The Walking Thread

This show is delightful.
(Spoilers are annoying the shit out of everyone herein. Content Note: Rape culture.)

When last we left our intrepid gangs of Grimeses, Grimes Gang 2.0 had captured Glenn and Maggie, and Grimes Gang 1.0 were about to start fixing to go get them. Spoiler Alert: When we once again leave our intrepid gangs of Grimeses, Grimes Gang 2.0 still have Glenn and Maggie, and Grimes Game 1.0 are fixing to go get them! Because this show makes glaciers look swift. Or some other metaphor not confounded by climate change.

"Don't bother me with your climate change hokum when I've got a zombiepocalypse to save the world from! Or at least my dwindling band of unfathomably faithful!"—Rick Grimes, probably.

Except he'd say "walkerpocalypse," because ugh this show.

Anyhoo. Grimes Gang 1.0 is still holed up in prison, and by that I mean the literal prison and the prisons of their own makings, and hey I heard you lost the anchor for your imaginary but very large yacht—please have this bit of symbolism from The Walking Dead which should keep it safely docked in Fuckthisshow Harbor FOREVER.

They invite Michonne in to hang out with them, by which I mean that Grimes and his mini-patriarch in training kill a bunch of zombies to save her, because she ran out of her endless toughness WHAT A COINCIDENCE right outside the gates of White Patriarch Hell. Immediately, Grimes starts yelling at her and LITERALLY TORTURING HER by jabbing her gunshot wound so she'll tell them where Glenn and Maggie are. Welcome to Grimes Gang 1.0, Michonne!

Carl the Hat and Grimes have a conversation about how Carl the Hat wants to name his baby sister Judith after his third-grade teacher, and if I didn't hate this garbage show with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns, I might find it slightly adorable or even sort of moving in the way it underscores in an atypically gentle way how Carl is still a child whose frame of reference doesn't extend beyond his school teachers. But OH WELL all I can see is some d-bag talking to his annoying kid because I am watching it through the GrimesPrism 2000.

Speaking of that baby, it's a good thing Carol lived so she can take care of the baby while the baby's father farts around in Unpleasantville.

Woman's work, bitchez.

So Grimes and Michonne and Daryl and the future corpse black prisoner head out in the Chevy Volt or whatever on their journey beyond Thunderdome. If I were a writer for this show, I would have had Mustache Prisoner join them just so he could sing, "On the road again!" as they took off, prompting Michonne to reach into the backseat with her machete and cut his head off in one quick, smooth motion before he reached the next line.

MEANWHILE! In Unpleasantville, Andrea is very sexy and likes having sex with Governor Niam Leeson and slithers around and purrs like a sexy cat just to let us know what a great and sexy lover he is during their sexytimes. Great. Who cares. It's a good thing I automatically barf every time I see Grimes' face at the beginning of every episode, or I wouldn't have the luxury of indifference at this spectacle of sexytime horrors.

Governor Niam Leeson asks her to go help Melvin Nerdly with a zombie science fair project, and she does, and it makes for a super boring arc about how zombieitis devours its victims' humanity in its entirety, which, no doy, we already knew, and we don't give a flying fuck about Melvin Nerdly so we have no investment or interest in his awakening to this dumbola fact that we've known since Season One.

The writers pulled the same shit last week with Michonne's discovery that being covered in zombie guts makes zombies pass you by. That scene would have had more (any) impact if Grimes hadn't made the same discovery in like episode two of the series. And we care even less about Melvin Nerdly, so: BORING!

Who is writing this show? The basic tenets of storytelling seem to be eluding whoever is writing it. Is each episode being written by a contest winner? What is the contest? Least Understanding of Dramatic Tension, Consistency, Character Development, and Forward Momentum? That sounds like a great contest! But maybe it should have a different prize! Like a complete set of Two and a Half Men DVDs.

Elsewhere in Unpleasantville, Merle is beating up Glenn, and I say to Iain, "If anything happens to Glenn, there is going to be HELL TO PAY!" Where hell to pay = me, squeezing my fisties with impotent rage!

And then Governor Niam Leeson "questions" Maggie by telling her to get undressed and leering at her. At which point Spudsy texted me to say he was amazed "this show took three seasons to get rapey." And I reminded him that Shane tried to rape Lori at the CDC in Season One. Because ugh this show. And the reason I remembered that is because the scene with the Governor and Maggie was reminding me of the scene with Shane and Lori in that we were clearly meant to understand that both of these men are sooooooooo terrible but not so terrible that they'll actually rape a woman, because only real sickos do that, which is a fucked-up rape culture upholding narrative all its own. And it's not like I wanted to see either of those scenes end in a rape, because FUCK NO I DID NOT, but I wish that The Walking Dead wouldn't walk up to that line and then back away and then additionally redeem both of those men by showing them having mind-blowing consensual sex with Andrea.

Which is so gross.

Anyway, Maggie eventually gives up the prison hide-out so Merle doesn't kill Glenn. I hope Glenn's life has been spared so that he can murder everyone in this entire show the end.

Oh, also Grimes Gang 1.0 fed a hobo to some zombies. Cool gang.

Discuss.