Color me impressed! The fifth season of The Walking Dead is
turning out to be pretty solid, and by that I mean, no more wasting time with drawn-out
subplots that go nowhere. Now the subplots go somewhere! We are moving through
them at a rapid clip! I’m fairly impressed—even as I mourn a little bit for
Bob/D’Angelo Barksdale/Lawrence Gilliard Jr. He is great, and if you need to
remind yourself of that, just go back and watch his speech about The GreatGatsby from The Wire. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.
But let’s turn back to this show and leave discussions of
The Wire, the Greatest Show of All Time, for another day. So what went down in “Four
Walls and a Roof,” besides Bob’s untimely, but well-handled, death? Let’s
discuss!
+ “You idiots! I’ve
been bitten, you stupid pricks! I’m tainted meat! Tainted meat! You ate tainted
meat!” The opening sequence of this episode was, let me be clear, flat-out
great. From how nauseating it was to juxtapose close-ups of the rotting zombie
faces with the grease-covered ones of Gareth’s people gnawing on Bob’s flesh,
to their shock and disgust once Bob, amid peals of maniacal laughter, showed
them his bite—it was excellently done, totally impactful, impressively
revolting.
“Join us or feed us,” Gareth said to Bob as they ate his leg,
but once they realize what they’ve done, they immediately dump Bob back in
front of the church. (Another plot point taken directly from the comics,
whereas last week, I thought maybe the show would have Morgan save Bob. I was
wrong!) And so Bob tells the group what happened to him—“They were eating my
leg right in front of me, like it was nothing. All proud. Like they had it all
figured out.”—setting in motion their attack on Gareth and a farewell between himself
and Sasha. When Sasha hands the knife to Tyreese so he could finish off Bob?
That was one of the more emotional scenes that has been on this show in a long
time.
+ “I already made you
a promise.” As we’ve discussed before, the primary question of The Walking
Dead is whether humanity and mercy have a place in a society where survival is
a paramount concern, and finally this season we’re seeing Rick realize that maybe they don’t. We saw that mentality
once they left Terminus and he said they should go back and kill Gareth, and we
see it this week when that plan comes to fruition, as Rick, Michonne, Sasha,
and Abraham kill Gareth and his people, who are on their knees and begging for
mercy, on the floors of Father Gabriel’s church. Because I am a terrible
person, I had a grim smile on my face the entire time for this—because angry determined
Rick is my favorite kind of Rick.
Here we are, then: the point of no return, when Rick and his
people have gone from simply trying to protect themselves to now going on the
offensive. That doesn’t seem to sit well with Glenn, Maggie, or Girl Whose Name
I Can’t Remember, as they don’t partake in the killing and stick with their
decision to leave for D.C. (Or with Tyreese, who watched from the door of
Father Gabriel’s office, and was shocked by what his sister did.) But eventually
everyone crumbles a little bit, right? Carl was once a kid; now he’s a killer.
Father Gabriel was once a man of God; then he turned his own constituents away.
This world will change you. So I guess the question now is, how will it change
Glenn and Maggie, who up until now have been confident in their love and tried
to live through compromise instead of combat? What will happen to them on their
way to D.C.? I wonder.
+ “I locked the doors
… Entire families calling my name as they were torn apart, begging me for
mercy.” Oh yeah, speaking of Father Gabriel—yup, he refused to let people
take refuge in the church, instead locking the doors and not opening them for
anyone. That would cause a lot of guilt, I would imagine. Seth Gillam played
the admission really well, I thought, and I like how in every episode, it seems
like some member of Rick’s group is tearing away his faith, bit by bit. This
episode, it came from Maggie, who coolly, almost resentfully told him “It’s
just four walls and a roof” when Father Gabriel was shocked that Rick killed
Gareth’s people in “the Lord’s house.”
But—and yes, I’m going back to The Wire here—Gillam is a really good actor, and he can do a lot
more than just guilty cowering in the back of a church office. Father Gabriel
is kind of a minor character in the comics who flirts with insanity driven by
his self-hatred for what he’s done, but I hope the TV show changes him a bit to
give Gillam more to do. He is SO GOOD, you guys, and he deserves more. Just
saying.
+ “He will make the dead
die, and the living will have this world again.” OK, so I’m kind of
cheating, and this quote from Abraham about Eugene was actually from last week’s
episode. But the D.C. caravan of Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene gets two new
additions after this week with Maggie and Glenn, who also decide to head to
D.C.—they agree to go before Rick, Michonne, Sasha, and Abraham go HAM on
Gareth and his remaining people, but it’s clear that Maggie and Glenn (who do not take part in the killing) are
shocked by what Rick is capable of. So they and the Girl Whose Name I Can’t
Remember (Tara? Lily? I KEEP FORGETTING) decide to head off to D.C., and leave
a map behind so Rick will know their route. Maybe Rick et al. will follow them,
but I think we all know that “maybe” here means “definitely.”
+ “Just look at her and tell me the world isn’t going to
change.” Some of Bob’s final words to Rick are about Judith and the hope and
optimism of youth, but I think his quote can go either way: the world can
change for the better, sure, but it can also change for the worse. And given
that we still don’t know what happened to Beth, and that Daryl’s return this
week seems to be against his will (who is he motioning to come out of the
woods?), I think we can safely assume things are going to get way shittier before
they ever get better.
And some final
thoughts:
+ So not only was Gareth awful, but he was also super sexist
(or at least played that up to Bob), which I guess makes sense for a guy who
looks like he would be a date rapist in another life: “The grey-haired queen
bitch who killed my mom … can’t wait to try her. I like women better. Most of
us do. … Sasha? I think pretty people taste better, too.” Shudder and ugh.
+ You have to love Rick for being so practically minded that
when Bob tells him about how Gareth ate his leg, Rick’s first question is, “Did
they have Daryl and Carol?” The hierarchy of the group is clear, and with
Tyreese out of killing commission, Rick needs his top people—but even still,
that seemed like a pretty heartless thing to say to Bob. Maybe work on your bedside
manner, Rick.
+ “We need each other for this. … We can through all of it
together.” So hopeful, Glenn! How long will that hope last?
+ “I should forgive them? For hurting him? For trying to
kill us? What the hell is wrong with you?” I hadn’t really paid attention to
Sasha as a character before (since she is original to the show, and hasn’t
gotten as much character development as someone like Daryl) but I think actress
Sonequa Martin-Green did a really solid job this episode, especially while sparring
with her brother Tyreese as he encouraged her to move past Bob’s injury. Watch
her face as she kills Gareth’s group—there’s rage there, but when everyone is
dead, sadness and resignation and shock, too. Nicely played.
+ For everyone worrying about Michonne’s katana, yup, she
has it back. And for as much as she told Rick last week that she doesn’t miss
it, I think her face once she wields it in the final minutes of this episode
suggests otherwise.
