TWD 8x06 "The King, the Widow, and Rick" episode discussion... **SPOILERS*

[Moon Knight]

Money! and... Welp. Life would be complete.

[Wyldwraith]

Just gonna throw this out there, EVERY, not most, not half, not a significant minority: EVERY group with the skills, manpower and equipment that's been encountered by Team Rick without the onus of a super-powerful antagonist faction acting as a common antagonist to them all, has had to be either beaten back or annihilated with lethal force...all the way back to Season 1. I get how people like Jesus could still have a "Taking and holding prisoners is more moral than slaughtering a couple dozen defenseless enemies" mindset. It utterly boggles my mind how any of the originals could think forcing the Saviors into surrendering, and simply eliminating Neegan and maybe his lieutenants can end this. Much like African child-soldiers, people can come to accept what we in the civilized world consider "barbarism"...IF those barbaric acts are at the behest of their Authority Figures. Even the Savior-workers are tainted to a significant extent. I get that surrender has to still be on the table to fend off the question "Why hasn't the Coalition just cracked the Sanctuary and let the Walkers finish this?" That, and of course the Saviors had to be given time for the siege to go wrong. (Just a prediction at this point...but I consider it inevitable.) If the siege doesn't go away, somehow the ending of it will prolong the Savior/Coalition conflict. My chief beef with TWD has always been that it seems like the same characters constantly have to learn and re-learn the same hard moral lessons. That isn't realistic, IMO. ALL that said, I feel Season 8 HAS been stronger than Season 7.

[MinionZombie]

Just gonna throw this out there, EVERY, not most, not half, not a significant minority: EVERY group with the skills, manpower and equipment that's been encountered by Team Rick without the onus of a super-powerful antagonist faction acting as a common antagonist to them all, has had to be either beaten back or annihilated with lethal force...all the way back to Season 1. I get how people like Jesus could still have a "Taking and holding prisoners is more moral than slaughtering a couple dozen defenseless enemies" mindset. It utterly boggles my mind how any of the originals could think forcing the Saviors into surrendering, and simply eliminating Neegan and maybe his lieutenants can end this. Much like African child-soldiers, people can come to accept what we in the civilized world consider "barbarism"...IF those barbaric acts are at the behest of their Authority Figures. Even the Savior-workers are tainted to a significant extent. ALL that said, I feel Season 8 HAS been stronger than Season 7. The groups they've faced in the past have either been out-right evil (Terminus), or small gaggles of freakshows (The Claimers) - or - there was the case of Woodbury, where the Governor was a secret tyrant with a close cadre of lieutenants who were doing his evil bidding. All the civilians of Woodbury were innocent - and Team Rick took them into the prison at the end of Season 3, proving the point that not everyone in these communities is actively involved in the potential 'evil machinations' of their runnings. Much like with The Sanctuary, they have the ruling class (Negan and his lieutenants), a sort of military class (the ones beneath the lieutenants who do all the dirty work), and the civilian class (the workers who stay within the walls of the Sanctuary and toil away on growing food, organising supplies, building things etc). The workers are innocent as you can reasonably expect in this context, and many have suffered (those above the workers get better accomodation and rewards for their direct dealings with/for Negan - while the workers get a shitty factory floor to scruff about in, as we saw when Eugene toured the place for the first time in season 7). So Rick is quite right to try and protect the workers who haven't done anything to anyone. It's Negan, his lieutenants, and the military class who the beef is with. Otherwise it'd be like saying that in any real-life war that the civilians are guilty of the actions taken by their government. You may vote them in, but governments can act on their own accord despite great protest. All Out War is different as we're not just dealing with one rabble against another, this is now a ZA society that is being formed with allied communities in multiple locations working together - not mere day-to-day, hand-to-mouth survival - they're building something far bigger here, and so it's important to keep the workers (and pliable lieutenants) on-side for what comes after, as what comes after is the real prize here. I do agree though, that Season 8 has been generally stronger - and certainly more consistent and better paced - than Season 7.