THE WALKING DEAD: Harvey & Adair On WHAT’S GOING ON
DUSTOLIO’S NOTE: I made a promise to myself when I started recapping The Walking Dead that I would just bang out the recap. I would leave all the thinking and hand-wringing to Mr. Harvey and I would have the creative, arty, slapdash job of spewing my obscenity-ridden first impressions of the episode onto the page. And that has worked out fine… until this week.
You guys, Sunday night’s episode was so coo-coo bananas, so off message for what we have all come to expect from the series, that I had to take some time to think about it. So that’s what I am doing. I’m sitting at my desk, in the Law Office where I Day Job, thinking about The Walking Dead. What follows is an odd recap of the oddest episode of an odd show. Enjoy.
Season 5, Episode 9 “What Happened and What’s Going On”
Dustin: So there was a petition to bring back Beth.
Timothy: Really?
Dustin: Yes, it got over 60,000 at last count.
Timothy: Huh. Well, she was shot in the head, so… wait. They do know she was shot in the head, right?
Dustin: Yep.
Timothy: And this isn’t Dallas, so it can’t have all been a dream. This really isn’t some show where she can come back as a ghost.
Dustin: How cool would that be, though? Ghost Beth. I smell a spinoff.
Timothy: The most we’ll get is a flashback to happier times or something. Perhaps a song. Maybe two.
Dustin: I know.
Curtis: Hey, are you guys talking about my petition?
Dustin: Shut up.
Curtis: I’m a stinker.
Timothy: Sigh. Why… why are people, Dustin?
Dustin: I don’t know, Tim. I just don’t know….
I'm all "atwitter". @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
Right. Welcome my friends, to the show that never ends, or as we like to call it around these parts, our The Walking Dead review. As always, Mr. Adair recaps, I commentate, and Mr. Smith mans the Tweeting machine. Our Miss Anne-Marie has moved to muggier climes and is preparing for Mardi Gras, so alas, we do not have her presence among us. Also as always, the following is often inappropriate, not-for-children, and may exceed your daily recommended allowance for snark and general weirdness. And SPOILERS of course. You hath been warn-ed.
RECAP!!
Everyone is super sad about Beth; there is a lot of sitting around and crying. You know what? I’m glad they don’t show Daryl crying in this opening scene. Daryl crying is the worst kind of crying, you guys. Norman Reedus cries with his whole face and it’s disturbing.
They still bury their dead… wait… then there are lens flares…. and running? And some twins? Are we in a Doublemint commercial?
There’s the prison…. What exactly is going on?
That was… really odd. It’s very stylized editing, and that’s not something we get from this show.
Rick and Noah are sitting by a truck. Everyone wants to take Noah home to Virginia, but Rick has some skepticism that there will even be anything for Noah to go back to. Rick says that it might be better for Noah to just move on. Way to be a downer RICK.
Well, it’s not like Rick has ever done everything he can to reunite with his family and friends or anything, is it? Oh wait. Less “way to be a downer”, and more “way to only care when it’s your friends and family, Rick.”
Someone really did edit the hell out of this episode. I am really having trouble following the visual cues. Where are we? What is happening? Judith?
Okay, this has to be some sort of @#$%ed up dream because Puppy and Sophia II have shown up to tell us it’s all okay. Have we ever seen someone’s dream before? Flashbacks, sure, but a full on dream?
It would explain the lens flares.
Or it was directed by J.J. Abrams. And really, if Sophia II shows up and tells you it’s OK, you do know it’s not OK, right?
And now, we travel. @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
Driving.
Noah tells Michonne, Tyreese, Rick and Glenn that they are about 5 miles outside of his little town. They drove 500 miles, people!! We are no longer in Georgia!! Or… at least that’s what we are pretending, only they’re basically still on the same 500 yards of road they have been on for the last 5 years. But hey, if you believe, I believe.
Holy crap. I’m stunned… stunned I tell you! TEAM ZOMBIE GOT IN THEIR CARS AND DROVE SOMEWHERE. And they got there without, apparently, randomly flipping a car for no reason, encountering an easily moved obstacle that they somehow can’t move, or some other contrived thing that has kept them trapped in the same little patch of Georgia for the last 5 years.
So… what, exactly, kept them from doing this before? I mean, aside from the writers.
There is a lot of stuff. Noah thinks the trade was the right play, while Tyreese says things happen the way they are supposed to happen. What a pragmatic way to look at things, Tyreese.
Ah, the old “It was meant to be” argument. I really hate that argument. It’s so… just let it all happen and don’t try to fight against the terrible things that one has to fight against. In this case, that would be the writers making people act in ways that make no sense at all.
RELATED: Melissa McBride Talks The Walking Dead at Dallas Comic-Con Fan Days 2015
Meanwhile, in the back of the Suburban, Glenn is looking at a CD. Why just look at it, Glenn? You’re in a running car with a working radio! Put that sucker in and enjoy some tasty licks!!
Tyreese says he’s finally on board with the zombie apocalypse! And it only took him TWO YEARS, having to STAB his sister’s boyfriend in the brain, having to watch a gentle blonde band singer get shot in the brain, having to watch a little girl get shot in the brain for murdering another little girl, his girlfriend being set on fire for having the flu, cannibals, marauding psychopaths with tanks, and ACTUAL PHYSICAL ZOMBIES for him to get there.
Wait, didn’t we just have the whole “things happen the way they’re supposed to happen” thing?
Tyreese talks about the news or some @#$%.
Tyreese backstory moment. Hmmm.
So Noah mentions that back in his Side Quest, he has a Mom and twin brothers. Oh, so those were Noah’s twin brothers in the pictures at the beginning… okay… getting there.
Well, that’s not actually a good sign for Noah, is it?
Even though Noah insists that his Side Quest will be totally “safe”, Rick wants to be actually safe and approach the town on foot and through the woods. Which makes a bit of sense. He radios Carol back with the main group to tell her of this plan.
Glenn breaks his CD. Must have been Nickelback.
And somewhere, our friend Brian Boye, world’s biggest Nickelback fan, is laughing.
They pull up to a wreck out in the middle of the woods; there is a walker trapped in one of the cars. They leave it.
Yet, oddly, despite the fact that Rick says that the wreck will help hide their car, they park far enough away from it that you can tell it’s not part of the wreck. Hoookay.
There are wires strung up in the trees as a defense for the Side Quest. Noah takes this as a good sign that his Side Quest is safe. Of course, he immediately gets cut on the wires. Because of course he does. BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES, TIM!!
Bet that cut's gonna be important later. @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
Wow, things are not looking like they are going to go well for Noah, are they? Trying to find his family – which is not likely to be successful given this show’s track record – and all the visual cues we’ve been given, and now an open wound to draw the Zombie Hordes even quicker? Yeah…
Finally, the away team arrives at the Side Quest and it looks like the walls and gate are intact, which Noah also takes as a good sign. Of course, if he had ever watched this show, he would know that all the extra security and the seemingly safe walls are all seriously bad signs. If there were puppies and little girls hanging about, those would be the WORST OF ALL SIGNS.
Good thing we haven’t seen any… ah, wait.
The only thing The Walking Dead hates more than having more than one black guy in the cast for more than 5 episodes is little girls. Little girls are the true enemy.
And yet, Carl lives. Must be the Hat.
There is a clock in the road.
What an odd place for a clock. Really, who leaves a grandfather clock just lying in the middle of the road?
Noah reaches the gates and there seem to be no guards. Uh-oh.
So that would be a bad sign, yes.
Glenn looks over the wall, and he’s disappointed.
As would that.
Everyone is disappointed. They climb over the gates. There seems to have been a fire and all sorts of bad stuff went down. Noah runs off to find his dumb family.
All sorts of people are dead. Noah kind of has a nervous breakdown about it. It’s almost like he didn’t have his father murdered in front of him, then get held captive in a hospital for several months.
Well, c’mon now. He was clearly holding out hope that even with all of that, there was still a place that was safe where his mother and brothers were waiting for him to return. And because he hasn’t been hanging around Team Zombie for long, he hasn’t learned the lesson that nowhere is safe and all hope is foolish. That is the message of the show, right?
Other than the fire and the undead monsters, it’s a nice place.
A fixer-upper.
Rick shares his condolences with Noah for all the people he knew and loved being murdered by suggesting they loot the town. Rick is totally the villain of this show. I’m beginning to wonder if everyone wouldn’t have been better off with The Governor at this point.
Ahhhhh, no. I think not, but this season’s Pragmatic Rick’s timing sucketh muchly.
Disgusted, Michonne goes to handle the few walkers that are shambling towards them.
We haven’t seen that many walkers, actually. Hmmm. Awful lot of town for so few undead to overrun.
Rick radios Carol to tell her the place is pretty much destroyed.
Later, Michonne breaks a framed jersey and claims it as a “clean shirt”.
Rick tells Glenn he knows Dawn didn’t mean to kill Beth, and he was pinning some hope on the town being intact. But now he has no more hopes.
Ah, Rick’s hopes. They comes, they goes. If the season starts with Rick having the hopes, it will end with him losing them. Reverse as necessary.
Meanwhile, back in the street, Noah cries about his whole life, and Tyreese takes a moment to monologue about hope. Because now we’re back to the monologing part of the show.
I’m not sure Tyreese is actually the best person to be delivering this speech.
Choose life, Noah, choose life!!
Noah gets up and goes running off towards one of the houses.
Back on the porch, Glenn monologues about that guy who was in the other train car back in Terminus, and how if he were given the opportunity to save that guy again today, he might not do it. Beth was just such a beacon of hope, you guys.
He grabs a baseball bat.
You guys, a chill runs through my body.
Me too. For you Kids-At-Home, who might not have read the comic… well, this is a particularly disturbing bit of foreshadowing. And considering the way the season is going…
Michonne says they need to stop with all the gloom and doom talk because they are starting to harsh her buzz.
Out in the street, Noah leads Tyreese to his house. Tyreese tries to stop him from going in, but ends up going in with him. Of course everyone is dead. Noah’s mother is dead in the living room. But she doesn’t look like she was bitten, she LOOKS like her head was bashed in…which is… not great, you guys.
The wide-open door was a bad sign. Which does beg the question, especially with so few walkers about… what the hell really happened here?
Noah falls to his knees by the corpse and begins to apologize for not being around to save/be horribly murdered with her.
Tyreese, proving that not only does he NOT know the mechanics of the world he lives in, but also that he had never seen a horror movie before the world went to @#$%, decides to go explore the house on his own.
Right. So one of these two is toast. Because this is soooo much a bad idea.
Of course there is a little mini-walker locked in the back bedroom, and in one of the other bedrooms, the other twin is lying on the bed, gutted.
Tyreese wanders over to the wall where pictures of the twins are tacked up on the wall. He lapses into what I can only call a fugue state. He stands there and stares blankly at the pictures tacked to the wall while the little walker in the back bedroom learns to pick locks, develops the fine motor skills to open a door, silently opens the door, and sneaks up on Tyreese.
Oh, and by ‘sneaks up’ on Tyreese, I mean SHAMBLES IN TO THE ROOM MAKING THE TRADITIONAL WALKER NOISES while TYREESE ACTIVELY IGNORES HIS APPROACH.
What's that noise? YOUR DOOOM!! @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
Oh, and then the li’l walker bites the crap out of Tyreese.
Right. So that makes all the sense, if by that I mean, what the hell was that? I just… I mean… ah to hell with it.
To be fair, TWD did introduce 2 new black guys this season… somebody gots to go!!
Hey, remember when that was just a joke, and not an active story mechanism that happened over and over and over?
Now we’re back in the weird flashing thing. There is a radio voice… what the actual @#$% is going on tonight?
Noah runs into the room and stabs his little brother walker with a model airplane. He doesn’t sit by him and apologize for not being there to save/die horribly with him or nothin’!! He must not have loved his brothers as much as he loved his mother.
You’re a terrible brother, Noah.
Now, now. Clearly Noah’s little brother has behavior issues, and has never grown out of the biting phase. I’m sure that can be embarrassing when company is over.
Noah says he’s gonna go get Rick and runs out of the room.
Tyreese sits on the floor and looks at a picture that looks like the cabin that he, Carol, Puppy, Sophia II and Judith lived in before Sophia II went full Jason Bateman.
Which we saw being bled on earlier, so I’m thinking that our new editing thing was foreshadowing?
Oh, and I think you mean Patrick Bateman. Patrick was the American Psycho, while Jason’s Development was Arrested. I mean, the line between comedy and horror can be pretty fine, but…
Heh. OK, so that would have been a completely different movie.
Then, one of the Fine Young Cannibals arrives! It’s the hot guy that Tyreese guarded in the cabin while Carol went and rescued the rest of the crew.
The Hot Dead Cannibal monologues about fate and whatever. Things are getting 100% weird.
I do like the fact that the, heh, Hot Dead Cannibal is pointing out that so many people would still be alive if Tyreese had just killed him like he should have, instead of allowing him to live, and enabling the Fine Young Cannibals to track down Team Zombie. Because that’s exactly what happened.
The Medic shows up. Then The Governor… I have no idea what is going on.
GOVERNER CAMEO!!!! Yessss. @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
The Governor talks about how Tyreese had said he would be willing to pull his own weight, but he hasn’t fulfilled his part of the deal. Then The Governor morphs into a walker and attacks Tyreese!! Tyreese can’t fight off The Governor Walker at first, so he LETS THE WALKER BITE HIM so he can grab a geode and hit it in its head.
Tainted meat. @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me #teamTyrese
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
They did introduce 2 black guys this season.
Seriously folks, this is ridiculous. Over 40% of the Georgia population is black or Hispanic, so it’s OK to have more than one main male black character. It really, really is. And considering at this point we’re left with Father “Too Stupid to Live” Gabriel and Noah, for all my issues with the TV version of Tyreese, this is not good.
I do find it very interesting that the hallucination of the Governor is the one encouraging Tyreese to fight to stay alive, while the Children of Doom are telling him it’s OK to let go. Seems a little backward to me, but maybe not. Hmmm.
Meanwhile, Michonne is thinking about moving in to the little burned down town. Let’s face it, they have lived in worse places. But of course, Rick doesn’t think it’s a good idea. Michonne wants to stay!! She thinks they have been on the road too long and they are starting to get weird. Which makes a lot of sense.
Starting? Starting? Oh Michonne, we’re way past starting. And you’re right and wrong. Yes, Team Zombie needs to find a place to call home, to defend and rebuild in, like people actually do. But no, because that doesn’t work on this show, because reasons.
She takes them to a section of the wall that seems to have been blown apart from the outside. Also: there’s a ton of walker… parts… all over the place. Whatever attacked this place is… not great. I think I agree with Rick, let’s not stay here.
So yeah. Something other than being overrun by walkers happened here, and we’re not going to stay and find out what is was, are we?
Glenn is all gloom and doom. Nothing matters. He needs a black tee shirt and a clove cigarette.
Seeing that this isn’t the best place to set down roots, Michonne says the group should go to Washington, D.C. like Eugene wanted to. Eugene might be a liar and the worst, but he picked D.C. for a good reason; it might be the best place to go for safety.
Michonne is killing it tonight, you guys.
And she’s right again, because Team Zombie has to have a plan and a destination or they’ll go more nuts than they already are, and since we can now, suddenly, leave Georgia, why the hell not?
Rick says they should go.
Both away from here, and to D.C.
Then they hear Noah screaming. Because he’s being attacked by walkers on a front porch.
Noah is the Cousin Oliver of The Walking Dead, you guys. The competent members of the away team save him and he tells them Tyreese has been bitten. The team runs off to the rescue.
In fairness to Noah, he does have the screwed up leg. Also, fairly, when one has a screwed up leg in the Zompochalypse, one should arm oneself a bit better.
Back in the bedroom, the radio pops on again. There is music. It’s @#$%ing Beth!!
This show. You guys.
It’s a sing-along.
Everyone has come to bring Tyreese back to zombie-less heaven.
But if Sophia II is there, is it heaven?
Everyone tells him he doesn’t have to stay alive, he can just die and be free.
OK, so that’s the “give-up-and-die” message from Tyreese’s friends…
The Governor shows up and tells Tyreese that he needs to accept that the world is @#$%ed and Tyreese needs to stop being soft.
… and the “don’t-give-up-and-die” from the murdering psychopath. Gotcha.
Tyreese tries to get up, but he is too weak. He finally struggles to his feet and stands up for himself to the ghosts. Tyreese says there is always hope. Tyreese talks about how he’s not giving up! Better get to sawing off that arm then, buddy.
He says he’s not going to die today!! Then he promptly passes out.
Like you do.
Puppy and Sophia II take his bitten arm and Michonne cuts that thing off.
YES. @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me #oneArmTooMany.
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
Like you do.
Everyone runs!!!
All the stuff we saw at the beginning of the episode, it happens again. Turns out, that this whole episode has been the fever dream inside Tyreese’s head. Or at least that’s how I plan on interpreting it.
I think that’s it. It’s a big departure from anything we’ve seen before, and that’s kinda cool, but did we really have to get there by Tyreese getting bitten so stupidly?
EVERY. SINGLE. DEATH is worthy of an award on this show. @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
They fight their way back to the Suburban, where in their haste, they hit another truck and all sorts of walker torsos fall out. Like, just walker torsos. Not legs. Not arms. Just heads and shoulders.
truckload of zombie torsos. Something bigger is going on. What is this republic? @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
What the hell happened here? And we’re leaving this place, so we’re not going to get answers. Well, that is, until Team Zombie crosses paths with the people behind all this on their way to D.C. Because you know they will.
They finally get back to the road and Tyreese continues to have hallucinations.
Beth sings… The Medic and Puppy tell Tyreese it’s okay to finally let go.
Then why do I not feel better? @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
With friends like these…
The Suburban pulls over to the side of the road. Rick and Michonne pull Tyreese’s dead body out of the truck and stab him in the brain.
Somewhere else, the priest reads from the Bible as they bury him.
Sasha is not doing okay, you guys.
Oh Noah. You're the cousin Oliver of this show. @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
I just realized that the three of us completely get the Cousin Oliver reference and it amuses the hell out of us, but there are probably a lot of people that have no idea what we’re talking about. Go here. If you find yourself spending hours there, don’t be surprised. In short, it’s the character the writers introduce that you will quickly grow to hate.
R.I.P. Tyrese. @WalkingDead_AMC @SciFi4Me
— Dennis Drangle (@Creepy_Curtis) February 9, 2015
This episode was full on insane.
I’m not sure I liked it. My problem with this episode – and don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem at all with Chad Coleman’s performance; in fact, he is, like a significant number of the actors of color in this show, a really GOOD actor – is that Chad Coleman isn’t playing Tyreese.
Look. In the comic (and yes, I know they are two very separate things), Tyreese is essentially…
Daryl. Daryl is the Tyreese of the TV show.
Yes. Sort of. More or less. In the comic, Tyreese is an ex-football player with a daughter. He joins Rick’s group, begins a relationship with Carol, kills the boy who enters into a suicide pact with his daughter, and has an affair with Michonne. He’s Rick’s right hand, and he dies at the prison, decapitated by the Governor. He’s part of 39 issues of the comic, and he’s kind of a big deal.
So when Coleman was cast as the character for the TV series, I was happy with that, because he killed it on The Wire. He looked the part, and hey… here we have the strong black leading man that Theodore was, unfortunately, not.
But that’s not what we got.
It isn’t, at all, and that’s what kills me about this episode. I really liked the surreal aspects, and I really liked the experimental style of the the editing, possibly because I am an editor. I liked the representations of the various parts of Tyresse’s psyche, and thought it was kinda cool that the one piece of his mind that really was fighting to keep him alive took on the form of the Governor. That actually pushes the character closer to the comic, and that was welcome, because…
Because Tyreese on TV was not at all Tyreese from the comic. We’ve got this gentle soul, who is only alive when we meet him because his sister isn’t a gentle soul, who then takes two seasons to die poorly.
Exactly. Tyreese isn’t Tyreese. If the character had a different name… look. I know that the audience for the comic is much smaller than the audience for the show. That’s just how it works. So bringing “Tyreese” into the TV version is clearly fan-service. But it’s just the name. The only things in common between the two characters is that they are both big and black, and that… that is… Gah.
The way this show treats black male characters is troubling at best and insulting at worst. And it’s a weird thing… Chad Coleman’s Tyreese is an interesting character, he really is! A peaceful man, damn near a pacifist, thrust into this mad world with zombies and death… struggling to find his place in a world that is demanding that he be something that he simply can’t be anymore. C’mon! That’s got so many possibilities, and some of them they even played with, but…
But he wasn’t the Tyreese we wanted him to be, and while that’s OK, it’s also really frustrating, because we almost got something like him in the confrontation between him and Carol, where she confessed to killing his girlfriend, and he was so good in that moment, but…
But then it was gone. Yeah. So fare thee well Chad Coleman, we’ll check you out on The Expanse when it hits Syfy later this year. And although I know that the show’s writers were trying to give us a man almost too good for this world and I didn’t think it worked, it was an episode with an interesting way of showing us what was going on in Tyresse’s mind as he was dying. More playing with the editing and the format are certainly welcome. And it didn’t hurt that it meant we got some cameos from our dead characters…
Ghost Beth! The Series! Traveling around the South, solving mysteries and singing songs…
Uh huh. So we’ll see you folks…
Saving people through the power of her songs! Songs about hope! Songs!
… we’ll see you folks…
Ghost Beth. Coming this fall from AMC.
… next week.
