The Walking Thread

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


"Everything is my fault. I'll sit over in the corner and eat wet cigarette butts."
Did you think we were going to find out what happened to Glenn this week? HAHAHAHAHA OF COURSE NOT! There was no way we were going to find out what happened to Glenn this week! And we're probably not going to find out next week, either, because we still have Daryl to catch up with! So just settle in for MORE FILLER, ya jerks!

(I will tell you what happened with Glenn: NOTHING. Glenn is fine. The end.)

This episode opens back in Aarontown, present day, and everyone is cleaning up the corpses and the EMOTIONAL FALLOUT from the attack of the W-Heads and the deluge of zombies surrounding the encampment, thanks to Grimes' hot plan.

Michonne tells Maggie that Glenn didn't make it back and didn't send a signal. Glenn is dead! (Glenn is not dead.) We hardly have time to purposelessly mourn for Glenn before Grimes comes charging back toward Aarontown, zombies afoot, screaming to open the gate. Deanna stares at him, and I will her to give the order to keep the gate shut, but no such luck.

Grimes comes barreling in, and against a backdrop of snarling zombies smashing their decrepit bodies against the gate, Grimes gives a cool speech about how Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham will totes stick with his excellent plan that will definitely work, and will come in their vehicles and lure the zombies away. (To where? Who knows. If only there were a giant pit to put them in!)

The Aarontownians seem super dubious, but obviously the only thing keeping anyone alive is UNFALTERING TRUST IN LORD GRIMES, so Aaron pipes up to report that the W-Heads learned the location of Aarontown because of him losing his pack like a dum-dum. (Whut? Aren't the W-Heads exiled Aarontownians? They were the group that "didn't work out," were they not? Whatever. This show.) Aaron also tells them that Grimes is the greatest hero who ever heroed, so they all disperse without murdering Grimes. Damn.

Deanna meanders around in a daze. She's given up! Oh noes! The Aarontownians begin to raid the community pantry. They've given up! Oh noes! Deanna's not-dead son gives a cool speech about how they can't just give up, so they agree to not give up. Phew!

Everyone has definitely given up on Glenn, though, and his name is added to an In Memoriam wall. Maggie is all HELL NO, and she starts fixing to go find Glenn.

Aaron, however, sees what Maggie is up to and makes like Grimes. She needs a man to tell her what to do, and he tells her she can't go. She's all FUCK OFF, and he's like FINE I'LL GO WITH YOU THEN, and she's all NO, and he's like MEN IN THIS TOWN DO NOT HEAR WOMEN ASSERTING THEIR AGENCY YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE BLOWING ON A DOGWHISTLE LADY, and she's all OH YOU HAVE A POINT, and he's like I WILL SHOW YOU THE SAFE WAY OUT THAT I'VE NEVER MENTIONED TO ANYONE ELSE IN OTHER SITUATIONS WHERE IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN HANDY, and she's all COOL.

So they go to a sewer grate and go down in the remarkably walkable sewer system and try to find a way out. And naturally they come across some zombies, and Aaron has to kill one that's about to get the best of Maggie who has been a proficient zombie-slayer for years but is suddenly inept when a point about how women are wrongity-wrong about their agency needs to be made, and she insists she would have gotten it on her own, and Aaron is all OKAY PLAYER.

They find an exit, but it, too, is overrun with zombies, so Maggie just says forget it, and then gives a totally incoherent but I'm sure deeply meaningful gibberish speech in which she reveals she is pregnant. AT LEAST SHE CAN DO ONE THING RIGHT AS A WOMAN.

They go back, and Maggie erases Glenn's name from the wall. Aaron tells her that Aaron/Erin works as a boy's name or a girl's name, which makes no sense, because they are two different names. I'm sure Maggie is super grateful for the humble suggestion.

In other news, there's a whole thing with Tig Nocarl wanting to go outside the walls to find Enid, Ron (the older son of Blaura Blinney and Abusive Dead Pete) tattling on Tig Nocarl to Grimes, Grimes teaching Ron how to shoot, and Blaura Blinney giving a cool speech about how the Aarontownians need to deal with REALITY MAN then making out with Grimes ewwww gross.

There's also a whole thing with Doctor Zoey gaining confidence in treating people and then making out with Tara. Cute!

Meanwhile, Deanna is still totes out of it, but then is suddenly overcome by the holy spirit or whatever, and scribbles out some plans for expansion of Aarontown. Then she has a fight with her son, who says she's to blame for her husband's/his dad's and her other son's/his brother's deaths. He seems nice.

But CLEARLY what Deanna needed was a dose of the patriarchy, because now she's all fired up, and she goes medieval on a zombie. But of course she only stabs it in the chest, thus failing to kill it, and Grimes has to show up out of nowhere to finish the job. Covered in splattered blood (which is all over her eyeballs, her nostrils, and her lips, but doesn't make it into her bloodstream), Deanna tells Grimes she wants to live and that she wants Aarontown to survive.

Grimes tells her then she needs to lead the people, and OMFG she responds by telling him that HE IS THE LEADER THEY NEED.

This whole narrative arc about how the Aarontownians are naive dunderheads who don't understand reality and Grimes, with his deep dark familiarity with grim reality, is the only one who can save them reminds me of that old Frank Rizzo quote: "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before," among the many iterations and variations of which is: "A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet."

The underlying idea is that liberalism (and associated ideas like peacefulness and diplomacy and multiculturalism) is an ideology that is embraced only by people who are catastrophically naive, who have never been harmed, who don't understand what people are really like.

Deanna, and the Aarontownians, could only maintain their simple, murderless, female-led ways while remaining detached from reality, and now that they've gotten a glimpse of reality, their only salvation is to join GRIMES GANG.

Nevermind that Aarontown seemed to be doing just fucking fine until Grimes showed up. Nevermind that it's easy to imagine that Aarontown would've dealt with the pit breach by simply plugging the damn hole (as Ethan Embry suggested). THE ONLY WAY IS GRIMES.

Thus, having submitted herself to Grimes and resigned her leadership role to him, Deanna is now fully ready for Grimes-style survival. She bangs back at the zombies banging on the fence.

But whooooooooooooooooooooooooops there is blood leaking through a crack in the wall! Because of course there is.

Next week: More of this garbage.