The Walking Thread

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


Stunt men; stunt glass; stunt wigs: A+
Welp, this was definitely my favorite episode of the whole season, because I LOVED WITH SO MANY HEARTS the last three seconds of the episode. Which is three more seconds than I usually enjoy in every other episode!

But let's not get ahead of ourselves! When last we left our totally trepid band of zombie slayers, Grimes Gang was REAL MAD about the Aarontownians' WEAK-ASS WEAKNESS and how it was getting people killed. RIP Noah. Also, Grimes and Carol had decided that Pete, Blaura Blinney's husband, needs to be killed, because he is abusing his wife and children.

This week's episode opens with Douchebag's family mourning his death by listening to his "Run Mix" of Nine Inch Nailsian garbage music, and it is probably not supposed to funny, but it's pretty funny. Carol drops off a casserole with a note saying that Grimes Gang is sorry that Douchebag died, and Deanna leaves the casserole on the porch and burns the note. Uh-oh.

Glenn recounts what happened to Grimes, while Douchebag Beta recounts to Deanna, on video because TRANSPARENCY, his version of events, which turns him into the hero and Glenn into the monster. Grimes wants to fuck up some shit—heaving sigh—but Glenn tells him they have to "make this work" because Noah believed in Aarontown.

It's pretty cool how everyone's always wanting to make decisions based on what dead people would have wanted, while endeavoring to never listen to what living people want. If you want Grimes Gang to make a good decision, be sure to detail your desire to them and then die promptly!

Carol and Grimes confab again how Pete needs to die, like, yesterday. Carol says that if zombies hadn't killed her abusive husband, she wouldn't be standing there talking to Grimes. "Yeah, you would," Grimes tells her. He does not add, "I'm actually pretty pissed that those zombies murdered the fuck out of your shitty husband and usurped my patriarchal right to destroy him!" but I can tell that he's thinking it.

Grimes goes for a moody walk and grips his gun. Pete strolls by and asks him what's up, and Grimes tells him to "keep walking." He does not add, "I am really desperate to kill you right now, man!" but I can tell that he wants to.

The next day, there is all kinds of action in the woods surrounding Aarontown. Daryl and Aaron, still out on their recruiting mission, find a dismembered zombie and a female corpse lashed to a tree whose guts have been eaten, and zombies with "W"s scratched into their foreheads. I begin to suspect that George W. Bush has been brush-clearing out this way.

Michonne and Rosita Espinoza track Sasha through the woods, because she's stalking zombies just to kill them. Conversations about Aarontown making them too soft blah blah yawn. They catch up to her, and have to rescue her from a zombie, OF COURSE, and Sasha gets all mad and says she doesn't need their help, then gets sad recalling how she told Noah he wouldn't survive the zombiepocalypse. RIP Noah.

Elsewhere in the woods, Carl the Hat: Apprentice Patriarch follows Enid, and lectures her about how she shouldn't be out there by herself. She tells him to leave her alone, then runs away whimsically so he'll chase her, because you know how girls are, amirite? "Leave me alone! No chase me! Hide in a tree from zombies with me!" They hide in a tree from zombies, in very close proximity, the kind of close proximity that makes for a one-way ticket to Bonertown, and Carl the Hat GULPS! while Enid plays it cool.

Back in Aarontown, Glenn tells Douchebag Beta that he won't be leaving Aarontown anymore, and says he's trying to protect him. Maybe just let this dipshit do what he wants and get his lying, cowardly ass killed, Glenn! But Douchebag Beta doesn't listen, anyway, and joins the party in the woods to dig up a gun he's hidden in a coffee tin. Well, a gun that Grimes hid in a coffee tin, which Douchebag Beta apparently found and relocated to this secret spot.

Grimes also goes to see Deanna and yell at her face about how Pete needs to die, and he's shocked (!) to discover that Deanna knows Pete is an abusive shithead, but hasn't done anything about it because the town needs his mad surgeon skills. What a terrific sheriff he must have been if it is a shock to him that sometimes men who harm their wives are protected by other people for fucked-up reasons! Deanna tells Grimes that they don't just kill people, and Grimes is all, "People die now!" as if people were immortal before the zombiepocalypse. Deanna insists, ominously, that if she needed rid of him, she wouldn't kill him—she'd just send him away. Duh-DUHN.

Grimes then pays a visit to Blaura Blinney, to tactlessly announce that he knows Pete is abusing her and let her know he's fixing to kill him. She tells him she can take care of himself, and that his intervening will only make it worse, and he's all: "I'M THE PATRIARCH I KNOW BEST WHAT DO YOU EVEN KNOW ABOUT YOUR OWN LIFE?" One thing you need to know about Grimes is that he will never follow this advice. NEVARRRRRRRRRRR!

Blaura Blinney closes the garage door in Grimes' face (lol), and Grimes starts to walk away, but then sees regular Aarontownians doing regular things, living and not dying, and he breathes so hard and then bursts into her living room, where they have a cool conversation about how he doesn't want her to die, and in case you missed the SUBTLE MESSAGING from the production design team, let me point it out to you:


"I don't want you to die. I can help you," Grimes insists, because this lady basically doesn't even KNOW the job of a professional patriarch! Blaura Blinney asks Grimes if he would offer to kill the abusive spouse of anyone, and he confesses that he wouldn't. "Mostly just for women I desperately want to fuck," he doesn't say. But also? He just told Carol he would have killed Ed, so wanting to fuck Blaura Blinney is actually just a happy coincidental bonus to wanting to murder the abusive husbands of any women he considers his property.

Grimes tells Blaura Blinney he just needs her to say yes, and she finally whispers, "Yes," just as Pete arrives home and starts shouting at Grimes to GTFO. Grimes, naturally, refuses to leave, and so Pete punches him and Grimes punches Pete back and then they crash through the front window and onto the road, where a crowd assembles.

Blaura Blinney tries to pull Pete off of Grimes, and Pete shoves her away. Then Carl the Hat tries to pull Grimes off of Pete, and Grimes shoves him away. OH GRIMES YOU HAVE BECOME THE THING THAT YOU HATE. AND ALSO THE THING THAT WE HATE.

Deanna bellows at them to stop, and Grimes is all, "What are you gonna do about it?" and launches into some insufferable diatribe about how their WEAK-ASS WEAKNESS is gonna get everyone killed, but, in the best moment that has ever aired on The Walking Dead, Michonne strides up and clocks Grimes over the head, shutting him the hell up as he passes out face-first onto the pavement. OMG YESSSSSSSSSSSS.


FUCK YEAH.
Next week: More of this crapola. Unless Michonne just kills Grimes and takes over everything. In which case, I will suddenly love this show A LOT, I bet! So it's definitely not going to happen. But I will wear my hope proudly, like a zombie in rural Georgia wears a plaid shirt. FACT.