The Walking Dead is really taking its time this season, and that seems to be pissing a lot of people off. This week’s episode went one step further and seemed to skip some important stuff and it ended up as a disjointed time jump that really makes me wonder where the story actually is in the placement of the world.
Two weeks ago, it looked like Glenn was dying while Rick was trapped in a mobile home. Last week, the series took a much needed break with a nice look at Morgan’s backstory and how he got to where he is now. However, this week suddenly jumped ahead. The episode started out with Deanna walking through Alexandria and seeing the deaths and carnage. She is pretty much destroyed at this point and has no idea what to do.
Then Rick races down the road towards Alexandria, begging them to open the gates and let him in. Michonne opens the gates, he gets in, and they close it as hundreds of zombies bare down on the gates. The episode never once explains how Rick got out of the mobile home, never once explains how he ran all the way back to Alexandria without getting eaten, and more importantly for me, how the hell the zombies were able to keep up with him as he raced back home.
It also makes no sense that, after all the talk of leading the zombies away, Rick would lead them to the gates just to save himself.
It is going to take a little bit for me to get past that lapse of story logic.
Anyway, the episode once again decides not to let us know what happened to Glenn (and from the looks of it, next week is a Daryl centered episode (YAY!) which means still no Glenn news). However, while last week’s episode was all about telling Morgan’s very interesting story, this week was about showing the citizens of Alexandria dealing with the situation. Honestly, as great as last week’s episode was, this week’s was a major letdown.
First of all, most of the people in Alexandria are not interesting enough to warrant this much attention. Deanna is. Jessie is. Aaron is. That is about it. So, this week, we get to see that Spencer (Deanna’s son) is as big of a dick and coward as his brother was. We get to see that Jessie’s son Ron is not just a bore, but he is also a wimp and possibly a little unhinged. We get to see that random people with no names want to steal food and die. We get to see that the uninteresting nurse is possibly a lesbian who likes Tara.
That is a lot of screen time for people that no one really cares about.
At the same time, we get to see Deanna finally figure out that Rick needs to be in charge, and not her, if the community is to survive. We get to see Jessie kill someone she knows after they turned into a zombie (looked like a suicide originally took their life) and then tell anyone who would listen that they have to fight or die. We get to see Deanne go completely bat shit crazy and cut the shit out of a zombie before Rick finally kills it.
But, the biggest thing of all, the biggest selling point on the show, came with Aaron and Maggie. See, Maggie watched the people of the town write Glenn’s name on the wall as one of the dead. This makes no sense, because they didn’t put Daryl’s name up there and he isn’t back yet. But, they already gave up on Glenn surviving. Well, Maggie is planning on going after Glenn when Aaron demands to come along.
Aaron still feels horrible that it was his lost backpack that led the Wolves to town and wants to make amends. He is, honestly, the most likeable person in the entire town, and continues to be a star on the show. He tells Maggie that he knows a way out of Alexandria, past the zombies, but he will come with her. After a trip through the sewers, and a battle with two disgusting zombies (seriously, Maggie pushed her hand into the zombie and out the other side), Maggie changes her mind.
She tells Aaron that Glenn wouldn’t want her out there looking for him and she needs to understand that because – SHE IS PREGNANT. If that isn’t a holy shit moment in the middle of a throwaway episode, nothing is. This not only makes Maggie suddenly mean so much more than before, but also makes Glenn’s possible death mean even more than it did before. The episode ends with Aaron and Maggie bonding while Rick and Jessie kiss in another part of town, and things seem to be moving towards another big emergency.
At the end of the day, this was an episode that really didn’t do anything to move the story outside of making it look like some of the Alexandria people are ready to grow up and fight, but that is just something that has been tossed here and there since last season. Next week is a big Daryl episode, so that is amazing, but this week was just a slight letdown with a holy shit moment at the end.