The Walking Dead, S 5, Ep. 2: Strangers

~~~SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS~~~Are you alerted? Good.I've been thinking and thinking about what to say regarding this past week's episode of The Walking Dead. And really, I don't have a whole lot of theoretical insight into the episode. I mean, it was mostly an expository episode, dig? Like, it was setting us all up so we can move forward into the rest of the mayhem-filled season. There were, of course, a few interesting developments. Here we go.--They met this preacher man, Gabriel, who apparently just cannot frigging deal with walkers.  They make him cry like a baby and throw up. He doesn't carry weapons. He says he hasn't killed any walkers (nor has he killed any people...at least not directly). Gabriel has a vicious penitential streak, as he wistfully looks into the distance, cryptically speaking about his multitude of sins. If he wrote posts like this on Facebook I would accuse him of Vaguebooking.  But he's so caught up in his zombie fear and sin complex that he seems ready to martyr himself as said object of his (at least one) sin walks toward him with dinner on her mind.Gabriel is weirdly glib, joking about things like stealing the squirrels Daryl had trapped for food (side note: is there no game in the Georgia woods? No ducks or deer or geese or...anything? Sorry, I digress). If you couldn't figure out how to fight off the zombies around you, why do you think you would stand a chance against the clearly experienced woodsman armed with a crossbow? I don't believe for a minute that he could survive on his own. I don't think he could do it even if he had a secret underground tunnel that led him to a zombie-proof bunker stocked with fifty years worth of food and a magically replenishing supply of ammunition, so there's a part of me that is sure he's got bigger, meaner friends somewhere.  And someone's got some kind of rage against him, carving the sentence "You'll burn for this" into the wood on the side of his church.--The members of Rick Nation are fiercely loyal unto Rick, essentially telling Abe and Rosita that without Rick's say-so (side note: he eventually says so), nobody from Rick Nation is leaving their group to accompany Abe's peeps to DC, regardless of whether or not Eugene has "the cure", whatever that means. Which is as it should be in the post-zombie-apocalypse world. When your world has turned completely inside out, why not build your home underneath the strongest tree? And he has shown that he is both willing and capable to do what must be done in order to keep his tribe alive (except for when he thought it best that they all walk derp-first into Terminus, and then had to have his and everyone else's bacon--literally--saved). I guess we all make mistakes. Thankfully, Carol showed up, ready and willing to blow things up and rescue them all. #TeamCarol--Glenn spent a few minutes mooning over the Bible passage, "And let us not grow weary of doing good. For in due season we will reap if we do not give up." Which sounds an awful lot like something Hershel would have said. The question isn't so much whether or not Glenn, as the new moral compass in Rick Nation, will die but rather, it's a question of whether or not he'll make it to the end of the season.--Carol doesn't want to talk about it, about her time in exile. Any of it, and "it" generally means, that day, you know the one. Where Lizzie was told to just look at the flowers.[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dCn7d_jDjg]Yeah, that day. Understandable if she doesn't want to rehash that old chestnut, even if it means leaving Daryl in the dark about what happened while she was away ("Well, I had to shoot a kid in the head, and...").--And Daryl just wants to know if they can "start over", whatever that means. Go back to that simpler time, living in the prison, when he was "Pookie" and Carol hadn't killed two people and burned their bodies in the side yard? Ahhh, l'amour. Instead, they end up getting into a car they found, that somehow is operable, to chase the car that Daryl had seen speeding off the night...WhatsHerFace?...was abducted.For the record, WhatsHerFace? Still not present in this episode. The car she was taken away in has gotten more screen time than her.--Rick is Mr. Incongruity. On the one hand, he's quite sensibly all about safety, and how the security of their group is, hands-down, their number-one priority. Before taking off for a supply run he sits Carl down and says:

I need you to hear what I'm about to say. You. Are not safe. No matter how many people are around, or how clear the area looks, no matter what anyone says, no matter what you think. You are not safe. It only takes one second, one second, and it's over. Never let your guard down. Never.

Got it? Great. Which is why it makes no sense that later that very night, in a building manned by a stranger Rick has already said he doesn't trust, he's all, "Hey, I know Daryl told me just last night that he knew someone was watching us but fuck it, let's not post any guards anywhere, make it easy for our own people to slip off into the chaos-filled woods unnoticed, and have a mini-feast and a few glasses of wine, what do you say?"Huh?And so it makes it easier for Bob...oh, Bob...to slip off into the woods, for reasons as of yet undisclosed by the TV show. Earlier in the episode Bob had been part of the supply run (that involved Gabriel standing like a martyr about to be eaten) when he's grabbed by a zombie and pulled below the water they're all standing in. They kill said zombie...walker, whatever...and Bob says he's OK, but not without a soulful look at his own chest, Later that night--because there are no guards and everyone's busy getting drunk--Bob goes out into the woods to have a cry. He seems despondent. Was he bitten? Was he wandering off into the woods so he can kill himself rather than subject Rick Nation to his inevitable fevered death and turning? We don't know, and it probably won't matter, because he's been clunked on the head and taken captive by Gareth, who is clearly mad and, after removing Bob's leg at the knee and roasting it (and eating it right in front of him...), he's also clearly hungry. And tyrannically cruel.  And calculating. He doesn't want to kill Bob, see, because they don't have the facilities for curing and storing meat like they did at Terminus, so if they keep him alive and just eat him in parts then his own body will make sure his Bob-meat doesn't go bad. Did I mention he's mad? And now he's eating what is in all likelihood zombie-infected meat, which can't be good. Like, we thought mad cow disease was bad, but this..?Oy. I suppose the joke is on him.Fans of the graphic novel know this fate originally befalls that version of Dale, but TV Dale has been dead since season 2. Largely because he was annoying.Never let your guard down, indeed. If only Rick had taken his own advice. Onward to episode 3!Here's a dedication, going out to Bob and all the horrifically cannibalized zombie apocalypse survivors out there.[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUDcTLaWJuo]