The communities join forces to restore a bridge that will facilitate communication and trade; someone is gravely injured at the construction site.

The Walking Dead has a focus this season. That focus is to see how you actually build a community. For eight seasons, the series has delivered a series about how one survives in a zombie apocalypse. But, with not threat seen beyond zombie hordes, and multiple communities, were do you go? How do you rebuild society?

This episode touches upon that in multiple ways. There’s further discussions about putting together a compact to codify the rights of individuals and rules for the communities. There’s also a focus on building infrastructure like a bridge. That bridge is also the not too thinly veiled metaphor of building a bridge between so many things, communities, individuals, the past and future.

But, through all of that positive, there’s tension underneath. There’s order but people are restless as can be expected. That leads to mistakes and fighting and individuals getting a hurt. That includes one long loved character losing an arm. There’s also couples coming together in various ways. But, what’s interesting is how much of the focus is still on the individuals of this world and how they’re dealing with it all. This is a drama first and zombie/horror story second.

But, even with that focus, we get some action. There’s some solid moments with a zombie horde attack that ups the action and gives us some gruesome moments that should make fans of gore happy. There’s some tense moments and those moments lead to the individual’s injury mentioned above. It’s decent but some of the action, the zombies felt a bit sparse and thus the danger not as present. Add in the amount of force shown, it doesn’t quite have the same feel as before.

The Walking Dead has a very different focus and that’s community building. I’m sure many will dislike this but the show has always been about what comes next after society’s collapse. We’ve gotten to the point where we get to see how you put society back together and not just survive. It’s a fascinating exploration for me though your mileage will vary.

Overall Rating: 7.5