The Walking Dead: Strangers
It’s a family reunion on Walking Dead, but when the survivors meet a minister they learn you reap what you sow.
As the gang trudges through the woods and makes camp at night, there’s a certain family reunion vibe. Rick thanks Tyrese for taking care of Judith, then thanks Carol for saving everyone because she’s Rambo, and you better damn sure thank Rambo. There’s a lot of reconciliation too: Rick to Carol for exiling her; Tara reveals her origin as a member of the governor’s group that killed Maggie’s father to Maggie, who seems to forgive her (and it seems like maybe Tara has a crush on Maggie); Tyrese wants everyone to forgive Carol for the burnings last season.
That happy vibe is underscored by a feeling that hidden secrets and past actions will have consequences. Abraham and Rosita keep furtively mentioning some kind of big revelation they have, waiting for their big moment. Is it just his big speech about the Anti-Zombie March on Washington? Or do they have something more in mind?
Bob keeps giving Rick a good-natured hard time about Rick’s command to execute all of the Terminus cannibals, but I lost the thread of what he was trying to get across there. I guess his point was that a hardline attitude takes something away from you, and when they victoriously reach Washington and solve the zombie problem, a man who’s given away all those pieces won’t be able to live in the rebuilt world. So there’s an interesting idea, that you have to harden yourself so much to survive, but if you have hope you also need to plan for a softer future.
Of course, they didn’t execute all the cannibals. And we can’t be entirely sure Tyrese was telling the truth when he told Carol he’d killed his captor, so that bastard might be out there.
A cry from help draws the group to a priest set upon by zombies, who are quickly dispatched. He’s such an obvious n00b at this zombie thing that you have to wonder where the hell he’s been and how he’s survived all this time. He takes them back to his church and explains that by sheer luck the apocalypse happened at the tail end of a food drive, so he had a crapton of canned goods to live off of. He hasn’t been able to scavenge the lucrative food bank due to his lack of walker killing skills, so they drag him there to clear the place out.
Here we get a great action/horror scene with some of the best creature effects we’ve seen on the show yet. A hole in the ceiling has rotted the floor, which has caved in. That means all the zombies have been sloshing around in a pit of water for possibly years. Horrible, slimy, disgusting water. The waterlogged and bloated zombies look really horrific. One walker looks very distinctive, a school marm looking woman who somehow kept her glass on all this time. Minister Gabriel freaks out, and we eventually learn she was his illicit, sinful lover in real life. There’s a wonderfully slimy zombie attack on Bob, plus some very gross head smashing. They are seriously amping up the gore this season.
They escape the food bank with a haul of canned goods, but meanwhile Carl’s found evidence Gabriel hides a darker secret. There are knife marks at the church window, and someone’s carved, “You’ll burn for this” into the church siding. Has any show ever gotten so much mileage out of cryptic scrawled or carved slogans?
Now it’s time to get into the meat of the episode (ha). First, Carol seems real skittish, and Daryl seems to catch her prepping a car to allow her to escape. But just then another car tears by, and by the symbol on the back he recognizes it as the car that kidnapped Beth. They jump in the car and take off in pursuit. Hell yes.
Meanwhile, Bob was clearly bitten by a zombie when he blundered into a submerged one in the food bank. All his bittersweet smiles and last few kisses with Sasha, then he wanders out into the woods, crying, a gun clearly tucked into his belt. I was pretty sure he was going to off himself.
But no, those mysterious figures that have been watching from the woods appear and clunk Bob in the head. A tree there has a mysterious rune carved into it. When Bob comes to, he’s been tied up by the cannibals. And then, horror of horrors, Bob looks down and sees his own leg has been chopped off, and his captor is munching on some meat as they chat. They’re eating him alive!
But wait. Is Bob turning into a zombie? What will eating his flesh mean then? Or, wouldn’t it be hilariously ironic if that’s the leg Bob had been bitten on, and cutting it off actually saves him from the zombie infection? I think too much time has passed, but who knows?
Related Posts:
Posted by Ed Grabianowski
on Sunday, October 19th, 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.
Tags: walking dead
