'The Walking Dead' gave us a Valentine's Day treat with the mid-season premiere on Sunday Night.  It was an edge of your seat, thrilling episode that proved there is still plenty of life left in this franchise.  Warning SPOILERS AHEAD.

Highlights

The show was fast paced, and it didn't waste anytime getting the action started.  What looked like it was going to be a long drawn out confrontation with Negan's gang ended after just a few minutes thanks to the RPG Daryl picked up.  Hell yeah!

Next, Rick and his zombie gut soaked gang weed there way through the walkers.  Unfortunately Sam had to have a meltdown and ended up starting a chain reaction of absolute horror as he gets eaten alive by the monsters.  His mom loses her cool (understandably) and she gets devoroured.  So now the already unstable Ron decides it's a good time to shoot Rick, as he is the reason for all of his problems.  As he pulls the trigger, Michonne skewers him with her sword, but he gets a shot off.

The way the camera angles were at this point, I knew that Carl got shot again.  Damn Carl, how many times are you going to get shot!?  However when we finally see it, it looks pretty fatal, as he's missing his eye.  I'm sure most people's reaction at first was, "I can't believe they killed Carl!"  During the commercial break, we broke it down and realized that he probably just lost his eye and the bullet didn't actually go into his brain.

Rick got him to the infirmary and the doctor chick finally bucks up and does her job.  Rick goes out and starts taking on the million zombie herd by hand.  Next Michonne makes it out, and then a miracle happens.  All of Alexandria comes out and starts fighting.  This was the pivotal scene that we've been waiting for all season.

We get what looks like is going to be a very short reunion with Glen & Maggie as he distracts the walkers to save her.  Just when we were sure that Glenn was going to be a goner, Abraham and Sasha saved the day with some incredible marksmanship.  Isn't anyone else surprised that Glenn didn't take a bullet?

And if there wasn't already enough awesomeness in this episode, Daryl sets a lake on fire using the tanker truck and draws the zombies into the burning death pool.  That was sweet!

This episode had an incredible amount of suspense, great character development, and what was set up earlier in the season finally payed off.   And Rick is motivated and inspired by the Alexandria people finally fighting.  "I wanna show you the new world, Carl."  Hell yeah!  But Rick doesn't know about Negan's gang yet.

I started wondering last season how they were going to keep the story interesting in the TV show.  After Sunday's episode, I'm not worried at all.  Bravo,  Walking Dead!