The Walking Dead, S5, Ep. 10: Them

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.And a note: I am out of town right now, so my post about this week's episode is going to be very short. Which seems right, somehow. The one word that kept going through my head during this episode of The Walking Dead?Sparse.Bleak, maybe. There were, absolutely, moments of bleak. But they were mostly sparse. The staging was simple and uncomplicated. The script...well, there was a lot of dead space, wasn't there? Didn't clog the script up with too many lines, did they? And the characters are worn down to their nubs, with no emotional cushion to speak of, just open nerve.This episode served to let the viewers know where all the members of Rick Nation are, mentally, before heading into the final six of the season. They're hungry and in want of water. They look grubby and smelly (more on that in a minute). And they're exhausted. This episode showed the group overall but focused on a few key players who are, in no particular order...Maggie. Oh, Maggie. She is angry and grieving. Grieving for the loss of her family, the loss of her world. With Beth gone the only family she has left is Glenn, and it seems like she's keeping him kind of at a distance. Perhaps she's thinking, if she puts up a wall between them, then his inevitable death won't hurt as much? (Hey, even without the zombie apocalypse, death is inevitable.)Sasha: Is angry and grieving; first Bob died, and now Tyreese is gone. It's tragedy stacked on top of tragedy. She only wants to poke holes in things and make them die. And it's making her careless.Daryl: Sat down and had some feels over Beth. Even started to cry. That sound you heard was the sound of a million vaginas swinging wide open, ready to mate with Sensitive Redneck Man.Rick: Philosophized. I'm still not sure how I felt about it.Eugene: Tried to drink a bottle of mystery water that showed up mid-camp (bearing the note, "from a friend"...sure, I trust that). This was two-fold. He was crazy with thirst, yes, but I also thought he did this because he was trying to take one for the team. If the water is poisoned and he dies, well...he sort of owed Rick Nation a big solid, since he lied to them. Abe Ford, subsequently, slapped the water out of his hand, which was also two-fold. On the one hand, Eugene can suffer with thirst like the rest of them. On the other hand, he didn't want to watch Eugene poison himself and die. It was a way for Abe to tell Eugene he was getting past Eugene's lie. Nice. Harsh, but nice.And then, as I was contemplating how dirty and smelly they must be, an impossibly clean guy showed up asking for Rick. I felt like he wandered in from a different set and was, clearly, lost. It was cognitively disconcerting.And there you have it.Tune in next week!