‘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.