Now there is a task to be completed and a potentially big reward for doing so, a way forward through the brutality, the hopelessness, the blood smears everywhere you turn.

To get to that point -- and here is where we will issue the obligatory spoiler alert -- all Rick had to do was get captured, negotiate for his life, tumble down a trash hill, win in the gladiator pit and promise to deliver troves of post-apocalyptic society’s scarcest, most precious commodity: guns.

So that’s why he was smiling at the end of the previous episode, just after being taken prisoner. Piece of cake.

The second episode of this second half of the seventh season of AMC's take on American dystopia brought a kind of hope to the proceedings, although as causes for optimism go, this one is profoundly cockeyed. Call it a light at the end of the tunnel, but acknowledge that there are plenty of trains still barreling through that hole.

Here are five thoughts recapping “The Walking Dead’ Season 7 Episode 10, The One in Which Daryl Gets His Bow Back:

1. Its good to be excited again about turning on the TV Sunday nights. The first half of the season was, let’s face it, a chore. Key cast members were beaten to death, others taken prisoner. They were separated from one another. They were mourning and meek and enslaved. They were the sad trombone players in the world of survivalist bands.

But now there is rebellion, or at least a plan to rebel, against Negan and The Saviors, current rulers of their chunk of the world. The gang has come together in the barn and decided it’s time to put on a show, and a plot now has a bounce in its step. Instead of sitting in the DVR queue like an obligation to seasons past, the episodes now get watched in real time again.

2. I think I like this new group of survivors, known as The Scavengers. They’re the ones who’ve captured Rick and crew after first, we learn, forcing Gabriel to give them supplies from Alexandria. And they have a credo: “We take. We don’t bother.”

They aren’t, as a I surmised when we met them briefly with their guns drawn at the end of last week, representatives or affiliates of Oceanside, another heavily weaponized, female-led flock. Instead they’ve been living in a kind of epic scrapyard, on a diet very light in Vitamin D, from the look of them. Seriously, this crew looks ready to stage “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at a moment’s notice.

But they are willing to deal with Rick, it turns out, because now the canned goods they live on are starting to reach their expiration dates. Also, they seem to be running out of vocabulary. They agree to join in the fight against the Saviors if Rick can deliver many guns; I assume he’ll throw in a few adjectives, too. And, oh, yeah, he must first vanquish…

3. Now that is what I call a zombie. It’s no secret that I’ve been growing disenchanted with our flesh-eating friends. They aren’t much of a fighting force on account of their speed and stealth issues, and producers haven't found much to do with them lately beyond gore porn. They’ve mostly become a kind of wallpaper that occasionally needs to be stabbed in the head.

But when Jadis -- she’s the (superbly steely) leader of the Scavengers -- tosses Rick into a pit, out pops a walker who looks like the offspring of a Swiss Army knife and a porcupine. Surrounding those gnashing teeth is a kind of head-and-body armor made of outward pointing spikes and cutting surfaces. To prove his mettle, Rick has to find a way to defeat this enbladed thing. His secret weapon, suggested by Michonne through a porthole into the arena? Gravity. Rick pulls garbage down on it and goes in for his most important zombie kill in a very long time. Thanks, Isaac Newton!

But does he first, during the battle, acquire a puncture wound directly through the center of one hand, like a certain other historical figure who would be sacrificed for our sins? Yes, he does. Does Gabriel, man of the cloth, tell Rick, “I was beginning to lose faith. But then I saw you, and you nodded at me”? Indeed. And we’ll have to see what the character actually named Jesus has to say about such allusions.

4. After more grief from Negan’s people, I thought Ezekiel would sign on for the coming battle. But, alas, it’s not going to be that easy. Once again the meeting for delivery of tribute from Ezekiel’s Kingdom to the Saviors turns violent and unpleasant. But instead of the king pinning up his Che Guevara poster, only his resident hothead, Richard, is moved to action.

Richard’s is a dumb plan designed to provoke the Saviors into attacking (and most likely winning). Daryl, when he learns that old pal Carol is to be bait in this scheme, puts a stop to it with a few punches and a memorable warning speech to Richard: “If she gets hurt, if she dies, if she catches a fever, if she’s taken out by a walker, if she gets hit by lightning, it anything -- anything -- happens to her, i’ll kill you.” Daryl does, however, accept the crossbow Richard gives him so he is, in a way, whole again.

Then Daryl goes to visit Carol in her woodland retreat -- nice little place with a fence and cemetery out front -- and there is a tearful reunion between these once very close allies. Carol explains that she has opted out of the game for fear that if she killed anymore, “there wouldn’t be anything left of me.”

So Daryl lies to her, tells her the Saviors didn’t get any of their people, which lets her remain at least a little bit at peace. They hug again. Then he goes and cozies up to Ezekiel’s tiger in its cage -- Daryl and the beast get along! Foreshadowing! -- and tells Morgan he needs to “wake the hell up” and persuade the Kingdom to join the fight. The last scene sees Daryl armed and heading out the Kingdom gates to head over to the Hilltop community.

5. So far the odds of beating the Saviors remain slim. Signed on are Rick’s group, with only primitive weapons and a whole lot of moxie, and the Hilltoppers, who would definitely win in a farm-off. The Scavengers only join up if Rick can come up with many guns. The Kingdom only joins if Morgan and Ezekiel have changes of heart or if Richard gets his way.

But Oceanside remains a wild card, a potential force to ride last minute to the rescue. I still like the idea of Carol and Morgan swearing off pacifism when the fight is finally on.

And what really gives me hope is that Negan has turned out to be such a killjoy -- not the great villain they’d hoped for, but a tedious one -- that he needs to be done away with. Even more relevant, of course, this is a TV series hoping to continue drawing viewers, which means it’ll surely find a way for most of its central characters to prevail. It's the how of it that is getting very interesting.

sajohnson@chicagotribune.com

Twitter: @StevenKJohnson

 

 

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