Spend

This week's episode of The Walking Dead focused mainly on the characters who hadn't seen much screen time in the last week or two. The result was mostly good, but still a bit mixed. Much of the character behavior felt off to me, which usually makes for an episode I don't care for. But somehow this episode rose above the sum of those parts.

I'll start with the plot line that was I thought was most solid from beginning to end, the one focusing on Abraham. When we learned the particulars of his history in the first half of this season, we learned he was a man who ended up losing everything just because (in his mind) he came on too strong in his desire to protect everyone -- which manifested as bloodlust. This tiger has not changed his stripes. He came charging in to the rescue of an Alexandrian, and genuinely enjoyed picking off walkers as they came at him one by one like pitches in a gory batting cage.

Not only was this a good plot line for Abraham, but it helped to answer to the question: "How have these Alexandrians managed to live so long like this?" The answer: they seem to hold human life in only slightly higher regard than zombies. As soon as someone was injured, the group's leader was willing to write her off and run. Eminently practical in terms of the long term survival of the group, of Alexandria. Pretty bleak for any one given Alexandrian -- which is exactly why they need to have a recruiter constantly out looking for new fodder to join their ranks.

Carol's story also worked quite well for me. I appreciated the turn things took after last week's menacing cookie threat. She found herself right in the middle of a situation that played on almost every bit of her history. A child was trying to get closer to her, which after the loss of her own daughter Sophie and her soul crushing "look at the flowers" moment last season, was about the last thing she'd ever want. And then it turned out he was reaching out to her because of an abusive father, touching on her pre-apocalypse history as a battered spouse. Carol has come a long way since then, and is no longer the sort of person who can tolerate abuse. She still may well play a part in the disintegration of the Alexandria situation, but not in the way I would have expected last week.

And certainly only one part. This takes us to the more questionable stories for me. First, there was the supply run. After Glenn's last experience outside the walls with the Alexandrians, it seems questionable to me that he'd agree to go out there again without a more serious overhaul to the system. Him getting to be in charge this time doesn't qualify in my book; he's still having to take with him two known loose cannons. And surprise, surprise, trouble ensued.

I'll only spend a moment on Noah's death. He wasn't around long enough to develop much of a personality to be missed. I'll only briefly note this oldie (and no longer goodie) from the writers' bag of tricks, suddenly giving attention to one character in the episode where they'll ultimately meet a "shocking death." (I suppose the death was shocking though, at least in terms of gore.)

The plot line was really about Eugene stepping up and finding his courage. It was a good idea, though I'm not sure I bought all the particulars. Why now? Had he developed enough of an attachment to Tara while creepily watching her with Abraham that he just had to act? And is him finding his courage really just a throw of a switch like that? Surviving one zombie clawing at his throat is enough to make him want to carry Tara to safety? Enough to make him put himself out there as zombie bait? Enough to make him try to pull a gun on someone who can almost certainly overpower him? I mean, I'm certainly not sad to see spineless weasel Eugene go, but I'm not sure I see how courageous Eugene arrived in his place.

In any case, we still have enough spineless weasel to go around. Gabriel's "arc" consisted only of bookend scenes at the start and end of the episode. With so little material, it's hard to make sense of his actions. But he is certainly feeling like a cliche who poorly represents religious people. Well, he 100% nails representation of a certain kind of religious person -- the judgmental hypocrite. But as we've never really had another overtly religious character on the show, he has to stand in for everyone at the moment.

We have to remember that while the group's journey north from Atlanta took only a few episodes for us viewers, it probably took them weeks or even months to make the trip. (Though one of those episodes certainly felt like weeks or months, so maybe we can understand.) That's a whole lot of time for Gabriel to learn who these people really are and what they're about. Instead, he fixates on his own loss of faith -- which, as the Bible shredding in this episode showed, was not just a single moment of weakness. Gabriel decides to blame his loss of faith -- and every other bad thing he's done, seemingly -- on Rick and the group. So he's got to see them punished for his wickedness. Yeah, I hate this kind of religious person. No question, they do exist. And as he is now the show's proxy for that, you'll understand if I now root for him to meet an even grislier fate than Noah or Aiden did this week. (Seriously, no mercy bullet to the head for poor Aiden?)

I suppose I'd call this episode a B. Some of it worked. Some of it didn't. But at least it all is clearly going somewhere now, which was hardly the case when this half-season began.