The most recent episode....
Mostly found it on the boring side, yet after the previous episode, it was a bit of relief. But this was first time I had to wait 7 days to watch the next episode and can now understand more why fans of the show disliked S2 when it aired. When you watch all of S2 back to back, I find it to be a very good season (seen it twice), but having to wait a week (or two) for certain plot lines to be addressed does make sense how one might find it boring. In the most recent episode (#2, from S7) we get nothing about what Rick's group is up to, and to not have any information there, does mean it'll be 14 days (at least) before we learn anything on that tangent.
Continuing on that first point, there's not much conflict in what's presented, and so Ezekiel and his clan currently come across a bit like Governor and his group, with them (leaders/fighters of the group) doing certain, secret things while the community does other (normal, life sustaining) things. Though, I'm thinking Ezekiel is around 5 times less nefarious than the Governor.
What I liked is possibly outweighed by what I found boring. Cause I can imagine rewatching this season on Netflix and not having to wait more than an hour or two to move beyond this episode. I like how the overall narrative is now really exploring what leadership means in the post apocalyptic world, and doing so not just with action but with understanding, subtext. I admit that it took me watching Talking Dead afterward to understand something from this episode that I didn't catch initially. When Carol first meets Ezekiel and is so thrown off by his antics, she's just giggling, resorting to her fake sweet self. Then Ezekiel offers her the pomegranate, the idea from TD was that he was referencing what is a sweet fruit surrounded by bitter fruit, or what metaphorically Carol is. Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch to interpret it this way, but I actually don't think so.
It's fairly clear to me in what we've seen so far that Rick and his group's world is getting much bigger, and that leadership is being presented to Rick's group in ways that they weren't really aware of until Negan came around.
The episode was also a bit magical. With Carol seeing the dead as humans (rather than zombie) upon moment they were killed is seemingly significant. How Ezekiel is able to make his (arguably BS) approach to leadership work is rather magical, and he explained fairly clearly why he does that. The tiger thing is certainly a bit magical. That Ezekiel was able to so quickly unravel Carol's BS facade and her doing the same is something that usually takes a few episodes to transpire, but this time it took minutes, which is nice (though not really magical).
There were a few other things that I didn't fully catch in this viewing and do think it'll make more sense as the season goes on and/or upon rewatch. Like the thing with the pigs. I understood that as Ezekiel has a methodical, almost effortless way of getting what needed to be done, done - whereas all previous leader types (i.e. Rick, Negan, Governor) would've likely gone route of slaughtering the pigs in a chaotic, but effective, hands on manner. Anyway, I saw that as being about leading the pigs to a walker, who they'd feed off and then die, which would make preparing them as food much easier. Yet a friend saw that as Ezekiel willfully feeding Negan's group tainted meat, but not telling them this. I see that as possible, and so would take further information from future episode to see how it plays out.
I'm also very curious how good of a fighter, if at all, Ezekiel is. I think we are lead to believe he is probably not very good, and in battle between him and Negan or him and Rick, he'd get his butt kicked, bad. But for all we know, that's a facade of sorts and he might be more like Master Yoda in that Negan, Rick or anyone else we know of really doesn't have a chance. Perhaps Morgan, maybe Jesus, but that'd be it.
