The Walking Thread

[Content Note: Descriptions of violence. Spoilers are lurching around undeadly herein.]


Grimes de-griming.
When last we left our totally trepid band of zombie slayers, Grimes Gang had arrived at Aarontown, and were fixing to enter and find out what was really behind those walls.

If the past ONE MILLION EPISODES were about how surviving the zombiepocalypse changes you man, this week's episode was about how surviving the zombiepocalypse on the road changes you and also about how surviving the zombiepocalypse inside walls doesn't change you enough. Or something.

So Grimes Gang enters Aarontown, and they are asked to surrender their weapons, which, after talking to Aarontown's leader, Deanna, they do reluctantly and suspiciously. Reluctant and suspicious are the themes of the day.

Grimes is the first to speak with Deanna, who videotapes their conversation because they believe in "transparency," and also because cutting away to the video interviews throughout the episode is a cool structure for this cool show's cool directors.

Deanna tells Grimes she's a former member of Congress, who was traveling back to her district when the Army redirected her to Aarontown, promising to come back, but they never did. Aarontown, she explains, was a planned community of expensive homes built with sustainability in mind. It has its own solar grid, cisterns, and eco-based sewage filtration, so no need to shit in the woods!

Everyone is dealing differently with this new adventure in Aarontown. They are all reluctant and suspicious, of course! Ha ha don't you worry about that! But Carol, for instance, pretends she can barely handle a weapon and talks about how much she misses her husband and how she was basically just the den mother of Grimes Gang, and now she's wearing a cardigan and cooking food for old people. She is trying to Fit In. Or at least fool the Aarontownians that she wants to fit in. While Daryl, meanwhile, wants to continue smelling like garbage and looking surly and cutting up possums for dinner while living on a porch.

Different strokes for different folks!

Grimes takes a hot shower and shaves off his beard and gets a haircut from a nice blond lady. She has a son about Carl the Hat's age, and they play videogames together. Carl the Hat also meets a cute teenage girl named Enid who is totes emo, and Carl the Hat stalks her on a private walk into the woods because this show is terrific.

Anyway! Everyone gets a beautiful new home, but, for the first couple of nights, they all stay together at Castle Grimes, because they are reluctant and suspicious. Why do the Aarontownians even want them there?! "I want you to help us survive," Deanna tells Grimes.

She seems legit! But is it only a matter of time before they find out she keeps zombie heads in an aquarium or holds Sunday cannibal barbecues?! GRIMES GANG BEEN DONE WRONG BEFORE!

A further concern is how weak these weak-ass weakheads seem. Carl the Hat tells his dad, "They're weak, and I don't want us to get weak, too." Later, Grimes and Carl the Hat, outside the gates of Aarontown, take down some zombies together. Hey, some dads take their sons fishing, some take their sons zombie-murdering. Don't judge! YOU DON'T KNOW THEIR LIVES. The two Grimes Guys clearly feel safer via the familiarity of killing a bunch of zombies. Surviving has changed them man. And they have proven to themselves that they are still strong.

Meanwhile, Glenn, Tara, and Noah, who've been selected (because everyone gets jobs in Aarontown!) to assist on supply runs discover that the self-described douchebag who's chief of the supply runs (and also Deanna's son) is not very savvy about survival on the outside. They have a super gross interaction with a zombie Douchebag was trying to keep as a trophy, which endangers the Grimes Gang trio, who kill it.

Back at Aarontown, Glenn yells at Douchebag that he's an incompetent dipshit, and Douchebag takes a swing at Glenn, and Glenn punches him. FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! As a crowd gathers, Deanna arrives on scene and gives a great speech about how Grimes Gang are now members of Aarontown and need to be treated as equals. She thanks Glenn for punching her stupid son, and then she asks Grimes and Michonne to be the town's constables.

Later that night, Grimes is parading around in a police uniform (just his size! lucky!) and Carol reiterates Carl the Hat's worry that living in Aarontown will make them weak.

Grimes tells her, "We won't get weak. That's not in us anymore. We'll make it work. And if they can't make it? Then we'll just take this place." OMINOUS FACE.

Gosh, you guys, I'm beginning to think that surviving the zombiepocalypse has really changed Rick Grimes.

Next week: More of this crapola.