Cause that part of the set probably no longer exists .

 

And I think they were trying to show us how badly the Kingdom has eroded over time. Even the walls inside Carol and Zeke's bedroom were cracked. Could be that the roofs were years overdue for replacement when the ZA happened...Now 10 more years have passed....its like driving through a section of town with lots of abandoned buildings and looking at the roofs....

It seems like they should have been on top of that, as if your roof goes, everything goes, but I guess the idea is that it was just too many buildings to keep up with, scarcity of people with real roofing skills, and all their time needed for basic things like keeping up crops and other basic supplies.

The extent of the decay of the Kingdom tells me they might have been hinting that we are not going back there. Perhaps contract isn't being renewed with Tyler Perry.

 

No in the beginning of the episode when Ezekiel was narrating into the microphone he said "and then the fires started" so the roofs were definitely burned.

 

I'm thinking the Kingdom was an abandoned location when they first found it, probably abandoned for quite a while. It's a large location, if people were there when the world died it would have been overrun with walkers and I don't think they were the type of people to clear out such a large location. So it was probably not in the greatest shape to begin with.

Fill it with people and after 9 years with no real maintenance it's going to slowly fall apart. I think the bursting pipes and water damage made things almost unliveable, then the fires destroyed roofs. I think the clogged chimney in Alexandria was the writers way of hinting at possible causes for the fires in the Kingdom.


As far as them not heading into the apartments in the Sanctuary, I think it's just a matter of them looking for a place to stay the night, that's it. No real need to venture into "nicer" areas when they would only be there for a few hours.

 

Home is where the heart is.

Kingdom gone. Shmeh.

Zeke leading the Hilltop perhaps? I am cool with that. BUT on the road Yumiko made mention of a council so I do not see Zeke leading Hilltop like he did the Kingdom. Perhaps more like Gabe's position on the Alexandria council.

Honestly I cannot think of an instance this season where Angela Kang made a creative decision just because it might be the easy road to travel. In my view every beat of this season had purpose, had reason. I see no reason why her decision to have the Kingdom fall would be any different. If it was a creative choice I have every confidence that she has a firm grip on how that story will effect what happens in season 10 and that the choice was made in support of storytelling rather than just being lazy.

And as @Neuropyramidal stated above, perhaps the contract with Tyler Perry Studios was not renewed and AK was faced with yet another obstacle to overcome. And lord knows she has excelled at overcoming the obstacles that she was met with when taking over the reigns as showrunner

 

Angela Kang has surpassed ANY showrunner on this show by leaps and bounds.

 

I think it's a matter of that rare time when someone telling the story is on the same page as the majority of the fans. I think a lot of writers have this idea of a story and they stick to it no matter what fans want. In Angela's case she IS a fan and she has the same mindset as most of us do. So she's not telling the story WE want, she's telling the story SHE wants, it just so happens that what she wants is also what we want.

 

That might be but it goes beyond the content of the story. She just seems to weave a better tale. Her transitions make more sense, her ability to develop characters is spot on not to mention her ease of juggling multiple stories within one episode. Her character choices make sense. Some of those choices may hurt our fangirl hearts for a moment or two but they are choices that serve the story moving forward.

 

What gets me is why was nobody doing maintenance?
I get they want to play medieval times most of the time but the place was a paradise.
If the roofs are starting to crumble set up thatch roofing. Thatching isn't hard, (most thatched roofs here last for about a decade and never leak. A poorly thatched one would last maybe 2 years and leak a bit, though that's survivable) it's catching a roof well and to last that's difficult, though it would become an acquired skill.
I always assumed that when Zeke said the fires started he meant that fires started due to idiots lighting fires in homes without a chimney or fireproofing because the steam heating system had broken.

As for the storm. I still don't get why everyone left the house because they couldn't light a fire due to a clogged chimney. If it was for one or two days high calorie meals and shared body heat (essentially everyone piles together and the people at the outside of the pile slowly crawl to the inside to warm up.
When I was young I remember hanging out with some friends in squat house. We got hit by the coldest winter night of the year.
Needless to say curtains were borrowed from downstairs and the four of us just piled together under them in our clothes. Everyone got kicked, elbowed and pushed around though we were warm in temperatures well below 0°c.

Even currently I have lesser used rooms in my house "insulated" by having blankets pinned above the door with drawing pins. I have gas heating but that would be expensive heating poorly insulated (it's a rental house or I would insulate the rooms myself) but between the upstairs hallway and the front box-room there was (until recently, I'll be taking the blankets down soon) there was a 10°c difference with that room being 5°c and the rest of the house being 15-17°c

Long story short, leaving the council building in Alexandria to get to Aaron's house in a blizzard was foolish. That risked everyone's life. Risking one's comfort for the night and moving at dawn would have been wiser; though the dog and Negan were a plot device. They were roped together but they never set a line up back to where they came from, meaning that had they gotten lost in the snow everyone would die.
The correct way to go about things would have been to send 3 people out with line to find Aaron's place then once they had tied off at Aaron's pull on the line (eg "when you feel us pull 3 times tie the line off at the door and follow the line") it would stop people getting lost in the snow and you don't put everyone at risk when moving.

 

I never even thought of that.
A windmill (despite looking fairly simple) is really complex as the mill exterior has to be able to turn to catch the wind and the slats on the blades have to be able to be "opened" (in case, there's for example a storm even with that windmills used to be complete and utter death traps and the Miller would usually live in a small house beside the mill. The gear trains would be quite complex too as the mill body has to be able to rotate, so a large gear in the middle met by a gear on top at 90 degrees may be needed so the mill body can turn independent of the mill's gearing system.
A water mill is a much easier (and safer) thing to build. More useful too; you can hook more up to a water mill (drop hammers are one thing that I remember water mills being hooked up to in the medieval era which was excellent for forging steel as you only needed to move the workpiece as it was hammered into shape) whereas a windmill was only really useful for milling corn (wheat if you're US American; though I guess corn (maize here) could be milled too) but I guess a modern one could be adapted for electricity generation. Kinda silly when you have solar panels however. They also have a nearby river. Diverting the water flow would have been easier than building a windmill.