The Walking Dead: Four Walls and a Roof

Posted on October 27, 2014

The-Walking-Dead-Season-5-Episode-3-Television-Review-Tom-Lorenzo-Site-TLOPinLauren Cohan, Andrew Lincoln and Steven Yeun in AMC’s “The Walking Dead”

 

The hits just keep on coming this season, don’t they? Another episode that isn’t just good, but among the very best this show has ever managed. But we’re so cynical that it took until somewhere well past the halfway point of this episode – close to the end, to be honest-  before one of us finally said out loud (and somewhat in wonder), “You know, this is a really good episode.” Even now, after a, frankly, unprecedented string of high-quality episodes under showrunner Scott Gimple’s belt, we’re still a little amazed when he pulls another one off. And it seems to us, in a solipsistic sort of way, that we’re having our pessimistic expectations played with just a little by the creative team.

When Rick and Co. left several of the most vulnerable people behind to go off half-cocked on a revenge mission in the middle of the night, we had no problem believing they would all do something so obviously ill-advised. More importantly, we had no reason to question it, based on the long history of these characters doing really stupid things. But when he came out of the darkness in that church with his gun pointed and his voice calm, we had a legitimate “Fuck, YEAH” reaction. In other words, we keep priming ourselves for another “Rick, you IDIOT” session in front of the TV only to find ourselves having a wholly unexpected fist-pumping reaction. It feels like the material is deliberately going for that feeling in the audience; playing on their still-lingering bitterness over past stupidities and disappointments only to reward them for sticking with it. And in a twisted sort of way, we’re having our faces rubbed in it.

The long lament about the characters on this show was that they acted stupidly, wasted time on bullshit, and constantly got people killed left and right by their collective naivete. Didn’t we all want Rick & Co. to get over their shit and start getting brutally smart about their survival? Well here you go, viewers. Watch them all slaughter people in a church, the blood splashing against walls and faces. This is what you wanted, right?

And you know what? We’re comfortable with that; just as we were comfortable with Rick using his teeth to rip out the throat of the man who was going to rape his son last season. We’ve said all along that we don’t agree with the relentlessly bleak vision of humanity this show puts forth, but that doesn’t mean we’re naive about what survival would mean in any post-apocalyptic scenario. And it doesn’t mean that the story has to cling to traditional methods of generating hope or optimism in the audience. Slaughtering Gareth and the Fine Young Cannibals on the altar of a church while a cowardly and useless priest looks on can be seen as something very dark; a way of saying that hope and faith are dead, along with conventional morality. .

But strangely enough, as gruesome as that slaughter was, it doesn’t strike us as a bleak or even a dark moment. Because if it was all over and life was only going to be an endless, grinding struggle for survival, why would you care about anyone else Gareth might potentially kill if you leave him alive? To kill these cannibals is to say that the world is worth better than this; that people should have a shot of survival without becoming monsters; that the world has a chance to become something other than an abbatoir. As Abraham said, in a note that made Rick smile and strike a pose like a goddamn hero, the coming world is going to need people like him. The important part of that sentiment isn’t Rick; it’s the accepted notion that there’s a better world still possible. Killing those people on the altar of that church was, in fact, an act of faith. A ritual slaughter for the betterment of the tribe.

And on a less philosophical level, it was an almost laugh-worthy surprise, because again, we had an expectation that Gareth & Co. were just going to be younger versions of The Governor; yet another faux-alpha male standing in as the big bad guy for far too long. Not so much. Not even much of a threat, really.

In other news, the show’s bold, bright declaration of its own morality and sense of hope makes Tyreese look as lost and ineffective as he ever did. We were right there with Sasha when she spit out furiously “What the hell is wrong with you?” in response to his utterly ludicrous suggestion that she forgive the people who plan on eating her. We suppose we’re supposed to feel better about him because he took care of Bob’s remains for her, but it’s pretty damn weak tea. And at some point, someone’s got to start noting that using the biggest, strongest member of the group as a baby-sitter and grave-digger is a pretty lousy deployment of resources.

We would probably be quite annoyed to see the group so splintered already, but the end of this episode had Darryl and someone else (WHO GODDAMN BETTER BE CAROL) coming back to the fold. Glen and Maggie’s departure honestly didn’t make that much sense to us, but the show’s moving so quickly through its storylines and so confidently displaying a real mastery of the characters and the world they inhabit that we have nothing but, well, hope for the future.

For now.

 

[Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC]

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