5.09: The Walking Dead - What Happened and What's Going On

[ctg]

The Walking Dead returns on Sunday 8th on US and Monday 9th in the UK in the usual timeslots. So set your recorders as the long silence is over. Hopefully. The episode will start on Gabriel's speech at Beth's Funeral where he says: "We look not to what can be seen, but we look at what can not be seen. What can be seen is temporary, But what can not be seen is eternal. For what we know, if the earthly tent we living in is destroyed, we have a building from God. A house not made with hands, eternal in Heaven."

What else is in the pot, we see, but here's one of the pictures for you guys.

 

[Jesse412]

Very depressing episode. I thought the skeleton with the flowers and grass growing out of it was a cool visual. How devastating for Noah to return home and find his neighborhood decimated like that. I thought Tyler James Williams gave a great performance portraying that shock and grief. Nice to see Tyreese step up to support him. I was shocked and disappointed to see Tyreese actually get bit. Nice to see so many dead characters show up in this episode. Beth singing kind of made me sad though. The gore in this episode as per usual looked incredible especially the slow motion stuff towards the end. Crashing into the back of the truck with all the zombie parts falling out was crazy. I genuinely thought Tyreese was going to make it there for awhile. Pretty heartbreaking that he didn't survive.

 

[Huttman]

Yup, the old hey-lookout-behind-you-why-can't-you-hear-him-oh-no-I've-been-bit routine. Well, thank goodness that isn't getting old!

 

[Culhwch]

Poor Tyrese...

Seriously, what was with the truck full of zombie torsos, though? I'm assuming that's setting up something.

 

[Dave]

It was a very long and slow goodbye to Tyrese. After waiting 2 months for a new episode that won't please many fans. I think others have mentioned before that in the graphic novels Tyrese died long ago, so I guess his time had come. I've seen other comments online asking why there can't be two male black characters in the show, but I'm certain that their skin colour had nothing to do with it. Everyone dies in this show. The fact that many appeared in this episode just proves that. It was totally senseless after the arc that his character had gone through.

Seriously, what was with the truck full of zombie torsos, though? I'm assuming that's setting up something.

Probably. What's your theory?

 

[Culhwch]

No idea, really. I'm thinking some more crazies, Terminus-style, but hoping for something different.

 

[ctg]

I think others have mentioned before that in the graphic novels Tyrese died long ago, so I guess his time had come.

You are right. Tyreese died a while ago, and he never got to finish the trip to Washington DC, which in its own is a quite sad thing.

I've seen other comments online asking why there can't be two male black characters in the show, but I'm certain that their skin colour had nothing to do with it. Everyone dies in this show.

The fact is that watchers forget Morgan. And even though he isn't in the screen, he is in the show and we know that he's been trailing Rick's posse for a while. So it is only a question of time when he gets a chance to reappear physically in the show. But you're right, everyone dies, and Tyreese for a while has been looking like a character that's going off his rails. He couldn't kill a man when he needed to, and Martin claimed in Tyreese lucid dreams that if he would had done the deed then maybe they wouldn't had found the church and things would had turned differently.

Just they didn't and now Tyreese is lying in a grave. I don't know what Rick really thought, when he drove like a madman towards the other group while the Big Man bled to death. Maybe he thought Tyreese had load of blood while some other people could had just set up a campfire, or light up a gas grill and used a frying pan (or similar thing) to cauterize the stump.

 

[ctg]

Yup, the old hey-lookout-behind-you-why-can't-you-hear-him-oh-no-I've-been-bit routine. Well, thank goodness that isn't getting old!

LOL. That made me giggle. But ... have you ever been in a place, where you have lost your thoughts because you were watching something intensily? I know I have and people have sneaked up on me.

Seriously, what was with the truck full of zombie torsos, though? I'm assuming that's setting up something.

I don't know if this makes me a weird person but I found that scene hilarious. And I thought that they had hit cannibals second time.

 

[Culhwch]

I was reading in the comments section of io9 that the torsos had 'W's carved into their foreheads, and there was grafitti in the town (which I noticed while watching, actually) that said something like 'the wolves are coming'. I'm guessing there is definitely a link there. Another group of bad guys.

 

[svalbard]

It also looks like the enclave was attacked by another group of humans.

I was not expecting Tyresse to go and am sort of dissappointed as I thought he was one of the more interesting characters.

Good strong start to the 2nd half of the season.

 

[ctg]

I was not expecting Tyresse to go and am sort of dissappointed as I thought he was one of the more interesting characters.

I have to confess that I was afraid from the very first episode that Tyreese is next one to go. I just didn't knew it was going to come so fast after we lost Beth in that last one. I still loved seeing her, Lizzie & Mika and the Governor in the episode. They added some chilling spice to his struggle, and I agree with Mrs Ctg that his effort was a worth of an Emmy.

He has been good, strong and stable character in Rick's Posse. I say Posse because to an innocent viewer some of their tactics might be a bit extreme. Especially since they got out from Terminus slaughterhouse. But I hope they'll start to see the way Michonne is showing to them by agreeing that Eugene was somewhat right, Washington DC is one of most probable places of finding other people. More probably than Atlanta with all its flaws and benefits. And I think Rick knows in his mind that if he's going to say no, it has to be for a good reason or otherwise he can say goodbye to most of his group.

What they need is a place to stay, but where they can find one when all known locations has been overrun one way or another by zombies. They can be seen as slow moving but when they pack together to create a horde there's very little anyone can do to stop them. Rick's posse doesn't have ammo or the numbers to take them down, but if they find survivors in the nation's capital then it's all good. They can breath easily and trust that they're safe, even if there's roamers on the street. The problem however is: how to get there?

How to get there safely I mean, because if you look the map, you'll see heavily urbanised areas all along northern Atlantic coast-line, and it doesn't stop until Canada's wilderness sets in. And that means a lot of potential zombies. Probably close to two to three hundred million individuals. But what is good for them is that mostly those one are slowly migrating to somewhere else, where that is, and what is the final size of the largest horde is going to be interesting thing to find out - if we ever get there.

Hopefully the spinoff is going to give some answers.

 

[Gnrevolution]

I did get worried for a while that they were going to have to take Tyreese back to the hospital and start retreading old ground yet again (a la Series 4) so in that sense I'm glad he didn't make it. But they are definitely stripping away anyone with a shred of humanity / pacifism, I'm guessing this could be a turning point for the group into deep and darker territory (like it wasn't deep and dark enough already!). Have to say as well though not really interested about this emerging plot of the 'Wolves' so far, if it's just another bunch of raider-cannibal-outlaw-scum we've seen it plenty before, do we really need another group like that?

 

[Menion]

I wonder who is going to inherit Tyreese's hammer? I loved the foreboding scene with Glenn and the Bat.

 

[ctg]

I wonder who is going to inherit Tyreese's hammer?

I think it was buried with the Big Bear as I love to call him. And it doesn't take much for them to pick up another one even though that one is especially good. It's just that you could lose it so easily if it would get stuck in some biters head. Think about it. It's better to stay in the grave with the big man.

 

[markpud]

Call the Proclaimers has as our intrepid heroes have driven 500 miles to Virginia!! I was hoping to see more of this journey over several episodes rather than this rapid progress...

But, on with the episode and I really liked the style of opening scenes, and the misdirect of the funeral we assume is Beth's but turns out to be Tyreese's.

Creepy scenes at Noah's community.. halved zombies, walls taken down from the outside.. good enough reasons not to set up camp there, but keep on the road to DC. At this rate they should be there at the start of the next episode! But I suspect the heavily hinted gang of raiders will get in their way.

 

[Nechtan]

I've seen other comments online asking why there can't be two male black characters in the show, but I'm certain that their skin colour had nothing to do with it.

Uh, haven't Bob and Tyreese both been in the show since the prison?

The episode was ok. I didn't really enjoy seeing Tyreese see dead people. I felt like I'd seen that kind of stuff before many times and done better. I was sad to see Tyreese go.

 

[Dave]

Yes, but Noah is new. I only mentioned it because I saw a lot of the same comments, but they don't stand up. There is a large ensemble cast, someone has to go to make room for new people.

 

[Nechtan]

Dave, those online comments? What about Michone and Sasha? Did those commenting not count black women as characters?

 

[Dave]

No, they didn't, and I don't know why I mentioned it now, other than there were few comments here at the time. I wish I hadn't but it seemed like a big deal to them. They were probably just adolescent boys. Female characters wouldn't count as far as they were concerned.

We get a much better class of discussions here.

 

[Culhwch]

There are plenty of memes all over the place that play on the idea that there can only one black male character on the show at a time. As shown, it doesn't really hold up. And I don't know that it's born out of any kind of racism, but more playing on standard television or movie tropes...