The Walking Dead Review: New Best Friends (Season 7 Episode 10)

The midseason premiere showed our characters had a renewed mission and sense of purpose, and the following episode — The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 10, “New Best Friends” — is another hour that is refreshingly free of the hopelessness that weighed down much of the first half of the season.

This is The Walking Dead, so it’s obviously not all sunshine and smiles, but by Walking Dead standards, it’s far more enjoyable than anything in the first half of the season.

The standout highlight of the episode is one of its more emotional moments — the reunion between Daryl and Carol. The Walking Dead has separated and reunited them before, but the scene is still moving, even if it’s similar to reunions we’ve seen in the past.

The Daryl-Carol dynamic is still one of the best on the show, after all these years, thanks in large part to Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride’s chemistry (platonic chemistry, romantic chemistry — regardless of how you view it, there’s no denying the actors are great together).

Carol’s shift in attitude at the end of Season 6 and the beginning of Season 7 has been a bit puzzling — not because her behavior isn’t understandable, but because it’s hard to see where her storyline is going or where the end of this arc is.

“New Best Friends” doesn’t quite answer that question, but it does maybe answer where the arc isn’t going, since Daryl lies and tells her everyone was safe after the Saviors came, knowing she would fight if she knew Abraham and Glenn were killed.

It’s a wonderful, emotional scene, and it may be one of the best crying scenes I have ever seen on TV.

McBride’s tears are so genuine, and the entire conversation makes me feel like maybe I don’t want Badass Carol back. Maybe she deserves to just peacefully live in her little house by herself for as long as she wants.

While it seems Carol may not be joining the fight against Negan and the Saviors, others are.

The cliffhanger from “Rock in the Road” is resolved as Rick and the gang get to know the group that surrounded them at the end of the last episode.

And they are… weird. They’re mostly silent, and when they do talk, they have an odd way of speaking, and they make Rick fight some kind of Zombie Trash Gladiator to prove himself, and it is all pretty weird.

This isn’t to say it’s a bad storyline. It’s entertaining in its weirdness, it gives Father Gabriel a nice moment of redemption, and the group of weirdos does agree to help fight Negan in the end.

Speaking of Negan, he was completely absent from “New Best Friends” and, like in the midseason premiere, he wasn’t really missed. The show has shaken its sluggishness in these first two episodes back, and not having Negan literally breathing down the throats of the group has helped with that.

With “Rock in the Road,” it seemed like The Walking Dead was getting back on the right path, and “New Best Friends” seems to confirm it.

But It does look like Negan will be back in Season 7 Episode 11, and it will be interesting to see if his return slows things down and brings back some of the doom-and-gloom or if the show can continue its streak of improvement.

OTHER THOUGHTS:

• Up until this point, Richard seemed like he would be a good ally for the fight against the Saviors, but after his plan to trick the Saviors into attacking Carol… Richard now seems a little too desperate to go to war against the Saviors, maybe dangerously so.
• Rick hurts his hand, again, while fighting Zombie Trash Gladiator, which definitely seems like another little tease about that thing that happens in the comics (to put it in spoiler-free terms). It’s at least the third tease from the past season and a half.
• When Rick says that Tara can tell them where not to look for lots and lots of guns, Tara fidgets with the bracelet she received from the teenager at the community of women who have lots and lots of guns. Let’s see how long it takes before we see them again.

What did you think of “New Best Friends”? Share with us in the comments below!

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The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

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