Not really a GoT person, so I'm back to various, YT channel watching until the few other shows I watch come back on.

1. Favourite moment.
Had to be the snowball fight.

2. Favourite new character.
Luke. Music education is underappreciated these days.

3. Best character arc of the season.
I'ma go with Carol. At peace for a little bit, now possibly slipping back into the badassery armor mode.

4. Favourite episode.
Bounty. Something about risking their skin for a near rare, projection bulb. Yet at the same time, you'd think they'd put the same amount of effort into ammo.(see no.11)

5. Greatest surprise. (Pleasant variety.)
Those "Highwaymen" turning out to be pleasant and negotiable people.

6. Greatest surprise. (WTF variety.)
The amount of time the communities went without really contacting each other despite not being too far away. Even on foot, horse, wagon, or **cough** bicycle.

7. How are you coping without Rick? (How are they?)
Surprisingly fine, as I am I with Maggie's absence. The in-universe itself? Probably not so great, but managing as they should in the fictional scenario. Death and running away are what they are. Hell, no one seems to have cared that Mo-Mo ducked out on them.

8. Funniest moment.
Negan riding the bike and then eating shit after Judith blows out the front tire.

9. Saddest moment.
Hilltop and it's consistent loss of leadership. Welcome to the stewardship.

10. Greatest badass moment.
Judith playing hunter jr and saving the newcomers.

11. Most annoying thing.
I'm not gonna lie. Near complete lack of firearms and ammo. Surely they would've at least reverted back to crude, black powder and museum armaments if modern day reloading supplies and tools were in short supply.

12. Best friendship moment.
Luke and Alden

13. Best romantic moment.
Damn, toss-up between Hayzeus and Aaron, or Yumike and Magna.

14. Best walker kill.
Luke seemingly dodging them and letting them get pinned between the cars to get taken out not much later.

15. What are you looking forward to most in S10?
Erm, More helimicopter?

And overall...
It was a good scene.

 

"8. Funniest moment.
Jerry singing "It's All Right Now" winking at Carol in Bounty, and. Her. Face. "

LMAO that WAS a great moment!!!

 

"11. Most annoying thing.

Luke having a midnight talk with a violin. It was just a strange scene."


LMAO

 

How about "Best unspoken moments".

Like Henry looking down and seeing Carol wearing her ring again. No dialog, just a glance and an "Oh shit" look on his face.

 

11:
The whisperers. After killing Jesus they lost their main advantage. Uncertainty.
Now all anyone has to do is toss a Molotov cocktail into the middle of a group of walkers behaving oddly and you'll soon find out if that is a whisperer horde.

Granted, every group also seems to have done nothing over the past half decade advance in the show. I would have used that to go out and get some good military equipment. The hilltop, due to it's height could have.easily fitted some military artillery pieces and with those you can launch everything from anti personnel proximity shells (which rain down shrapnel on their targets) to sarin gas shells. Needless to say a single sarin gas shells fired into large wbisperer horde would probably discourage them from going anywhere near hilltop and those shells are perfectly safe until fired.

As for Alexandria, a tank or two would be nice. They eat fuel, though you can stick the transmission in neutral and tow them (slowly) by horse.

There's a whole heap of old military equipment lying out there. They should have gotten some of that.
I hope Rick gets back and says
"Its been five ****ing years and you built a goddamn windmill? A windmill We don't even grow wheat!! The **** were you guys thinking?!"
"Uhh, it would look cool when the show intro theme plays...?"

I would have made it my personal mission to.find one of these:
Walker horde? Hold my beer.


Edit; would have always wanted a Davy Crockett recoilless rifle too.
You can't go wrong with nukes. You can never go wrong with nukes.


But yeah, they could have grabbed a tank or two and a self propelled artillery gun. No.need to get close to the enemy, just get a computer running off solar/battery/generators to run artillery equations for you and pick them off a mile away.
They took five years of no threats and basically used them to paint a giant target on themselves. They could have sent out scouting parties, they could have recovered old military equipment as well as fuel and spares for the piping at the kingdom. They were only really seen to even want to expand after the five year gap and the reason (for Alexandria) seems to be Rick's "death" and the fact that Michonne killed a bunch of kids in self defence. Neither could have been easy, but putting everyone's life at risk just because you're a bit sad? Michonne should have handed command over to the council.

 

1. Favorite moment - I’ll have to really think but what’s coming to mind is when Negan gets out and revisits the Sanctuary and sees what’s left of the world.

2. Connie is really the only new character I like. The rest so far.. ehh.

3. Carol.. and I think there is a lot more to come for her. She’s so complicated and great.

4. When they were at the museum getting the carriage for the horses. I forget the name of the episode.

5. The reveal of RJ.

6. The helicopter.. really WTF.

7. He was never my absolute favorite but I don’t at all feel the same about the show without him. If they didn’t kill Carl then I may be doing a little better.

8. Negan’s “Father, not the father” comment and Eugene laughing.

9. Rick’s exit.

10. Rick pulling himself off the metal bar through his midsection and riding off on the horse.

11. Henry.

12. Daryl holding Carol back again when she saw Henry’s head on the pike.

13. Was it this season or late last season when Rick mentioned having a baby with Michonne and then they got in on? Lol if it wasn’t this season then I’d say give us a little more romance here and there next season.

14. Maybe the iced out walkers?

15. Negan’s arc and Carol’s story. I’d love it if they had a nice long conversation. Been waiting for that.

 

All of what you say is true, though Mochonne is showing (very obvious) signs of combat fatigue (PTSD), it would have been better had she been relieved of her position when she was no longer capible, until she was capable of running Alexandria's military wing.
The trip by Eugene and Rosita (it was Rosita; IIRC, the cast changes so often now) to set up the radio repeater (signal booster) wasn't sanctioned, greatly increasing the risk to both of them. Due to the."we stay behind our walls" policy of Michonne they had little to no situational awareness or up to date intelligence. As such they ended up pinned down by an enemy they did not know exited.
This could have been easily mitigated by either letting Alexandria know that they were leaving and they should be expected back by <time here> and if they were cut off they would move to either hideout A, B or C, in which they would have a place to stay until rescue.
That being said the whisperers were not expected. But light scouts could have gathered lots of Intel on them if Alexandria set up scouting parties to scout 3-5 miles outside the borders (and due to the nearby forest, construct treehouses) as defence from walkers.
[Tangent] Rope ladders could be used for slow entry and a sack filled with rocks (weighing about 130-170kg could be brought up a pulley by 3-4 people (or carry packs of rocks up the ladder and dump them into the sack) and the rope could then have a grab rail (made from a stout piece of wood) that would hang just above head height and a second rope could tie this handle off to the tree. Need to make a quick ascent, grab the "rail" and cut the rope holding it and the.counterweight will hoist you up. you would need to get the rope lengths correct so people don't get their hands mangled in the pulley due to the counterweight rope being too short, or people only getting pulled up half way due to the rope being too long, but they would be good shelters that you could climb normally in normal circumstances, or be pulled up by the counterweight in an emergency, then swing yourself towards the platform.
[/tangent]
Though scouts in high places and the use of emergency signal flares (if you can find some nice big fireworks you have a makeshift flare) or short range radios (possibly easier to come across, though new batteries would need to be made eventually. They could run their radios off a few potatoes lol) I suppose instead of batteries you could set the radios up to be hand cranked for power as a dynamo (as simple as an electrical motor run in reverse and a couple of diodes to convert to DC power) never goes bad, unlike a battery.

When Alexandria shut the gates essential items like medicine would still be needed. You could try to grow penicillum mould from bread if there were some books on mycology around and pain relief could be achieved by growing poppies and harvesting opium, though more complex medicines that need complex synthesis would need to be looted fairly often. Just remember that without dentistry or antiviotics a decayed (and abscessesd) tooth can kill you.
Books would also be needed so looting nearby libraries (or even better; college/university libraries) would be helpful, though even children's picture books from a preschool would be useful as there will be children who need to learn to read.
Even with the "live inside the walls" strategy Alexandria seemed unprepared after five years for a heavy winter storm. They hadn't even checked the chimney in their primary shelter. If you're going to stay inside your walls, you at least want the buildings inside those walls to be safe and usable, they failed at that even. They couldn't even light a fire without starting what I assume was supposed to be a tar fire (Eugene said (a specific type of tar/pitch) and H2O, though with H2O being water I assume the original line was "a mixture of <tar> and O2", since tar is pretty melty and can pour out of a chimney it would either burn the building down or simply seal the chimney off (no explosions sadly) causing the room to fill up with carbon dioxide (CO2) and possibly the more dangerous carbon monoxide (CO), sweeping a chimney isn't hard. If you don't have a brush an old timey way was to get on the roof, lower a rope down, tie that rope to a goose or duck and pull the duck/goose up the chimney. Apparently the flapping of the wings cleaned the chimney out quite well. Obviously the goose/duck would be nearly dead when you got it pulled out so it would be dinner after that. Not very humane, but effective. For larger chimneys it was common to send a young child up one with a brush. Probably a really shitty job.
The fact they only checked the chimney during a crisis situation reflects poorly on them. They did have 5 years after all.
Even then, if caught out in the snow some snow holes could be dug (one hole for two people) and these get toasty warm even in winter. The trick is to dig in, down and then set an elevated spot for sleeping on so any water drops (and waste carbon dioxide) sink down into the sump you created. I can't say I've ever had the privilege of sleeping in a snow hole, though I've heard they can get up to 10°C at times, which; with furs or a a sleeping bag, would be comfortable, especially with shared bodily warmth.
Alexandria could have done a lot to improve their situation. However they hit the pause button for 5 years.

Sorry for the essay, it's essay. It's just my opinion in leadership in Season 9.
Not that the season didn't have some really good bits in it, Alexandria (and the other communities) could have prepared and maintained more.

 

I cheer them on too.
To survive 90%+ of humanity dying is no easy feat.
I'm not the survivalist type embassies that because I set up a bunch of preps I will definitely survive anything the world can throw at me. I know that if there were some apocalyptic event the numbers would not be on my side; chances are I would be dead within the first few weeks. That said I have a few survival books in the house and I've annotated them with things I've learned (I used to love camping until my knee got really bad) and I've even stapled in fold out sheets on things like suturing skin, or plant identification so if the world does end (highly unlikely at least not in a TWD scenario, or any quick apocalypse scenario) and I'm not around maybe someone who raids my place will benefit from what I left behind, if not maybe my (future) kids or grandkids will add their own stuff, the books I have only really reference things like GPS as an expensive tool that is rarely used, if at all.
So cheering them on whilst watching is definitely earned, they survived where 9 out of ten others didn't. It's after watching that I start to analyse their methods of surviving, they may have been the lucky ones but they did have 5 years to learn and to teach and it seems that for the most part the producers hit the pause button for those 5 years, other than Judith growing up and Negan changing a bit, not much else has changed; they have a windmill, yeah though considering the massive lack of it being featured; even briefly, in episodes it seems to simply be there for the intro. Speaking of windmills, I'm sure I mentioned somewhere that they were a bad idea if there was a nearby river (water can.be diverted) mainly due to the fact that they aren't the safest structures and they tend to be a huge danger if there's a sudden storm, with a water mill if if the river swells you just open the sluice gate and let the excess water pass by the wheel.
That said, the show has never really gone in depth when it comes to how they survive, there are moments or occasionally singular episodes though it's more about the characters' individual experiences, rather than being a survival story, so I'm almost certainly overanalysing some parts of it.

 

I love this thread. Great idea. I had to put some thought into this because so much happened this season that it feels like 9a and 9b were two different seasons. Especially compared to seasons 7 and 8.

1. Favourite moment.
I think the scene where we first see older Judith saving that group. And the snowball fight.

2. Favourite new character.
Lydia and Connie, though I like everyone in Connie's group except her little sister.

3. Best character arc of the season.
Daryl. Especially in the second half of the season. His interactions with Judith, Connie, Michonne and Lydia are terrific. I'm happy to see him...evolving?

4. Favourite episode.
The Calm Before. The tension was well done, setting up who was going to be piked, the groups coming together, Alpha at the fair, Lydia standing up to her mother.

5. Greatest surprise. (Pleasant variety.)
Judith. From the moment she stepped up to save Yumiko and company through everything that follows. Her and Negan, her talks with Michonne and Daryl. Great writing and acting.

6. Greatest surprise. (WTF variety.)
Alpha's conversation with the King at the fair was crazy and creepy and I loved it. Everything about the group from Scars. That was really disturbing.

7. How are you coping without Rick? (How are they?)
I don't miss him much to be honest. I know, I know. Sacrilege. I do agree that the communities probably wouldn't have fallen away from each other if he were still there, though.

8. Funniest moment.
Judith taking Negan out on that bike. And Jerry singing "It's All Right Now" then winking at Carol in the episode with the projector bulb. Carol's expression is priceless. And Negan's Father not the Father comment, followed by Eugene's chuckle.

9. Saddest moment.
There were too many heavy ones to choose from. I'm going with Michonne destroying that Stradivarius. Absolutely tragic.

10. Greatest badass moment.
Carol torching Jed and the Saviours. Classic Carol.

11. Most annoying thing.
The elevator scene with Beta bugged me. Shoot some arrows down the shaft, toss down anything heavy that's hanging around. Something to help ensure that he's dead.
And Henry. Pretty much everything about Henry.

12. Best friendship moment.
Daryl and Michonne on the swing set in Scars.

13. Best romantic moment.
I can't think of one? Maybe Henry and Lydia's last conversation, where he kissed her. Even though he died, he saved her in more ways than one. It was sweet. And just about the only thing I liked about Henry.

14. Best walker kill.
Gabriel and Jadis in the museum. I think it was Gabe that killed the walker and it was stuck to the wall display as the next step in human evolution. Clever.

15. What are you looking forward to most in S10?
More great storytelling. The communities working together. More Alpha, who I hope is taken out by Carol. Possible relationship between Connie and Daryl?
Seeing where they go with Negan. More Lydia. More Judith wisdom.

Overall I absolutely loved this season. It reignited that spark that first drew me into this show. I'm really looking forward to what comes next.