These two shitty random side characters - Eugene & Blonde evil Daryl - cannot carry an episode. They were never meant to. This series loves to pull this pretentious shit sometimes, but the show would never have built up the audience it has if it was all like tonight. Waste of an episode.
shareI detest Walking Dead episodes that focus on one or two characters the entire episode. The old format for Seasons 1-3 was much better than this, where main characters were in every episode.
sharePart of that divide-up-the-cast thing was money-driven--everyone signs a five-year contract but after that, they get a big raise, so the incentive is to use them less--but part of it is just the showrunner's preference--Gimple has always preferred to do this. He, in fact, did it back when he was just a writer, before he ran things, and continued it when he took over, which was before those money-pressures started.
Filler, which is really the problem here, has been a serious problem for the series from when Mazzara took over to the present. It certainly isn't new. By the end of Mazzara's reign, in fact, the writers were doing so little work that production had to be repeatedly shut down for lack of material to shoot (which is why Mazzara was fired in the first place). As a practical matter, it's always a lot more work to properly plot an episode of a television series than to simply throw out some one-line-item idea one dreamed up in two minutes then fill out the running time with padding. TWD viewers have been unwilling to punish the show for this sort of behavior, which is why it has continued. The writers know people will watch the show, no matter what they do--why bother doing any more than the minimum? None of them are talented. This is the highest-profile show with which they'll ever be involved. Just put in the two minutes, cash the check and go home.