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“The Walking Dead” recap (5.3): Four Walls and a Roof

Two words, guys: Tainted meat. (A new ’80s Walking Dead cover band?) Anyway, when we begin this episode, we see Bob’s still kicking it around the fire with one-leg and a band of cannibals. The leader is telling him why they kill and roast body parts. Bob watches on as they chew their Bob jerky. Gareth, the leader, is like, “Be glad you’re alive” as he describes the stellar job they did on amputating his leg. That’s when Bob erupts into laughter. He shows them he was bitten. This explains why he was so eager to escape the church and give Sasha one last kiss-maybe he truly was going to end his life to avoid turning and putting anyone in danger. The Terminus leftovers see Bob’s wound and freak out-throwing up their meat, turning on Gareth because he didn’t check Bob. Also, that dude that Tyreese beat is still alive, which is a truly terrible realization. Here I’d thought he’d killed him. That’s another mistake we can now tack on to Rick’s original intention to kill everyone left inside of Terminus. Then, maybe we wouldn’t be here.

Back at Fr. Gabriel’s church, Sasha is out looking for Bob when some walkers sneak up on her. Rick and the others emerge, and help clear the spot. But when they get back inside, Sasha attacks Fr. Gabriel, asking him if he knows what’s going on. It’s time he come clean with his secrets. What was the writing on the wall outside of his church all about? He begins to cry and explains that when everything fell to pieces, his congregation came looking for sanctuary at his church, but he always locked the doors at night, and he locked them out. He buried their bones, but he’s forever damned. Just then, someone notices something outside, someone laying on the ground. It’s Bob! The people of Terminus didn’t kill Bob, even though he told them he’s infected. They dropped him back off like they just took him out on a date for some reason-but why? He’s going to tell everyone about what happened. And he does. The look on Sasha’s face is enough to make me cry-she knows she’s about to lose her Bob, he’ll turn any day now.

That’s when Sgt. Abraham steps in to explain that he needs to “extract” Dr. Porter’s “ass” to Washington, D.C. as soon as possible because there’s a major threat here now. Rick says they can’t leave because Daryl and Carol (why am I just now laughing about how perfectly they rhyme together?) will be back. Abraham has his best angry voice on and he’s like, “NO!” Everyone starts fighting, but Glenn breaks it up because Glenn is the best. Tara offers she’ll go with them if they wait another day.

Abraham raises the stakes and says the deal’s on if Glenn and Maggie go with, too. But Rick is like, “NO!” And that’s when Abraham decides he’s not about this game anymore, so he tells Dr. Porter it’s to time hit the road, and Dr. Porter sits there wounding his achy breaky heart, with his mullet looking the finest it’s looked in days, saying he doesn’t want to go.

Well, someone make a decision? Get Bob that couch to sleep on and maybe discuss what you think the best method is here for getting those Terminus mother fuckers. My worry is that Rick is ready to go over the river and through the woods to the pretty little elementary school where they were last spotted, only to be lured into their trap. These are hunters! They’ve already shown their weapon. We know they are freaky. They have a hankering for human meat, and they’ll stop at nothing to make sure that even though this little Terminus gig of theirs started out totally differently, that they don’t dare turn back into rational, compassionate human beings.

It’s decided, sort of. Abraham and his troop will stay and help them, and then Glenn and Maggie and whoever else wants to, can join them and leave, even if Daryl and Carol aren’t back from rescuing Beth yet. By the way-are we going to get to that this episode? The tension is killing me softly. Not nearly as much as it’s killing Bob, however. The guy is on his last leg (oops, no pun intended) and Sasha hands her knife over to Tyreese, instructing him to stab him in his temple when he stops breathing. Rick and his gang leave the church in the middle of the night to make the daring walk over to where Bob was taken, and we can already see that hoards of walkers beyond the elementary school walls are about to bust through the glass, which has just now begin to crack into a thin spidery web.

Oh, I see what they did there. Back at the church, Gareth and his meat-eaters are circling the holy place like vultures. They think they’ve got Rick and the rest totally duped. But we see Carl with a loaded gun posing in the preacher’s office, ready to take fire at any moment. They expected this would happen, after all, they are being hunted. Gareth and the others enter the church with all this bullshit talk of “We know who’s in here!” It’s striking and creepy that Gareth knows everyone’s names, even the baby’s. I don’t get how he figured this shit out. Just as they’re about to shoot out the door that everyone’s hiding behind, they hear a baby cry from the opposite way. They turn, and they meet the end of Rick’s loaded gun. A few go down easy, but Gareth is shot in the fingers (nice one, Rick, right where the douchebag loves to point and direct.) But summer camp’s over, cannibals. Much like Janet Jackson’s third studio album, Rick is in control. The whole group re-enters the church and surrounds the bad guys. They totally butcher them, and a horrified Tyreese and stunned Glenn and Maggie look on. This is a true moment for the group: We know who’s “got it”-ultimate killer instinct. It’s Rick, Sasha, Abraham, and Michonne.

Speaking of Michonne-girl got her sword back! Even though this moment is truly violent and we as the viewers are expected to cock our heads to the side much like Tyreese does with his wide-eyes, I don’t find myself feeling too terrible about this. Like Rick says, “That could’ve been us.” He’s right, guys-it could haven been us. Fr. Gabriel disagrees, and in his best, shaken Southern accent, he stammers, “This is the Lord’s house.” Maggie will correct this. “No, it’s just four walls and a roof,” she says. Coming off last week’s episode about the concept of sanctuary, this significance takes the entire perception of shelter up to a new actualization. For brief and sometimes long bouts of time, this group has grown accustomed to moving around, setting up shop, and calling a place home. Remember back at the prison, they even had a fully harvest-able garden? They’ve gotten soft, they realize. But also, more than that-they’ve evolved in their thinking as survivalists. Kill or be killed, wait or move, think or act-they’ve come too far to settle, trust, or believe in any possibility that this will change. Are they fighting this hard to get to Washington, D.C.? Do we really believe that Rick has full faith in that story?

The next morning, the gang pays their final respects to Bob, saying goodbye through tears as Bob simply smiles and looks at peace. He thanks Rick, for being the kind of guy who took people in, and he has a touching moment with his Sasha, where he tells her he’s dreaming of her, and she’s smiling back. She gives him one last grin, and asks him what the good is in all this evil-but he’s passed. Tyreese walks in and takes her knife, tells her to step out, and does the hard deed that we nearly imagine he won’t be able to do. He does it, it’s the sacrament he’s making with himself.

Now it’s time for Abraham, Rosita, Tara, Dr. Porter, Glenn and Maggie to hit the road to Washington. They give Rick a map and Abraham apologizes for being an asshole. We can see by the markings on the map that these guys have a long way to go. One again, Glenn and Maggie are without the group, but now, I feel a closeness with everyone, so I’m sad to see the group separate into two at all. They did say they’d never do that again! Later that night, Michonne is having a talk with Fr. Gabriel, who’s still a big ball of mess, when she hears a stirring in the trees. Is it a walker? A last-ditch effort from Terminus? Or is it-yes, it’s Daryl! But where’s Carol? He asks someone to step out of the brush, but the episode cuts out before we can see who.

Have you watched the scenes from next week’s Walking Dead? We learn all about what happened to Beth. And yes, she’s alive. The question is: Who has her, and is she safe? This show is so brilliant. In previous seasons, where the fear was so focused on the walkers, now it’s as if the crew has walkers so under wraps that the fear of fellow humans takes precedence as the world continues to change and rations grow scarce and people’s minds go numb. Also, I have a really important question that has yet to be addressed: Is there anyone on a space station watching this happen? If they could see the destruction from space, the absence of electricity lighting up enormous cities, they might as well know the world has come to a destructive end. The conspiracy-lover in me is amped up for answers, but is it too eager and too good to be true for any of us to be “excited” for Washington, D.C.? We can’t expect anything good. We can only expect a lot more to change.

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