FIRST TO POST!

New season, and unfortunately, some people stay exactly the same. I did like the mindfuck aspects BUT IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME FUCKING THING WITH YOU TYREESE.

Personally I would be wearing like football or BMX biker gear at all times.

 

Terrible trade giving up Tyrese for Noah.

 

Tyrese's (how is his name spelled?) problem has been the same problem he always had.

He stopped in a room with a dead body in a house that had not been cleared for safety to look at Noah's family pictures. Seems the same as staking out a goat for the lions to come. He kept holding back

 

The revolving door of black actors is starting to become a tad ridiculous.

 

21-23 minutes in, Maggie pops open the trunk of a car to check it and there is a I shit you not, dead walker that had been tied up and gagged in the trunk. Probably a living girl who had the worst run of luck....

 

I really liked Rick's little speech about his grandfather. "We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead." Pretty bad ass line imo.

 

I don't know if I can take another big character death, guys. Tonight we lost Rick's beard. Ol Beardy Beardstein, who's been here in infancy since Season Two... Fuck. That one hurt.

Also, Glenn being effortlessly badass and Carol being a sneaky motherfucker was amazing. And sure, we definitely got confirmation that Rick's ruthlessness can survive without Ol Beardstein, which is good. Dude's going to be killing Jessie's husband and banging her on his corpse within three episodes, so go him.

 

Michonne at least seemed pretty happy at the loss of the beard.

Also, I'm not convinced Carol is half as sneaky as she thinks she is. The guy who first approached Rick's group mentioned that they had been watching them for weeks to get to know them, they must know Carol is a supreme badass.

 

The last time she did anything big was wherever Beth was. I don't think they saw anything.

I'll miss the beard. it was pretty awesome

 

Carol's June Cleaver shtick is hilarious. I can't wait for the moment when these people realize that beneath her smile is a wolf bearing its teeth.

I'm skeptical about Alexandria. It seems a little too good to be true, and as every fiction reader knows; under every utopia is a starving, squalid, beat down child that everyone knows about but ignores for the common good. I don't think it's going to be quite as drastic as that with these people. I'm thinking that Deanna may look like the leader, but underneath her power is thin. She hasn't had a police force until Rick showed up so she wouldn't really have had anyway from stopping people from doing what ever they wanted. She's probably had to let some people get away with stuff in order to keep the peace (like that guy probably beats his wife, and her son being an idiot that gets people killed is overlooked).

Also, I really liked the ending. 3 of the 5 original Atlanta group survivors meeting on the porch to discuss a possible coup. I think it says something about the current power structure of the group. Glenn and Michonne aren't to be trusted with this kind of conversation and no one from Abraham's group is part of the "inner circle".

 

Am I the only one who thought when Rick was talking to that woman at the party and her son stamped Rick's hand with A for Alexandria that the A was for Adultery?

YOU CAN'T RICK YOU'RE CHEATING ON LAURIE

 

Carol's speech to the little kid was ridiculous! I think there are a bunch of better ways that she could have prevented the kid from talking rather than threatening the poor guy in such a gratuitous manner.

What happened to Sasha? Did she leave Alexandria permanently at the end or what?

 

She went to the tower for watch duty.

Spoiler

Aint no one getting between Rick mofucker Grimes and the first piece of decent pussy hes seen in a long time. Not even a doctor whos pretty much gold dust these days.

Aint no one.

 

I think Carol's speech was sufficiently creepy and mindfucky to scare the child out of his wits and have him obey her. Maybe it was too much, maybe it'll blow in their faces? I don't know, what I know is that Carol is one of the more complex characters in the show.

She went from victim-survivor(abused housewife) to survivor in the span of the show, ending up as a predator by the time we landed in Alexandria. Neat stuff and character development all around.

As for Jessie? Yeah, I think widowhood is in her future.

Overall, I enjoyed the last episode a whole lot and had damn good fun watching the last three. This could be the best season so far and I'm loving it.
[*] R.I.P. Rick's beard, you will be missed.

P.S. All the time Carol was talking about cookies, I was thinking the kid just should go to the Dark Side. I blame all the memes with cookies and dark side for this. :facepalm

 

Is it just me or is Rick better looking with a beard. He looks pretty good with stubble, but he looks a lot worse clean shaven, imo.

 

Anything is better than the beard earlier this season.

I'm getting weird cult vibes from the Alexandria stamps.

 

The stamps just looked like a harmless kid thing little Sam was doing that also helps with one giant parallel. Because, hey look, the stamp's an A for Alexandria. Makes sense. And what box car were the group trapped in at the start of the season? Boxcar A. Hell, the promo photo from the start of the year certainly looks almost an awful lot like the ending shot of this most recent episode.

So at the start of the season, we learnt how Terminus became how it was. And how was that? Oh, it was a nice happy place that recruited people and then a group came in and took it over and got to raping and murdering. And what's that? Rick's group is recruited into a nice happy place and then the more hardened and brutal ones - like Rick and Carol - are making plans to take it over if need be?

Of course they won't go to murderape, just the slightly more heroic stuff like stealing guns and threatening children. So twenty bucks is that the finale is one of them going too far or trying to take over for what they believe is the good of their family, and then realising "holy shit we've kinda become the bad guys" and thus we get a lovely unsettling note to end the season on. Especially because the likes of Michonne and Daryl and Glenn will be like pretty vehemently "What. The. Fuck. Guys." for sure.

Because hey, you end last season with Rick embracing his darker side a bit more and saying they're fucking with the wrong people, you might as well end this season with them realising they've gone too far. And even in a visual sense it'd be an amazing parallel; dead-eyed Rick with blood in his beard captured in a cage ready to fuck shit up ain't nothing on dead-eyed Rick with no beard bringing dirt and blood and madness into a wide-eyed happy little community.

Alternatively, since the letter A was red, it's a little The Scarlet Letter shoutout. A for Adultery, what with Rick's little inklings to go full Shane on the Jessie situation and maybe engage in a little extramarital affair. Speaking of, that kiss on the cheek he gave her was this great uncomfortably real "haha... uh oh" moment which I just loved. Because the guy was more than a little drunk, and a nice pretty chick just handed him his baby daughter. Dude was probably two drinks away from calling her Lori, let's be real. And Jessie's little smile was like she just thought it was vaguely amusing, but since things look much the same as they are in the comics, she's probably a tad pleased/relieved to get drunk male attention that isn't abuse. Poor girl. Point is: that storyline is almost like a strange parody of Andrew Lincoln's Love Actually story, with an apocalypse involved. Can't wait to see more of that!

 

That would be an amazing way for the season to go, but I'm worried it'll be something far less satisfying - whatever group of people destroyed the settlement where Noah's family used to live and is carving the letter 'W' on Walkers attacks Alexandria and any potential conflict is thrown away to deal with that.

 

NICHOLAS NEEDS TO DIE AND BE LEFT TO COME BACK AS A WALKER.

All I'm sayin'.

EDIT: Nicholas needs to be left to come back as just a Walker head.

Maybe Rick and the fam needs to take over Alexandria, because the people are soft and weak. So fucking weak.

And fuck you too Gabriel. You pick this time to play the Judas.

 

That was brutal as all get out. Glenn's fucking face. Holy shit. That trauma. Fuck, man. This whole back half-season has been a Glenn Rhee Screentime Party and he's been put through the holy fucking fiery ringer and I love it.

In lighter news: good on Eugene for manning up some, Rick's flirting game was again hilarious and Carol wingman'ing for him is very nice of her, and looking at next week's promo I think we're pretty set for Rick messing shit up (hey isn't it a lovely dilemma that Tara needs medical attention right when Rick's about to kill the doctor) while the Wolves get to work in time for the finale. The finale which is an extended one, by the way! Bodes well.