Rick is sobbing; Carl says, not indecisively, “Dad, just do it. Do it.” And at the very last, he’s about to do it when Negan takes the hatchet from him. Rick is a mess. Negan has him repeat Rick’s allegiance to him, repeating like a wedding vow. Negan’s group leave them in a heap, considering, “How things work.” They take Daryl. Negan taunts Rick, “He’s got guts. Not a little bitch like someone I know.”

He leaves them with a truck to gather their first offering, due in a week.

There is a beautifully shot transition as they leave the group behind, slow motion. The final shot holds Rick in the foreground, looking down, with the body of Glenn laying right under his face in the background.

There’s a shot of the “imaginary table” with all of them gathered, including Glenn, Abraham, a small child on Glenn’s lap. Negan scoffs at Rick, “Bet you thought you were all going to grow old together.” I wonder if that was more for the audience to mourn the dream as much as it was for Rick, who, for six seasons has been all West Side Story, contending “There’s a Place for Us.”

When the group is finally “alone” (I say this because they’re probably being watched), Maggie insists on walking to Hilltop alone, which is sort of ridiculous because, as Rick points out, she can barely stand upright. But she keeps mumbling, “I can’t have you out here. Go home. Take everyone with you.” Sasha volunteers to go with her, but Maggie wants to bury Glenn. She wants them to fight. Rick insists they do it; “he was our family too.” The last shot sees Rick picking up the hachet, driving the bloodied RV, and in the rear view mirror, he sees a lone walker and watches him fall to the ground.

So a couple of things this episode left with me:

1. Lucille. Some had predicted Abraham; I didn’t think that would be the choice, honestly. I should have seen the 1-2 punch coming. As much as I love Glenn, I knew his time was more than up, particularly since there were no dumpsters in sight. And meeting his demise via Lucille, well, that’s right out of the source material even though we all know that this storyline doesn’t follow the GN, yada, yada, yeah, I know. This episode was relentless in a way that previous episodes have just let us off the hook.
2. Get your Bible out, folks. Abraham and Issac story. God tests Abraham, calling to sacrifice his only son, Issac.  Not just because God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son (as Negan proposes Rick does to at least a part of Carl). But on two other accounts. First, he “tests” Rick until he breaks down out of exhaustion and fear. And then there’s that pesky little tail end of the story, in which Abraham spots ram tangled in a nearby bush, slaughters and sacrifices it in lieu of his son in thanks to God. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think of Negan as either an angel of God or God himself. Negan probably thinks of himself like that, and this moment is about Rick’s absolute humility in the face of this request. Negan aimed for a specific “look” in Rick’s eye, namely fear and utter despair. Just as the angel in the scripture says, “Now I know that you fear God,” Negan sees the fear that has taken Rick over. He needs to break people down and build them back up in his own image. Although that strategy is a liability in itself. The analogy is not exact, particularly since Rick doesn’t really give anything over to Negan in thanks. However, Negan has Daryl. And while at first I thought all of that talk about having a “right hand man” was foreshadowing Rick losing his hand, I think it’s much more interesting if it’s referencing Daryl and Rick’s relationship in some way. (Although I’m not confident that Rick’s right hand is long for this world.)
3. The graphic violence. Sorry, folks, but it’s a zombie show. And, in the interest of fairness and open discussion, I admit that I feel torn about the level of violence in this episode, although not for any puritanical reasons. Mostly, I’m not sure if it proved to be as effective as it might have been. On the one hand, there’s a saying in performance; “If you cry, they won’t cry.” In other words, if you want your audience to feel all the feels, it’s less important that the performer is feeling all of those same feelings at full tilt. If the audience witnesses something so awful, so emotionally wrought, it can have the opposite effect and, out of emotional self-preservation, the viewer will pull himself out of his suspension of disbelief. I think this is what happened with this episode to an extent. The scene was just so horrifically beyond comprehension and description, I felt myself pull away just a bit. On the other hand, it is absolutely crucial that we see what brings this group to their knees. It takes a lot to break Rick, and we already know this. Anything less than decimation proves unconvincing in turning Rick and the group. And while some accuse this episode of employing cheap torture porn tactics to manipulate the audience, I would argue that is exactly what Negan deals in. No, it wouldn’t have been enough for us to comfortably watch the group listen to a maniac monologuing in the cold night air, having his thugs beat up one of their captives. We’ve been there before; they’ve been there before- repeatedly. We were subjected to the assault on our senses so that we could feel the relentlessness, the hopelessness, and the inevitability of this event. There is no Carol, no Morgan, no deus ex machina to rescue them at the last possible moment. No one is let off the hook in this iteration of the experience.

Negan has knocked the group off balance in a way they have not previously experienced. Certainly, the title gives us some clues about how “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be.” There came the day when you won’t be- with the deaths of Glenn and Abraham. There came (yet another) day when you won’t be thankful for another “chance.” There came the day when you were so viscerally traumatized by the absence of humanity, by the torture that stripped you of your basic humanity that it was marked as the day when you won’t be any longer…you.

PS: No predictions this week, but hey:

Where’s Carol?

Where’s Morgan?

Where’s Jesus?