So for various reasons that are not interesting to people who aren’t me this has been an insanely busy week. I know I start all of these saying “Okay, this one’s gonna be short,” but this time I mean it: this one’s gonna be short. Every malware program on Earth is currently installed on my parents’ laptop, which I’ve been trying to fix for two weeks and really need to get back to them soon, I have to be back at school– SCHOOL!– for the second time today in an hour so that I can unlock the building, hopefully not accidentally attract the attention of the cops, and let the orchestra kids in from their weekend concert, I have to work tonight, and oh right I have a novel manuscript that needs finalizing in the next couple of weeks. So here’s what I’m gonna do: I’m going to catch you up on what happened to each of the characters this episode, as quick as I can, and then move on to the 1400 other things I have going today.
Should I have gotten this done Wednesday? Yes. Yes I should.
PREVIOUSLY ON THE WALKING DEAD: Season 5.5 has been easily the best half-season of the show at this point. There’s two episodes left. I’m frightened.
Sasha and Michonne:
Daryl:
Drives away on his motorcycle at the beginning of the episode but otherwise doesn’t show up.
Rosita:
Is apparently still sleeping with Abraham. That’s all she does in this episode, as she’s asleep when he wakes up.
Rick and Carol:
Rick is barely in the episode, although he gets a scene with Carol at the end. This episode would be worth watching just for the scenes with Carol and Sam, who was apparently less intimidated than one would think with Carol’s horrifying threats the other day, as he breaks into her house to demand cookies and then tries to be her friend. Carol gets every line you’ve ever wanted to say to an annoying little kid, and eventually figures out that Sam’s dad is a raging drunk who is clearly beating on somebody in the house. Rick, meanwhile, is On The Case, trying to figure out who wrecked the owl statue that I swear Rick wrecked a couple of episodes ago. At the end of the episode, Carol tells Rick that he has to kill Blondie’s husband. Sooner or later I’ll figure out her name.
I feel like there has to be some other solution for this problem jesus how is this four hundred words already.
Abraham:
Is out on a construction run with a bunch of other people. Walkers attack, their lookout falls from a height and sprains an ankle, and everyone else decides to run and leave her. Abraham gets that look on his face, utters the priceless line “Mother dick!,” saves her, and kills a bunch of zombies with a gleeful grin on his face. He appears to be using some sort of medieval mace or flail or something and the only thing that could have made the scene better is if he were singing a jaunty sea shanty while he was doing it. By the end of the episode he’s in charge of the construction crew. Slowly but surely, our people are taking over Alexandria.
Eugene, Tara, Glenn, and Noah:
Hoo-boy.
This picture’s all you need. I almost don’t even want to tell you about this part:
They go on a supply run. It … uh … doesn’t go well, as Aidan shoots a military zombie that– oops!– still had a couple grenades attached to his chest, and in the resulting explosion not only is he impaled on a bunch of rebar but Tara takes a nasty shrapnel wound to the head. Aidan is gruesomely ripped to shreds– and it takes a while— but not before confessing that he and Nicholas abandoned the other supply-run folks that he was talking about in the previous episode. Meanwhile, speaking of abandoning, Noah, Glenn, and Nicholas manage to get themselves stuck in a revolving door— don’t worry, in context it makes a strange sort of sense– and Nicholas, combined with the weight and mass of all the zombies pushing on his side of the door, manages to escape, moving the door open wide enough for the zombies to pull Noah through.
His.
Death.
Is.
Horrifying.
Like, I don’t really know the rules for gore pictures around here, but I write a recap series about a zombie show, so I assume they’re pretty loose? I’m not posting the picture you’ll see if you scroll about a third of the way down this page, because holy crap. Noah gets, hands down and far away, the worst death of any character in the series. It’s awful, and this was already an episode where a guy was impaled with pieces of rebar through his entire body in two or three different places and ripped to shreds.
Dude, I totally was doing the SAME THING.
Anyway, Glenn gets free just as Nicholas is trying to make off with their ride, knocks Nicholas out, and then the three of them head back to Alexandria with Eugene (who, by the way, gets some good character development that I don’t have time to give details on) keeping him at gunpoint. At the very end of the episode, you can just hear someone screaming for help in the background.
But yeah! Eugene kills a walker!
He almost dies, too.
This douchewhippet:
Father Gabriel, who is apparently alive after all, has a couple of deeply unhinged scenes throughout the episode– first manically ripping pages out of his Bible, then delivering a crazypants rant to Deanna about how the rest of the group was Satan and she should turn them out before they destroy all of Alexandria. Which, ironically, is probably true, but he’s a douchewhippet anyway.
Maggie:
Was listening the whole time. So, uh, that’s not gonna go well for Gabriel.
Two episodes left, y’all. Is it next Sunday yet?
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