“You still don’t get
it. None of you do. We’re the ones who live. You, you just sit and plan and
hesitate, pretend like you know when you don’t. You wish things weren’t what
they are. You want to live, you want this place to stay standing? Your way of
doing things is done. Things don’t get better because you want them to. Starting
right now, we have to live in the real world. We have to control who lives
here.”
“That’s never been
more clear to me than it is right now.”
All of you who spent this season’s 14 episodes thinking, “Wait,
are Rick and Co. the bad guys now?”, welcome to your victory dance! Yes, you
could very well argue that our favorite sheriff Rick Grimes has finally stepped
into the role of the villain after last night’s penultimate episode “Try,” what
with attacking Jessie’s husband Pete and almost killing him and then basically
telling Deanna she’s a useless idiot before getting – triumphantly and straight
out of the comics! – knocked out by Michonne. Say goodbye to your constable
status, Rick – you’re pretty much done.
Now, that’s not to say that Rick is fully wrong, actually – I mean, clearly resentful and traumatized
and enraged at how easy these people have it, but not necessarily fully wrong. It is terrible of Deanna to
know that Pete was beating Jessie and their sons, and it was irresponsible to
just shrug it off in the hopes that he would somehow get better. It is terrible
of Deanna to seem to trust Nicholas after the phenomenally failed run, even
though he already has a history of people dying when they go on runs with him
and Glenn is so much more remorseful (which I would think would be a sign of
honesty). And it is terrible of Deanna to, as a leader, not acknowledge that
her son Aiden was a real jackass, even though she had admitted that in a
previous episode to Glenn – where did that self-awareness go?
I guess losing your son is awful or whatever, but that guy’s
mixes sucked! And that Nine Inch Nails song (“Somewhat Damaged”) was clearly
not what he was listening to on the last run! That mix was some terrible dubstep nonsense! Have some consistency when it
comes to Trent Reznor, Walking Dead writers!
Ahem … anyway. So what else happened in last night’s
second-to-last episode of this fifth season? Let’s talk!
+ “We’re truly sorry
for your loss.” Poor Carol – her casserole goes untouched and her note to
Deanna and her family gets burned, a sign of bad things to come regarding
Deanna’s view of the group. And bad things do come: She doesn’t seem to believe
Glenn’s version of events, letting Nicholas go free despite his obvious
responsibility in Aiden’s death; she blows off Rick’s concerns about Pete
because she values his worth as a surgeon more than caring about Jessie’s
safety; and that last confrontation with Rick has clearly fundamentally altered
their relationship. And her response to Rick when he suggests killing Pete – “We
don’t kill people. This is civilization. … I wouldn’t kill you. I’d just send
you away” – sounded very familiar, right? Like she’s said it before. Like she’s
sent people away already .. I think we’re getting closer to an answer of who the
walkers with the W carved into their foreheads are, don’t you think?
+ “People like you
are supposed to be dead.” Jeez, have we ever seen Glenn be this cold?
Although anything and everything he says to Nicholas is totally justified – the
guy is a professional coward, willing to leave behind Aiden, admitting that he’s
left behind other people, and then lying to Deanna about it, saying that Glenn
was trying to kill him and that “If I didn’t push back, I’d be dead, too.” I’m
hoping for an eventual showdown between Glenn and Nicholas, but at the same time,
what would it matter? The hole from losing Noah is big in Glenn, and I’m not
sure getting violent revenge is Glenn’s style. At least, not yet.
+ “Cool, you’re
afraid of me, too.” Yeah, yeah, Carl gets closer to his first kiss with
Enid as they do whatever they’re doing out in the forest, trailing and watching
walkers. Anyone have any idea why Enid threw a kitchen timer at one of them? Literally,
I have no other thoughts about this subplot. None.
+ “I don’t need your
help.” The Sasha-has-PTSD train keeps on rolling this week, as she does a
nighttime shift on the watchtower and then goes out past the wall the next day,
hunting down walkers on her own without telling anyone. A concerned Michonne
and Rosita go after her, leading to some nice girl-power bonding for the pair,
but Sasha thoroughly rejects their assistance – even though she clearly needs it
when Michonne saves her life. And by the end of the episode, she’s back in the
watchtower shooting walkers and Michonne is back in her constable outfit,
putting Rick back in line. But what is the end game for Sasha? She’s kind of
like Chekhov’s gun in that I don’t think her instability is for nothing; I
think she eventually has to boil over somehow, but how and why? Will that
happen next episode or will it linger into next season? (And, isn’t it
frustrating, still, that we really have no defining personality traits for
Sasha outside of “disturbed” or for Rosita outside of “now she wears clothes”? Sigh.)
+ “How the hell did this happen?” In the continuing
adventures of Aaron and Daryl, we see them beyond the wall, seeing some
frightening things: mutilated bodies, sliced apart at the torso and limbs, and
a naked woman tied to a tree (how very True Detective-inspired!), with a W in
her forehead, left to be eaten alive by walkers. They see what looks like a
fire off in the distance – is that person or those people responsible? What
else are Aaron and Daryl going to find? Another storyline that I wonder if the
writers will wrap up next week or prolong into season six.
And finally, some
stray odds and ends:
+ “Why do you care? Why is this so important to you?” I don’t
care about Jessie at all, but I was
especially irritated with her initial shoving away of Rick this episode. I
mean, yes, Rick is clearly meddling because he has personal feelings for her,
but at the same time, he is in a
position of responsibility that means he can’t turn a blind eye to needless
violence in their society. Get it together, Jessie! Notice that during the
fight between Pete and Rick that she goes to pull Pete off Rick, so I wonder
what that alliance with Rick instead of her husband will mean down the line. (Well,
if the show is following the comics storyline, I know exactly where this is
going, AND I HOPE IT GOES THERE.)
+ So does no one lock their doors in Alexandria? How was
Rick able to just waltz back into Jessie and Pete’s house after she closed the
garage door on him earlier? Come on.
+ I loved Rick’s
almost-amused “You mean me?” in response to Deanna’s “That’s never been more
clear to me than it is right now.” His maniacal exasperation is my favorite
thing.
