‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.15 “Try” (8.5 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

Our relationship with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), and, by extension, his whole group of survivors has taken an interesting turn tonight. The tension between them and the Alexandrians has intensified with the deaths of a few characters last week, and it’s becoming unclear as to what the end result will be. Spoilers ahead, folks!

The Rift

In the pre-credits scene, we see Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh) and her family mourning the loss of their son (which they do by sitting around and listening to Nine Inch Nails—cool song, but an odd way to incorporate it into the show). Deanna’s prompt incineration of Carol’s (Melissa McBride) sympathy note reveals a lot about her current opinion of their visitors. Their philosophical differences have finally reached ground zero, and the time for ultimatum is quickly drawing near. Ever since Rick and his buddies made it to Alexandria, I’ve been a stout supporter of their often ruthless pragmatism. They do what needs to be done, and I’ve always respected that. Seeing them try and force that attitude into a community with vastly different backgrounds and ideas has made me call some things into question—and that’s what I’ve loved about these last few episodes.

The best example of what I’m talking about is Rick’s confrontation with Pete (Corey Brill). It starts off in the right direction when he brings his suspicions up with Deanna who then confirms them—he’s been getting away with being an abusive scumbag because he’s the town’s only surgeon. It’s Deanna’s uncertainty with what their course of action should be that gives Rick the ground to suggest a prompt death penalty if he’s found to be guilty. This scene is fascinating to watch, as we can see Rick shift into alpha male pack leader—the argument becomes less about who’s right and more about who’s going to back down first.

Rick’s inevitable altercation with Pete is yet another attempt at pack dominance. After telling Jessie (Alexandra Breckenridge) that he wouldn’t pursue an abuse case so aggressively if it were anyone else in the town, Rick’s motivations with this whole thing are called into question. He’s clearly attracted to this woman, and his crusade to stop an abuse cycle could just be an excuse to remove his competition for Jessie’s affections. One thing that I noticed during the surprisingly bloody fight was that Rick pushed Carl (Chandler Riggs) away from him just as violently as Pete pushed Jessie away when the two of them were trying to break up the fight. When Michonne (Danai Gurira) knocks Rick out in the middle of an insane rant, it gives us the signal that there might be some division within his own group, which will be interesting to see pan out later.

Verdict

There are two interesting things that have happened with our group. First, Rick seems to have become Shane (Jon Bernthal) circa season two. He’s asserting his own ideas of survival into a community that isn’t ready for them, and he’s willing to get violent about the implementation of these ideas. Second, the supporting cast members seem to be addicted to zombie slaying. We’ve seen Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) come down with the shakes right before flinging himself into a zombie horde, and the same set of symptoms seem to have taken Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), Rosita (Christian Serratos), and Michonne. It’s been extremely interesting to see these people who are total badasses in the zombie world become kind of dicks in the not-zombie world. I still love them, and it sucks that the horrors of the zombie apocalypse have made them into wolves right before they find sanctuary.

But perhaps wolves will be exactly what the Alexandrians need when Negan and his crew show up. All those zombies that have a “W” carved into their foreheads? Yep. That can’t be good.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.14 “Spend” (8 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

We haven’t seen a whole lot of our supporting cast during the last few episodes, but tonight they sure made up for lost time. During this episode, we started to see how Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his group have started to make things better in the walled-off town of Alexandria. While it was cool to see Abraham (Michael Cudlitz), Glenn (Steven Yeun), and even Eugene (Josh McDermitt) step up to the plate, it made the Alexandrians look utterly useless. Between their lack of common sense and their policy of extreme cowardice, it’s become surprising that they’ve managed to survive this long. Many spoilers ahead, folks!

Abnormal is the New Normal

One of the things that this episode did well was set up multiple storylines that each began with a bit of normalcy. Abraham is helping to reinforce Alexandria’s wall, Noah (Tyler James Williams) wants to be an architect, Rick is on the case of Jessie’s (Alexandra Breckenridge) broken owl sculpture, and Glenn is amicably leading a supply run with Aiden (Daniel Bonjour)—despite the fisticuffs that ensued during their last adventure. Other than Father Gabriel’s (Seth Gilliam) slightly unhinged moment of scripture vandalism at the very beginning of the episode, it seems like just another day in zombie-ensconced paradise. As the episode progresses, however, we soon see how quickly all of that normalcy can explode into a series of violent deaths and tragic realizations.  Both Glenn and Abraham find themselves surrounded by lily-livered Alexandrians when shit gets real, and it ends up costing a few brutal deaths.

The two storylines have vastly different tones—Abraham’s is one of plain awesome as he wades into an encroaching zombie horde with a claw hammer in order to rescue an injured lookout while the other members of the construction crew just fall back and gawk. Cudlitz injected this scene with a savage glee, indicating that Abraham has missed hacking up zombies.

Glenn’s story is similar—we know that Aiden and Nicholas (Michael Traynor) are incompetent, but while on a routine supply run, that incompetence quickly turns to cowardice—and the resulting death scenes are truly nightmarish. Perhaps the most intense moment comes when our heroes find temporary refuge inside a set of revolving doors—they pin themselves inside while two walls of zombies close in on either side. I suppose if we’re going to blame someone here, it’s got to be Nick. He leaves Aiden to get ripped apart, and his panicked decision to escape opens the door for Noah to get yanked out and mangled right in front of Glenn. Both of these scenes were extremely difficult to watch—Aiden stares upwards as the undead julienne his midsection, and poor Noah gets his jaw detached from the rest of his skull. I figured Aiden would get himself killed sooner or later, but it was rough to see Noah go down like that.

While both of these storyarcs were bloody and tragic—two things TWD does really well—they also communicate the same message: Even Eugene, the weakest link in Rick’s team of zombie commandos, is more competent than the most hardcore Alexandrian. It’s always good to see the characters that we’ve stuck with through four seasons represent, but it would have been helpful to see the Alexandrians show a little bit more backbone tonight. After their laughable attempts to fight zombies and their apparent orders to save only themselves, it was hard to believe that they had enough grit to build and maintain a community like Alexandria. If the zombies didn’t get them, their lack of loyalty definitely would.

The Homefront

After Carol scared the fluids out of Sam (Major Dodson) the little boy last week, you’d think he’d have the brains to stay the hell away from her. But, like most little boys, he’s fascinated with danger. Their scenes are strangely cute—Carol pulls no punches and encourages him to steal chocolate—and they lead Carol to sniff out Sam’s father as an abusive alcoholic. We don’t see any physical evidence of this yet, but given Carol’s history with an abusive husband, she can smell it right away. When she brings this suspicion to Rick and encourages him to handle the matter with extreme prejudice, we once again see how life on the outside has sharpened our characters into ruthless pragmatists.

The final scenes seemed a bit rushed, but will no doubt stir up some additional conflict during next week’s episode when Glenn returns home without Aiden. Gabriel, who has officially lost his mind, warns Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh) against the acceptance of Rick’s crew, calling them the devil in disguise. It’s a huge betrayal, considering the billion times the crew has saved Gabriel’s ass, but I’m hoping Deanna will write him off for the lunatic that he is.

Verdict

Tonight’s episode could have been much clunkier than it turned out. Yes, the bulk of the action seemed overly concerned with proving how badass Rick’s teammates are, and yes, that’s something we already knew. However, the scripts and editing between scenes were tight, which facilitated the large amount of story and character development that took place tonight. It’s impressive to see a show juggle such a large amount of complicated characters in a way that still manages to tell a cohesive story.  What will become of our friends over the course of the final two episodes? Only time (and zombies) will tell.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.13 “Forget” (8.5 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

After tonight’s episode, the big question is whether or not Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) crew has become the type of people that he warned Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh) about in his entry interview. Sure, we still love Rick, Daryl (Norman Reedus), Michonne (Danai Gurira), and the rest of them—but tonight we saw them steal weapons (and chocolate), throw sexy vibes at married women, and terrify children into submission. It was fun as hell to watch, but, to quote Harvey Dent, have our heroes survived long enough to see themselves become the villains? As usual, spoilers will happen.

The Triple Threat

 Rick, Daryl, and Carol (Melissa McBride) have been meeting to discuss what happened to their stash-o-guns, and these meetings have evolved into what appears to be a super-secret contingency club—I’m not sure that even their own group knows what they’re up to. It’s here that we start to see an interesting, but kind of scary part of Rick Grimes. During his description of why the folks at Alexandria are lucky, he wraps up by saying, “And now we’re here.” Clearly, Rick thinks he and his people are better than the Alexandrians in some capacity. It’s something that we saw last week, when Aiden (Daniel Bonjour) got smacked by Glenn (Steven Yeun) for acting tough instead of being tough. While it’s true that Rick’s team has been forged into some hardcore survivors, lording that over the Alexandrians is a slippery slope to navigate—it was that same air of superiority that led the Termites to start eating people. The show appears to be using the relationship between Rick and Jessie (Alexandra Breckenridge) as a microcosm of this larger issue—after Rick delivers a surprisingly sexy kiss on Jessie’s cheek, we see him grip his newly-stolen pistol as Jessie and her husband walk by. There’s some great chemistry between these two actors, and as much as I hope they hook up, I hope they do so without anyone getting murdered.

Daryl’s storyarc during this episode is a bit more on the positive side. I wouldn’t have pegged Aaron (Ross Marquand) as having much in common with Daryl, but the mutual respect that they develop for one another was great to watch. It made Daryl seem like less of a man-beast and Aaron seem like more of a badass. As unexpected as this pairing was, their conversation about being outsiders in a place like Alexandria made their scenes believable.

And man, oh man, do we need to talk about Carol. Watching her talk recipes and gossip with the local busybodies only to turn around and threaten to feed a small child to the zombies if he snitches on her gun heist—brilliant stuff. There was a moment when one of the Alexandrians displays some machismo when offering to teach Carol how to handle a weapon when I thought, “Dude, if you only freaking knew how Carol handles a weapon…” Melissa McBride was equal parts charming and terrifying tonight, and I love the direction that her character has taken.

The Dinner Party

While some of Rick’s group was nonexistent tonight, the ones that were around had a few choice moments at a dinner party that Deanna throws in honor of their new guests. Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) was the most uncomfortable, as she’s dealing with a mixture of survivor’s guilt, hostility towards her hosts, and what could be defined as an addiction to the survivalist lifestyle. She criticized the Alexandrians’ lifestyle during an outburst at their dinner party, which is a juxtaposition that we’ve been running into lately. Our heroes have been through hell, and now that they’ve met some people who haven’t experienced that kind of hardship, they worry about getting soft. While I don’t love how Sasha’s character has been narrowed down to “pissed-off girl,” I do like seeing how a group of survivors has been thrown into a different environment with a different set of rules for survival. Sure, our team can mow down a zombie horde without breaking a sweat, but can they put up with the profound terror of chit chat about pasta makers?

I think the conversation that Michonne has with Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) most clearly defines their new struggle. As Michonne ironically observes a plastic, sword-shaped toothpick, Abraham tells her that they’re fighting with a different set of weapons now. There’s a balance that our survivors are striving to achieve; one in which they’re still tough enough to deal with life when things go down the toilet, but not so tough that they’ll forget to learn how to play nice with others. It’s been great seeing them struggle with the Alexandrian’s alleged normality while the outside world is still a place of nightmares.

Verdict

Watching Rick’s group adapt to their new surroundings has been a blast to watch. I love seeing how firmly-established characters navigate new and unfamiliar territory. Each person has dealt with this in their own way, but my favorites are still Carol and Daryl. I’m a little worried about Rick, but I think his self-confidence is just setting the stage for their inevitable confrontation with Negan. I do think the series is going to start following along with the comic book’s storyline—we saw Rick get stamped with an A for Alexandria, but we also saw a walker with a W carved into its forehead, which hints at the existence of another more savage community.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.12 “Remember” (8 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

Sometimes, TWD just needs time to rev up. While tonight’s episode wasn’t a spine crusher, it successfully brought the show into this new situation and it’s become more interesting to watch than the last few episodes. In essence, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his group come to a shaky acceptance of life within the walls of Alexandria. Their leader, a former congresswoman named Deanna Monroe (Tovah Feldshuh), hopes to integrate them into their community—but that integration isn’t going to be comfy for everyone. Spoilers ahead, friends!

Adaptation and Manipulation

Living through the horrors that four and a half seasons of TWD has inflicted upon our heroes is going to result in some serious mental scarring. While our group has been able to retain their core humanity because of their loyalty to one another, adjusting to the suburban community of Alexandria is going to present its own kind of difficulties. The episode focuses on Rick’s adjustment—we all took a moment to bid farewell to that dead shih tzu that has been attached to Rick’s chin for the past season. With the clean shave and new clothes, Rick has come to a cautious acceptance of this community, and it seems like the rest of his group is on the same page. Daryl (Norman Reedus) is perhaps the most uncomfortable in their new surroundings. Even before the dead started getting up and eating people, Daryl wouldn’t have been at home in a suburban neighborhood. Carol (Melissa McBride) came into this with a gameplan, however. There’s this scene when her group is piling their guns into a cart, and she walks up with this goofy “silly me” grin and struggles to unload that Kalashnikov that she’s been carrying around. At first, it didn’t make sense—we know Carol to be all sorts of badass. But when she says she misses her husband during her video interview with Deanna, it all makes sense. She’s playing the role of this dopey housewife so their new neighbors will underestimate her deadliness if this decision goes south. Clever.

The Locals

The Alexandrians that we’ve already met seem nice enough—but there are a few folks who will likely stir up some trouble for our heroes. One of them happens to be Aiden (Daniel Bonjour), a self-proclaimed douchebag, and Deanna’s son. He appears to be in charge of supply runs, and when he takes Glenn (Steven Yuen), Tara (Alanna Masterson), and Noah (Tyler James Williams) out for a run, things get punchy. We all know dudes like Aiden. Guys that get cocky because they’ve been around the block a few times are a lamentable fixture in every community. When they meet someone like Glenn, who actually does know his shit, he feels the need to pull some kind of rank. Of course, dudes like Aiden need to get clocked, and Glenn does the honors here. When Deanna breaks up the fisticuffs, she sides with Glenn—either out of a realization that their community needs some piss and vinegar or out of a ploy to win their trust for something nefarious.

Another potential problem comes in the form of Jessie (Alexandra Breckenridge). From the moment she sees a shirtless, clean-shaven Rick Grimes, it’s easy to see that there’s an attraction. This wouldn’t be a problem if she wasn’t married to a man that likes to loom on his porch in the middle of the night, delivering welcomes that sound like threats.  There’s definitely some trouble brewing on that front.

Verdict

TWD has always placed strong emphasis on the interactions of its characters, and with the addition of a few newcomers who lack the survivalist perspective of Rick and his group, those interactions remain complex. A few of the Alexandrians have already revealed themselves as future obstacles, and tonight’s episode handled those moments well. The video interviews that Deanna conducted with a few of Rick’s group were a nice touch—it was interesting to see their story from the perspective of someone who had been relatively safe during the outbreak.

Rick’s and Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) appointment to constables is following pretty closely along with the comic book storyarc—which means there’s potentially a whole heap of evil in store for them. If they don’t follow that storyline, I would be happy watching a few episodes in which constables Rick and Michonne police Alexandria. Who knows what kind of weirdness they could dig up.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.11 “The Distance” (7 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

The main conflict tonight comes from Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) extreme trust issues as Aaron (Ross Marquand) tries to persuade our heroes to come home with him, along with a few night zombies along the way. My reservations about the midseason episodes are still lingering in my mind like the stench of a walker left to rot in the basement. As always, ahead there be spoilers.

The New Guy

When Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) bring Aaron before Rick and the others, they give him some time to say his piece. It all sounds great—steel walls, food, applesauce—but through the course of the series, Rick has come to understand that the term “too good to be true” has come to mean “lure you in slowly and kill you when you least expect it.” It’s a fair judgment to make, seeing as how 90% of the strangers that come across Rick and his pals are up to no good. The difference between this situation with Aaron and their encounters with the other lost denizens of post-apocalyptic Georgia is that his story seems to create a schism between Rick and the rest of his group. Interestingly enough, it’s Michonne (Danai Gurira) who seems most willing to trust Aaron and go with him to his community, Alexandria. This is an interesting moment, considering season three Michonne would probably have chopped Aaron’s head off without thinking twice about it. She’s gone through some interesting changes, and I like that the show has kept that up.

That being said, I didn’t love how the episode played out. Assuming Aaron was always playing some sort of mind game with him, Rick kept negotiating and re-negotiating the terms of their eventual trip to Alexandria. Since the episode ends with them showing up at the community’s gates, all of the zombie peril that our heroes endured tonight was totally Rick’s fault. While his bad decisions could be leading up to some kind of coup within the Rick-tatorship, it was a lot of clumsy thinking, which is not something we’ve come to expect from Sherriff Grimes. On the other hand, these bad decisions did give Rick the opportunity to shoot a zombie in the head with a flare gun, which was one of the most inventive zombie kills that we’ve seen on the show so far.

Verdict

You’ve gotten yourself into a pickle, “Walking Dead.” As our new additions Aaron and Eric (Jordan Woods-Robinson) are impeccably-dressed, totally in love with one another, and appear to have nothing but good intentions for our heroes, the show now finds itself between a pack of feral dogs and a horde of ravenous zombies. See, if Rick and his crew head to the romanticized bastion of Alexandria with Aaron and Eric (Seriously? There are plenty of other dude names that start with a consonant) and it’s not a façade for a group of cannibalistic maniacs, then what? Volleyball and wine coolers? At the same time, however, if they do find that Alexandria is populated with social deviants who are planning on crafting necklaces out of the groups’ vertebrae, we’re then faced with another Woodbury, or Terminus, or Grady Memorial, which is a trope that has officially worn out its welcome.

I’m only a little bit concerned with all of this—TWD has previously done a good job of setting things up only to knock them all down in an unpredictable and violent manner, and if the show is going where I think it’s going (Negan…yeesh), I suspect we’ll have plenty to talk about further out. And, I have to go here, props to TWD for assembling one of the most diverse casts on TV. The inclusion of complex characters from multiple different races and sexual orientations makes the survivors feel like a microcosm of the real world. Regardless of background, we all have our own zombies to kill, and TWD has captured that without making it feel obligatory.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.10 “Them” (7.5 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

Tonight’s episode was a little bit better than last week’s (.5 points better, to be exact). It captured some of the urgency of the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ episode “33,” in which our heroes are exhausted to the point of collapse but they have to keep moving. The downside was that the episode had a difficult time maintaining that urgency, and we ended up with a lot of time spent moping in the wilderness.

No Time to Mourn

Before the opening credits roll, there’s this extreme close-up on Maggie’s (Lauren Cohan) face, which is distorted with the grief of losing her sister, being stuck in the wilderness with little food and water, and, you know, the whole end of the world thing. In the background, a walker comes shambling closer. At this point in the game, Maggie has dropped enough undead to keep us from fearing for her safety, and she executes the interloper with an automaticity that we’ve come to expect from our survivors—they stab walkers in the head with the same indifference that we have when swatting a fly that has flown into the house. From what I can tell about the rest of season five, it’s this automaticity that our heroes will be combatting from here on out. Currently, there isn’t much separating our group from the walkers that are constantly at their backs. One of my favorite scenes from tonight’s episode shows our group in the foreground while a nasty horde of undead shambles slowly behind them. The way that the shot blends both groups together makes it difficult to distinguish who is who—just a bunch of walkers looking for food.

The Middle Slump

While the beginning of the episode is full of wilderness survival (feral dogs!), and the episode ends with a storm that leaves the zombie horde mangled and impaled by nature’s fury, the middle is a little dry. Sasha’s (Sonequa Martin-Green) anger issues, Abraham’s (Michael Cudlitz) booze drinking, and Daryl’s (Norman Reedus) self-mutilation are all stacked together in an effort to show us how the group is being stretched to its emotional and psychological limits. All of this is well and good, but the show really drags us through these moments. Perhaps the most effective was the interaction between Maggie and Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), which called into question the existence of religion in a zombie apocalypse. It’s an interesting mixed message that, right after Gabriel burns his clerical collar, a rainstorm sweeps in. Not only does the storm replenish their water supply, but it wipes out the nasty horde of zombies that has been following them through the wilderness.

Another “Friend”

During the final moments of the show, we are visited with yet another clean-cut dude with a potentially dark secret. It answers the question about who left them a bunch of water, but as soon as this guy approaches Maggie and Sasha, there was a part of me that couldn’t help but feel like we’ve seen something like this before—a pleasantly-mannered fellow approaches under the guise of friendship only to find that he’s secretly in to skinning people and eating them. While I’m not totally sure how this guy’s appearance could mean anything but more trouble, we’ll have to see what his deal is.

Verdict

I liked the idea of survival vs. living that was explored in this episode. When Rick calls himself and the group “the walking dead,” it drove home the point that humans need something more than just food, water, and shelter in order to be considered alive. It just took an incredibly long time for the episode to explore that concept.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.9 “What Happened and What’s Going On” (7 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

As excited as I was to have “The Walking Dead” back on Sunday evenings, tonight’s episode filled me with a mixture of feels. “TWD” isn’t what I’d call a “surreal” show—if anything the show excels at being hyper-real—but surreal is the word that I would associate with tonight’s episode. I think it worked, but it was a bit jarring overall. As always, there be spoilers ahead.

Pre-Credits Weirdness

Before the show’s opening credits, the audience is bombarded with images that allude to Beth (Emily Kinney) getting buried. It sets the tone for what director Greg Nicotero called a “manipulative episode,” since each image contains several different connotations. As the episode unfolded, the memorable images of a skeletal corpse with flowers sprouting upwards from its ribcage, or a farmhouse sketch slowly blotting over with thick blood became like milestones on a roadmap.

These milestones were unreliable—as is so much of the world of “The Walking Dead”—since they weren’t alluding to a death that already took place, but to a death that would happen in the very near future. Yes, the show killed off one character during the midseason finale, and another during the midseason premiere. Seriously, don’t read any more if you don’t want to know who bites it tonight.

The One Who Bites It

It what is sure to be a polarizing episode, tonight focused on the last moments of Tyreese Williams (Chad L. Coleman). While I felt mostly positive about the treatment of one of the show’s most interesting characters, Tyreese’s death left me with some issues. It’s no secret that Tyreese’s compassion has gotten him into some tight  spots—like leaving Martin (Chris Coy), the Terminus prisoner alive when the told everyone else that he was dead. However, the beginning of this episode would have you believe that Tyreese has struck some kind of balance between compassion and survival, most notably when he comforts Noah (Tyler James Williams) in the ruins of Shirewilt Estates. This makes sense now that we know the episode was trying to trick us into thinking Tyreese was safe, but now that I’m thinking about it, it makes me wonder about the effectiveness of Tyreese’s final scenes.

Overall, the scenes are great. Tyreese has some fevered conversations about his life choices with some departed members of the cast, including Beth, Bob Stookey (Lawrence Gilliard, Jr.), and the Governor (David Morrissey), and Coleman brings a desperate kind of nobility to these moments. Embedded within these existential meditations, however, were a few things that didn’t quite sit right with me. Most notably was the moment of Tyreese’s demise (he gets bitten in the arm by a zombie). Something about this scene felt resigned in a way, like Tyreese had made this decision to die before actually going toe to toe with this particular zombie. As I’ve appreciated the fact that Tyreese has established himself as the resident optimist, the fact that he would throw in the towel (during the midseason premiere, no less) bummed me out a little bit. While I love that the show is all about the “adapt to survive” mentality, it needs a character like Tyreese to take the edge off. I worry that, with him gone, we’re going to overdose on pissed-off survivalism.

Washington? Still?

With the bulk of tonight’s episode focused on Tyreese’s last moments on Earth, the only important revelation that came from the other members of the group was Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) insistence that they continue to Washington—even though Eugene (Josh McDermitt) was lying about his governmental ties. Maybe after losing home after home to the unrelenting zombie apocalypse, Washington is as good a destination as any, but I found it odd that Michonne and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) would agree on this, since the original genesis of the trip to Washington was based on a lie.

Verdict

This episode bothered me. Not in a huge, “I’m done with this show!” way, but there were some stylistic and narrative choices that didn’t quite gel together. It’s great that the show is experimenting with its format—all good shows need to do that as they mature—but this bout of experimentation didn’t entirely work out for the best.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.8 “Coda” (10 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

After some hasty Internet research, I learned that a coda is a musical term that is used to designate the end of a symphonic movement. 

What a perfect title for tonight’s episode. 

From the show’s intensely kinetic overture to the intimately emotional final moments we were treated to one of the most operatic stories in “The Walking Dead” history.

BIG SPOILERS A-COMIN’!

Gabriel Has Issues

Before we get to the juicy stuff, we need to discuss Gabriel’s (Seth Gilliam) actions tonight.  He’s clearly suffering from some massive, guilt-fueled anxiety—and it’s making him a liability.  It’s difficult to tell whether or not he’s gotten some closure after leaving the safety of the church to see what was left of the congregation, mostly because of his profuse sweating. However, there is some metaphorical weight to the fact that he inadvertently let his zombified congregation into the church so Michonne (Danai Gurira) and Carl (Chandler Riggs) to board them up inside—and that shot that framed a zombie horde beneath the words, “He who consumes my flesh and my blood shall have eternal life” perfectly illustrated how that which was once comforting has become twisted and grueling in the world that our characters now inhabit. 

The Trade

Right from the get-go, we see feet hitting the pavement, efficiently setting the tension for the entire episode. The plan for hostage negotiation went a little awry last week, resulting in the death of Lamson (Maximiliano Hernandez)—Rick (Andrew Lincoln) hasn’t been too keen on second chances lately. Since Lamson’s death threatened the integrity of Rick’s hostage trade, we’re left with some uncertain feelings about the other two police officer’s in Rick’s custody.  Sure, they seem nice and cooperative, but that’s how they all are—right before they shove your head into a window pane.

It’s a problem not unknown to Dawn (Christine Woods), whose character becomes a bit more focused during tonight’s episode. After she and Beth (Emily Kinney) tag-team a duplicitous officer, Beth learns that Dawn’s whole management ideology is based around the fact that things are better in the hospital than they are outside. It’s an idea that she enforces through manipulation and fear, but it’s also an idea that she truly believes in. Which is why when Rick and his team show up to make the trade, she requests that Noah (Tyler James Williams) stay behind.  It’s a sneaky way for Dawn to assert her authority over the situation, and it goes to show how something that was building up to a peaceful resolution can go horribly wrong.

With the visceral grace of a Tarantino film, the scene explodes. In a final act of defiance, Beth jams a pair of scissors in Dawn’s chest, which triggers thirty of the most brutal seconds that I’ve seen on the show. Dawn discharges her gun under Beth’s chin, Daryl (Norman Reedus) retaliates by killing Dawn, and both sides stand disarmed at what has just happened.

These closing scenes demonstrate how good “The Walking Dead” is about creating tension and then releasing it in gushes of emotional acting. Reedus plays Daryl as emotionally restrained for the bulk of the series, so when we see him break down and carry Beth’s body outside—it’s hard to watch. Maggie’s (Lauren Cohan) reaction was equally heartbreaking—made more so with Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) mention that Beth was alive and would soon be back with them.

Verdict

It’s episodes like this one that make this show brilliant. All of the violence, zombies, dysfunctional humans, and overall grit serve to emphasize the power of human endurance. These characters continue to go through hardship and tragedy, but what makes “The Walking Dead” cool is that they don’t do it unscathed. They have physical and emotional scars that they carry with them, but, in many ways, that’s what makes us love them.

The season will continue in February, which already seems like it’s so very far away.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.7 “Crossed” (9 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

“The Walking Dead” has traditionally made good use of its episodes that lead up to its mid-season finales—they like to swirl some flecks of optimism in with the doom and gloom that we know and love. Three different narratives—some more subdued than others— occupy tonight’s episode, which catches us up with our heroes thus far.

Spoilers ahead!

Team Rick

Even though it took a zillion weeks, we finally see that Daryl (Norman Reedus) has brought Noah (Tyler James Williams) with him after their less-than-successful trip into Atlanta. With Noah’s knowledge of Grady Memorial Hospital and Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) strategic planning, they make a plan to bust Beth (Emily Kinney) and Carol (Michelle McBride) out of the hospital.

Since the beginning of the season, we’ve seen Rick develop more of an edge—as evidenced by his scraggly beard and matter-of-fact death threats. Along with Rick’s mounting intensity, there appears to be a redemptive undertone to this season thus far—almost as if our heroes are questioning the often knee-jerk response to meet uncertainty with violence. Take the rescue plan for example. While Rick conceives a quick and dirty infiltration plan, Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman) offers a plan that involves a hostage exchange. When Daryl sides with Tyreese, it seems like a win for compassion—until the very last scene of the episode in which Sasha’s (Sonequa Martin-Green) compassion for the captive officer ends up getting her head smashed into a window, which is a hell of a way to end the episode. 

Of the three narratives, this one brought the highest level of zombie grotesquerie and character drama, both of which are exemplified in Daryl’s (Norman Reedus) confrontation with one of the Grady Memorial cops. It’s a tightly shot melee that takes place amid splatters of pizza-fied zombies—later explained to be victims of a napalm strike after the initial outbreak. As Daryl’s fingers wander dangerously close to a melty zombie face, that moment when he yanks off its gross head to bludgeon his opponent into submission was disgustingly awesome. Not only did this scene provide several tense moments, it served as a testament to the show’s ability to depict the undead in new and disgusting ways, which I’ve really come to appreciate.

Team Abraham

After Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) beats Eugene (Josh McDermitt) within an inch of his life for lying about the whole “I’m a scientist!” thing, their subgroup has been moping around an abandoned fire truck. Despite the fact that Abraham seems to have suffered a mental break—he spends the entire episode on his knees, staring intently into the woods behind them—this narrative veered into territory seldom tread by “The Walking Dead” by giving characters a moment to enjoy themselves.  It’s not much, but it serves to break up the tension created by Rick’s rescue mission and Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) interactions with Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam)—which we’ll discuss right now!

Team Michonne

Dipping back into the conflict between compassion and ruthless pragmatism that we saw with Rick and his group, the scenes with Michonne and Father Gabriel back at the church are infused with tension. Michonne seems to be concerned with the priest’s mental well-being—especially after he gets schooled by Carl (Chandler Riggs) about how to properly kill a walker with a machete. It’s interesting to see this type of emotion from Michonne, whose character has evolved from a zombie-exploiting killing machine to a woman who no longer sees the world in shades of living death.

The real enigma during this narrative is Father Gabriel. Seth Gilliam plays the character with what could be construed as crippling guilt or crippling cowardice—it’s sometimes tough to tell what exactly is eating him. He seems to be so stuck in the world that existed before the dead started getting up and eating people that he can’t function properly any more. His decision to sneak out of the church was odd—I doubt anyone would have really cared if he just said, “You know, I think I’m going to take my chances out there without all of you highly-trained zombie assassins,” but that could just be chalked up to his extreme cowardice. Every so often, I get a whiff of something sinister from this guy, but it’s been tough to get a bead on him ever since we first saw him this season.

Verdict

Tonight’s episode definitely set up all kinds of interesting conflicts that could take place during next week’s midseason finale. I’m looking forward to see how Beth and Carol will find a way to mess things up within the hospital—those weirdos have it coming.

‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 5.6 “Consumed” (9 out of 10) Created by Frank Darabont; Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.

After waiting two weeks for a look at what Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) were up to while Beth (Emily Kinney) was learning the horrible rules of Grady Memorial Hospital, we finally get an episode that puts them front and center.  Their time spent tracking Beth through the ruins of Atlanta is packed with the metaphorical weight of Carol’s sometimes fractured sense of morality.

Spoilers ahead!

White Crosses

Throughout the episode, we get a mixtape of Carol’s greatest hits. It’s interesting to see some of these scenes from Carol’s perspective—watching her stand above the smoldering corpses of the flu victims and foraging for survival after Rick (Andrew Lincoln) sends her packing convey the sense of lonely survivalism that has come to define Carol. These flashbacks are excellent windows into the core of who Carol has become.

In addition to Carol’s specific flashbacks, the entire episode feels like a journey that we’ve been on before—in a good way. It felt nostalgic to see Daryl and Carol combing a hostile environment for a missing girl, since their ultimately tragic quest to find Sophia in season two was what initially brought the two together. The setting has changed from the wilderness back to the shattered urban sprawl of Atlanta—there’s even a scene in which the pair walk past a tank that looks an awful lot like the one Rick holed up in at the end of the show’s first episode. This backdrop is an excellent environment for the two characters to discuss how much they’ve changed over the course of the zombie apocalypse.

Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride have built a unique type of chemistry over the course of the show, and I love it when we get to see them interact. As the episode’s dialogue was sparse and lean, it allowed these two actors to really explore the nuances of silent interaction.  Both  Reedus and McBride bring a hefty dose of charisma to the table, and it’s quite amazing how well these two can emote without saying anything at all. 

Choices

It’s tough to watch this journey through a city-turned-hellscape without thinking of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” The ruined city of Atlanta is representative of Carol’s abusive and dysfunctional past, and the person she is in season five has done many questionable things to become self-sufficient. As she navigates the urban ruins, she is navigating her own conscience in order to find a reason to keep on surviving. Daryl, who is also not the same person he was at the beginning, fills in for Virgil in this Dante analogy, as he is the one guiding Carol through a literal and figurative purgatory. Daryl, who Carol describes as a “kid who became a man,” shares her sense of pragmatism in the undead world, but his attitude seems to have been seasoned by Beth’s—he’s a much more optimistic zombie hunter than he used to be. 

Their philosophical debate is put to the test when they find Noah (Tyler James Williams) pinned down by a zombie. Earlier, Noah held them up and stole their weapons, and Daryl wants to leave him in his current predicament—after stealing his pack of cigarettes, however. When Carol pleads for Daryl to help him despite his treachery, it feels like she’s put that cold survivalist persona away. It’s fitting that only moments after she has this breakthrough that she gets hit by a car, however.

Verdict

Every so often, “The Walking Dead” throws us some solid storytelling and character building without an influx of undead action. Though tonight’s episode didn’t totally skimp out on the action—the van plummeting from the bridge was a beautifully tense scene, for example. When these episodes arrive, it’s important to have actors who can dig into their characters and change them around a bit. Reedus and McBride are exactly the type of actors that you want for an episode like this, as they even fill the silence with serious stage presence.