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Walking Dead: Four Walls and a Roof

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Walking Dead Four Walls and a Roof

It’s easy to lose your humanity on Walking Dead, even if you’re not turning into a zombie.

Things kick off with Bob still dealing with watching other humans eat his leg while he watches. The cannibal jerks are like those guys that like to argue on the Internet, chewing a piece of Bob’s leg that they chopped off and cooked themselves: “Can’t you see that we’re really the good guys here?” Bob starts laughing and eventually reveals he’s been bitten. I’d have held off a little to make sure they all got a good meal of it first, maybe let it digest a little. Bob screams, “Tainted meat!” a few times which was pretty hilarious.

Back at the church the gang browbeats the priest into revealing his deep dark secret. It’s pretty weak: when the zombie thing went down he locked the doors of the church and wouldn’t let his parishioners in, so he had to listen while they were eaten by walkers. As far as terrible secrets from your Walking Dead past go, this barely rates mentioning. The priest is a whiny and annoying character.

The cannibals deliver. “Somebody ordered the Bob special?” Not sure why they dropped him off at the church, unless they thought they knew Rick and knew he would set off on his revenge mission, leaving the church undefended if Bob could tell him where the cannibal camp was.

Abraham picks this exact moment to throw a fit and demand they leave for D.C. Even Eugene doesn’t want to go, but Abe seems to have control over the mulleted scientist. I don’t entirely understand the deal that went down here. Abe wanted the bus, for some reason Glen and Maggie agreed to go with him if he waited and helped with the cannibal takedown? I kind of lost the thread there.

This lead to their assault on the cannibal camp, but it was shot in a bizarre way. There was a shot of the elementary school overrun by walkers, then a shot of Rick and friends marching into the woods that just hung there on the sign for the church for a good long while, then showed the cannibals come out of the woods across the street and approach the church. That was apparently some kind of wacky hijinks with the two raiding parties crossing paths in the night without knowing it.

But they did know it! First the cannibals invade the church and call out everyone’s names, and they know exactly who left and who’s left. Crying Judith gives the survivors away, but Rick had this elaborate triple-fakeout play planned all along. To save bullets, they murder the cannibals with machete whacks and gun-butt beatdown. It was pretty brutal, and there were a few who clearly felt uncomfortable with the whole thing and didn’t participate.

That’s the idea this season is going to be hammering at us, it seems: Bob’s speech about not giving up part of yourself to the nightmare. This episode was full of not-so-subtle references to this idea. Bob losing his leg is a literal version, as well as Bob turning into a zombie (he never did, so symbolically cheerful Bob never gave up his humanity). Rick and company brutally slashing and beating the cannibals to death is another version of losing your humanity. Those people clearly needed to die, but giving in to that kind of bloodlust could have consequences. Michonne already talked about moving past her dark days as a brutal, solitary zombie slayer. Finding her sword seems to bring some of those memories back.

But first we need to talk about Abraham leaving on the bus for D.C. Eugene has at least offered a semi-plausible explanation for his cure, but the whole thing still feels like a pipe dream. The map he gave Rick (“Sorry for being an asshole.”) shows their route. It looks like they’re somewhere northeast of Atlanta, with plans to take 85 up through Durham, then through Richmond into Washington D.C.

That night Michonne investigates sounds in the woods. Daryl walks out. “Where’s Carol?” she asks. The look on his face tells a lot of the story, and it doesn’t look like a happy one. But then he says, “You can come out,” to someone in the woods. Who? What happened to them? I really can’t wait for next week.

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Posted by on Sunday, October 26th, 2014. Filed under Dark TV, Headline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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