This week’s episode of The Walking Dead was nothing short of genius, at least in my eyes. It was completely subdued, but the message was big.
The good:
– The overall feel of this episode made an impact on me. You can’t always be fighting and on alert. The fact that our group was out of sorts, hungry, no water, tired, no shelter, hot and extremely emotional made it one of the most believable episodes I’ve seen to date. I know that there wasn’t much action, but that’s what makes this show seem so real.
– The scene where they had to get rid of the Walkers, but had no energy to fight them, so they tricked them to go over the bridge. Then, Sasha decides she needs to fight, she needs to get rid of the pent up anger and grief she’s holding on to because of Bob and Tyreese. She nicks Abraham’s arm, and he was almost bit in the process.
– I loved how they showed everyone dealing with the recent deaths in their own way. Maggie is just shutting down, Daryl keeps going off into the woods to look for food and water, when he’s really just sitting smoking and crying about Beth, Carol admits that she can’t let herself feel it.
– While they were eating their delicious dinner of wild dog, courtesy of Sasha, Gabriel decided it was time to shed his priest collar and threw it in the fire. This, to me, is the first sign that he’s actually starting to accept the fact that life isn’t going to go back to how it was. That he can’t just ignore everything, but he has to keep moving on and keep fighting. I still think he’s kind of a wuss, but I’m starting to trust him a little more now.
– In the middle of the road there was a bunch of bottles of water with a note that said, “from a friend.” They did the right thing by not drinking it, even though Eugene was ready to take one for the team in the form of quality assurance (luckily Abraham smacked it out of his hands before he drank it) and it immediately started to rain just at that moment.
– Because of the crazy storm, they took shelter in a barn Daryl spotted while he was having a smoke. Everyone is sitting around the fire while Rick tells a story about his Grandpa when he was in the war. He explained that everyday he would wake up and pretend that he was dead, so that he could fight day in and day out, and then one day it was all over and he was able to live again. Rick said, “We are the walking dead” and Daryl got defensive and said, “we’re not them!”
– During the storm, the Walkers are making their way to the barn where everyone is at. They start pushing at the door, and it took every one of the group to hold the doors shut and keep them out. When Maggie finally woke up and grabbed Sasha to go look at the sunset and talk, they realized that nature took care of everything for them because there were Walkers all around, taken out by trees and limbs.
– At the very end, while Sasha and Maggie are talking, some dude walks up, all clean cut back packer type of guy and says that he wants to talk to their leader, he actually knows Rick’s name! He said his name is Aaron, and that he’s a friend, but can we trust him? Is he really a friend?
The bad:
– I don’t know if there was anything bad in this episode. I know a lot of people are always hoping for an action packed Walker episode, but I love the more subdued ones as well.
Next week:
Maggie and Sasha bring Aaron back to the barn where everyone is, and Rick questions him about who he is and where he’s from. From what I saw in the scenes from the next it looks like he has some pictures, and that they’re possibly from the prison. I’m not sure what to make of this guy. From what I’ve heard there’s a great big bad coming soon, could this be him? Or could this be someone that they can actually trust? I’d like to see our group find a few more good people out there, it can’t always be bad can it?
