The Walking Dead ***please use SPOILER tags***

Whatever the decision for the time jump, there's now another whole load of back story the audience doesn't know anything about. Rosita and Gabriel is probably the most unlikely pairing ever, so what gives (also, how did Gabriel get out of Jadis/Anne's truck)? We're being led to assume that the little 'un with Michonne is her and Rick's kid...but that's a rug that's likely to be pulled down the road, too. And what was with the little girl calling Aaron 'Daddy'? Wasn't he supposed to be gay? Does that mean she's adopted (assume so, but again...would that kind of set-up even exist with no protective services hoops to jump through? Would it need to)? When did the council form? When, why, and how badly did the alliance of communities fall apart? Given that it has fallen apart, how and why does Hilltop still get Alexandria's rejects? Come to that, how did the newcomers manage to survive for what is now 7-8 years post-ZA, given that they were apparently still bumbling about the wilderness? Smacks of a larger, heretofore unknown community (and I mean...really?), which means they're either spies or genuine survivors from its fall. But, given their reaction to Alexandria and its vestiges of organisation, maybe not, yet there is no way such a rag-tag bunch could have gone on for seven years that way.

I'm not a massive fan of internal reboots, but that's clearly what they've done. It would have been better, IMO, to cap TWD off this season with Rick disappearing, then launching what was clearly a continuation show and letting it stand or fall on its own merits, or lack of them. As it stands, it feels like a bit of a cheat. Maybe not much of a one, mind, but still a cheat.

Also, having watched it back, I clearly misheard what was said at the end. That was partly because I had my gf waffling away saying how ridiculous it all was (her standard position; she's never liked TWD and thinks it's become ludicrous now), and partly because, as the ep wound down, I was already mentally switching off. And you don't expect clear speech from a zombie horde in any case.

This explains the "speaking Walkers"

'Walking Dead': Why Those Zombies Just Spoke

Though I wish I hadn't been paying quite so much during the new guy's Neanderthals speech. Got pretty much everything wrong on them, AFAIK. They were smarter than Homo Sapiens? Er...no? OK, they painted, as did 'we', but...well...
And I thought it had been known/accepted for quite a while that 'we' didn't wipe Neanderthals out in the way described. There would have been conflict in some areas, just as there was with other groups of 'us', but in others there was interbreeding. It's supposed to be where red hair comes from (or was the last I knew). Either way it just makes sense. That extra strength and resilience would have been attractive to some, and they were enough like each other to be able to breed, so there you go.
Oh, and crude instruments have been found among Neanderthal remains, so it's at least highly likely that they also had music and song of some type.

Anyway, I quite liked the introduction of Daryl's dog. Quite how said doggo survived, either as an adult or especially as a pup, for all those years is a bit of a mystery, and why it was still so tame is another, and you just know that the dog's going to end up being chewed on-screen at some point fairly soon (being killed in fairly nasty ways seems to be their entire raison d'être in movies and TV; it's fast becoming a cliché), but still, it's a nice dog.
The fuel for Dazza's motorbike really should have gone flat by now, though. If it was a stretch given the timeline before, it's definitely dodgy after the jump.

I don't know if it's just me, either, but I'm really struggling again post-jump. The first 5 eps of the season were a welcome return to form, but the last two...I don't know. There's a different feel and as much as they went straight for action, it felt like quickly plastering over a whacking great crack and hoping for the best. Then this week we had more or less an old-style filler (ha!) episode, without even a brief moment with Eugene (and how, exactly, did they get away from that horde to find a barn? Is that going to be told in flashback? Are we going to get an entire ep on it? Have they just "done a Glenn" with Eugene (who, with all due respect, is rather too large to be hidden under a dumpster, hence the barn)? And we all know what comes staggering out of barns after an eps-long arc, don't we?
I said way back I'd watch it until Andrew Lincoln left. I've watched the last couple more or less so no one could say I'd written the rest off without giving it a chance. But the way I feel about it right now, I'll give it until the mid-season break (so, what? One more ep? Two?) then see if I remember/can be bothered on the return. If I do/am or I find myself looking forward to it, I'll carry on. If not, well, 8 1/2 seasons of a show isn't too bad, and in retrospect it's mostly (but not always) been fun.

the cute, clever bit with "Dog" bringing first a zombie hand, and later foot to Daryl as a present.

I like the dog. It was a boring episode, can't wait for the evolution walkers/whisperers not sure.

Damn Jesus is Dead but maybe they give him 3 Movies.
The Scene at the Graveyard had a great Atmosphere, really creepy....seems like the Horror is back in TWD.
The Whisperers and Neegans escape, two good Reasons for me, to look forward for Part 2 of Season 9

Wow, episode 8 was actually good, the last parts of it. I wasn't expecting Jesus to go out like that but knew about the whisperers. It would have been way more interesting if the walkers had actually evolved, more dangerous. They made the last few scenes so creepy looking in the cemetery. Thunder and lightning to boot. It's been a while since they've been trapped like that too. And Negan escaped. I'm so over Negan.

Well, for a mid-season finale that wasn't bad. I expected one of the main characters to go, though in hindsight it was never going to be Aaron or Mr Dixon, but was still surprised when it was Jesus. That entire scene in the graveyard was one of the best in years, though. Atmospheric, creepy as...for the first time in a while, you could actually believe it might be curtains for the lot of them. It needs more like that and less of the 'folks just ambling around' stuff.

If I do have a gripe, though, it's the way the teenagers were portrayed, again. It's as if the writers (not just of this; it's a more general problem I have) can't imagine teens being anything other than...well, disobedient idiots. Yes, they'd get bored, yes, they might not always make the best decisions, but having grown up in that world, having lost people and having seen what the walkers can do, their behaviour would be quite different. Filching hooch and getting up to frat school-style hijinks seems a bit too "this world" to ever convincingly be "theirs". Even Carl wasn't quite that stupid, and that boy could be dumb as a post.