The Walking Dead, S 5, Ep. 9: What Happened and What's Going On

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERSAlert.I have been wondering for the last two days, just what in the hell I was going to say about this episode. It's complex. It's arty. It's visceral. It's the episode that will end up getting discussed in a film class. Welcome to the biggest acid trip The Walking Dead has given us thus far. And, GODDAMN IT. You had to go and kill Tyreese, didn't you? He was a good guy, maybe too good. I think even Chad Coleman, the actor who played Tyreese, described his character as the moral center of the group, which he should know is always the death knell for anyone on the show but GODDAMN IT. I generally liked Tyreese.A note, if anyone is reading this blog for the first time. This particular blog assumes you regularly follow The Walking Dead and are familiar with past characters and plot lines. If this is your first time reading...stop, read everything else I've ever written about The Walking Dead, and come back here when you're ready.This episode is largely cerebral...in more ways than one, ha ha. Much of the last half of this episode involved the goings-on in Tyreese's hallucinatory, fevered brain as he makes the journey to the Great Beyond, but on the grander scheme, his internal hallucinations reflect the more general question of what it takes to be considered a citizen of the world.Visited by the recent dead--on the positive, welcoming side by Lizzy, Mika, Beth and Bob, and on the negative, shit-to-work-out-before-I-die side by The Governor and Martin, a Terminian who Tyreese almost killed once, but didn't (and who died when Sasha savaged him in the neck with a knife)--Tyreese tries to come to an understanding of the worlds he once lived in, and lives in now. And they're curiously similar. Reminding us--over and over again--that humans are perfectly capable of being monsters, Tyreese re-audio-hallucinates a BBC radio broadcast reporting on a war-torn nation that has suffered vast brutality; to me, it sounded like reports from the genocide in Rwanda. The radio reporter (voiced by Andrew Lincoln, speaking in his normal, British, non-Rick-Grimes-accent) talked about people being done in with machetes, or set on fire, all of which are things Tyreese has witnessed in the post-apocalyptic world. And the point is, if it wasn't an actual BBC report...it could have been.What does it mean to belong to the world? Tyreese has a dying-dream conversation with Martin, who was ready to kill Baby Judith, and from whom Tyreese rescued her. Maybe if Tyreese has killed him at that point then he couldn't have told Gareth where Rick Nation was, and maybe Bob would be alive, maybe it would all be different. Instead, Tyreese holds the image of that baby up as the pinnacle of good that he'd accomplished in the world. Judith is alive, and it is, entirely, all because of Tyreese. When The Governor showed up he started yelling about how Tyreese couldn't "pay the bill". He couldn't be cold, couldn't be ruthless. Couldn't be the killer The Governor wanted him to be. Couldn't kill Carol, who killed the woman Tyreese loved, a woman who was sick with a superflu and was about to infect and/or kill almost everyone around her. But the person who operates from the Governor's perspective as their personal base is someone who belongs only to himself, only to the notion that the self is paramount and that the idea of a collective "Greater Good" is whatever a single individual decides is right and good, even if it's morally reprehensible.The Governor, if you remember Merle's and Andrea's deaths, proved that he was perfectly willing to let someone slowly die so they would turn into the undead. He bit Merle's fingers off, he murdered Hershel in cold blood, to make a point. Rick is right on par with The Governor, having ripped Claimed Joe's throat out with his teeth. Rick is the guy who strategically left another member of the "Claimed" group dead and ready to turn, so said dead guy would attack and distract his own gang members, and in this, most current episode, admitted to Glenn that he knew Dawn didn't mean to kill Beth but didn't care, he just wanted to shoot her anyway. Without Beth and now without Tyreese, Rick Nation has become an army of assassins, with little to keep them anchored to a humanity that is anything other than carnal.Michonne, I think, is getting close to being the new voice of humanity, as she is about three steps away from losing her mind. They've been out on the road too long, she says, and they need a place to stay. To root. To come back together as a community with a common goal (other than, simply, survival). To build something, and grow plants, and hopefully figure out how to have a sheltered rest.Tyreese is a great example of Rick's warning to Carl earlier in the season to never let one's guard down. For just a few moments, Tyreese was pulled out of the present, lost in a picture of Noah's younger twin brothers and what the previously "normal" world was like. Going for pizza. Sitting at a ball game. Hanging out at the playground. Contemplating the loss and promise of the lives of these two young boys, one of whom was dead in the bed next to him, with large chunks taken out of him. Then the other brother came in quietly from behind and took a bite out of Tyreese's arm. Game over for our favorite moral compass.And speaking of "carnal", let's talk about what happened at Shirewilt, the gated community where Noah used to live. Somebody came at this community, hard. They busted in through a cement wall like they were an army of evil Kool-Aid mascots. They burned and looted and bashed in heads, and it was probably just for the joy of killing. Rick took some time to point out the strategic flaws of Shirewilt as a homestand; I mean, it looked secured, with a big old wall and locking gates. But it wasn't. If Rick understands the flaws in it as a stronghold you can assume that anyone else with a reasonably sound sense of defensive strategy would see the same flaws. So, the people who busted in to Shirewilt weren't there to take it over, they just hearkened to the call of bloodlust. And then...they cut walkers in half, chopped off their arms, carved "W"s into their heads and loaded them into the back of a pickup? For...?I would imagine that would make one hell of a decoration around a fortress. Kind of like putting your enemies' heads on spikes after you chop them off. Is this a way for some group to mark their turf? Since we got a nice, close look at the walker with the W in its head, you can rest assured we'll see them again some time soon. And--seriously--it seems like any time you have someone willing to manipulate the bodies of the undead, it's shorthand for "we are dealing with a crazy person". Think of The Governor and his wall of heads. Michonne was close to crazy--was certainly dangerous--when we first met her with her undead entourage chained to her side, but then again, she's come to realize that when she does that she's in a dark, dark place.Wolves not far, the graffiti said.Never let  your guard down, not even for a second. Duly noted.Image credits:Dead EndLizzie and MikaThe Gang's All HereHead carvingWolves Not Far