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“The Walking Dead” recap (5.9): What’s Happening and What’s Going On

Well, damn. When Andrew Lincoln recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly about how “weird” The Walking Dead was going to get, I had no idea how accurate that would be as the midseason premiere began last night. Weird, you say, Sir Lincoln? I think we can dig on that.

Speaking of digging-that’s exactly where we meet the gang as the episode begins after the loss of Beth. We imagine that’s exactly what they’re doing-burying Beth. Or are they? The images that open the episode are of two twin boys in photos, blood dripping onto a painting of that cabin in the woods where Tyreese and Carol once stayed, which leads to a smiling Mika and Lizzie, saying, “It’s better now.” There is a feeling of change, death, the past, childhood, and grave uncertainty. Noah says Beth was planning on going with him to Virginia, so the group decides, even though it’s a major long haul, they should probably give Georgia a rest and look for happier pastures up in VA.

Tyreese tells Noah about being a kid, afraid of the world and it’s scary news-watching horrible things happen on TV, turning it off or changing the channel. But after all of this, he knew he couldn’t tune it out, he had to be ready and aware, help in any way he could. His dad once called this “the high price of living.” Noah says he’s still got a mom and twin brothers back home. (Ah ha, foreshadowing indeed, you intro.)

By the time they get to their destination, they hide their car in the woods and make it to the wall where Noah’s family is hopefully still holding fort. Carol, Daryl, Maggie and the others are hanging back. Better to send one group ahead before the whole gang gets bombarded. This group knows they need a Carol hiding in the woods. The once-thriving Shirewilt Estates (Wiltshire Estates in the comic) is a ghost town. Tyreese passes a big Grandfather clock randomly sitting on the pavement. Is time on their side? Glenn peeps over the side of a big wall, but he just shakes his head. After Noah takes a look, he starts to wander off, visibly upset. The whole area looks deserted, but badly defeated. There’s some spray paint on a wall that reads: “Wolves not far.” Oh, great. Do they eat people? Probably.

Glenn, who seems on edge, having just smashed a CD into pieces, (I did that when I got over Hanson, it was heartbreaking) starts up a conversation with Rick about Dawn and Beth. Rick says he doesn’t think Dawn meant to kill Beth-he could see it. But he killed Dawn anyway, not for Beth, just because Rick is a complicated dude who can’t really explain why-but he knows that this trip was for Beth. She wanted to bring Noah back to his home, and they did that for her. Glenn still has feelings about this he can’t quite put his finger on. We’ll soon realize just how much repetition plays a major role in this mid-season opener.

Tyreese is watching over Noah, consoling him like a good friend. “This isn’t the ending,” he tells Noah. At that, Noah starts to get up and Tyreese is thrilled. “That’s it,” he says. But Noah just makes a mad dash-still wobbling badly from his injuries. Tyreese runs after him. They’re at the foot of Noah’s front door. Noah’s mom is dead on the living room and Noah talks sweetly to her as Tyreese goes into a bedroom and spots another body on the bed. In photos on the wall, he sees Noah’s twin brothers, smiling, having fun on the playground, at a game with Noah-and Tyreese smiles too at first, until his expression changes, and he’s completely glued on this photo of the twins, tears in his eyes. What does he see? Does he see himself as a little boy in that photo?

Before he has time to think, he’s bitten. Low and behold, it’s one of the twins, a young walker. Noah rushes in and without a second thought, kills his brother with a toy fighter jet. He runs to get help, but Tyreese isn’t in good shape. All this talk about being a kid, and here Tyreese lays dying, in a little boy’s bedroom. It’s not okay, but it’s so very fitting. The desk clock starts buzzing with news clips-we hear flashbacks from a time before walkers ruled the land and their groups were isolated, unexplainable-but there they were on the news, for people like Tyreese to hear. And he’s hearing it again, now. His eyes widen in horror, his face sweating-dude’s either letting all that zombie juice go to his brain or he just found some magic mushrooms in Noah’s little brother’s room.

These visions only increase. There sitting in this room next to him aside Guitar Hero equipment is his old bud Martin, you know-Martin! It’s that douche bag from Terminus who Tyreese didn’t have the heart to kill as he watched over Baby Judith. I doubt he wants to play a round of “Message In a Bottle” by Sting. But, he does have a message. “You like to save babies,” he says, suggesting that Tyreese is responsibly for every single domino move made yet-had Tyreese shot him, maybe Gareth wouldn’t have come looking for them, and then Bob wouldn’t have died, and then maybe that would’ve somehow spared Beth.

But, that’s not good enough for Bob-who appears now to Tyreese from across the bed, telling him with that soft Bob smile on his face, “This is how it’s supposed to be.” His reassuring smile soaks into Tyreese, who stares down at his wounds and bats his eyes in shock. Unfortunately, that’s not the most shocking vision of all.

Ghost Governor has a few words for Tyreese, too. He’s standing in the doorway with a patch over his eye and that rigid smirk on his face. “You told me, you’d do whatever you gotta do to earn your keep,” he says, squinting out of one eye. He keeps repeating himself as Tyreese fixes his eyes on the desk clock radio, buzzing with sounds. He keeps reminding Tyreese that he once said he was willing and able. Then the two girls show up, Mike and Lizzie, telling Tyreese it’s going to be OK-not only is it going to be OK, it’s better like this now. Mika and Lizzie-officially making those twins in blue dresses in The Shining look like a walk in the park next to their creep showing. OH, NO! Suddenly, a walker starts attacking an already bitten Tyreese, who snaps out of his daydream and fends it off with a big ass geode. Yeah, give it a dose of that crystal magic. I don’t even think magic will save the day though…

Meanwhile, Michonne is pitching some wild idea about cutting down all the trees around this busted neighborhood to protect them against walkers. Wait, what? Cut down the trees? Now, I’m all for surviving, too-but that seems completely crazy. Why don’t we talk about the fact that you’re even closer to Washington now, and the possibility that President Morgan Freeman (only because Morgan Freeman should be the TWD President, duh) is still alive and some form of government is running the show there is possible. Anything’s possible. Rick and Glenn humor her by following her over to the woods where she excitedly says, “See, look over here,” leading them to an already-broken wall. There they find body parts scattered all over the grass and she sees how irreparable this area is. “Washington,” she says decidedly. Yes, yes, yes! Rick and Glenn seem less inclined. Glenn was with Dr. Porter along the way, not Michonne. So, from where Glenn stands, the man with the best mullet in the Southeast is a liar. Glenn stares at the body parts and tells Rick, finally-it doesn’t matter if Rick killed Dawn, or if Glenn had, or if anyone else had for that matter, pointing to the body parts. Rick just gives him a half-understood look, until they hear screaming.

Noah’s trapped himself behind a piece of trellis as a mob of walkers attacks him. (He’s so terrible at this.) How did he get caught up on someone’s front porch? After they help him out, he warns them Tyreese is back at his house, and he’s been bit. What no one could possibly know is that Tyreese is also enduring a bona fide trip, like he’s eaten too much acid and he’s being visited by the ghosts of no holidays past. This isn’t even psychedelic anymore. Between Martin chewing away on his gum, the Governor interrogating him about what he told Tyreese upon arriving so many moons ago at the old town, it’s no wonder Tyreese is a wreck.

What unfinished business, what guilt, what blame, what demons are we to be confronted by at the time we’re all bit, too? (Sorry, that was dark.) Tyreese is suddenly treated to a guitar-playing Beth, singing “Struggling Man” by Jimmy Cliff. As she sings, Mika and Lizzie sit contently on a beanbag, still smiling at Tyreese, as if his BFF Carol never killed Lizzie and Lizzie never killed Mika. Martin laughs as he continues chewing, telling Tyreese that in order to be apart of all of this, he has to be a being. What does that mean for Tyreese? Is he willing to let this end, right here-or is he willing to fight for his life? The Governor appears once more, telling him he must “pay the bill.” Tyreese stands up to him and tells him that he knows “what’s happening and what’s going on.” He tells him that he never knew him-that he never owed him anything-that he still believes in humanity. I get it, I get why Tyreese gets all this special treatment at his time of death. He never felt tough in life-tough enough to kill, to deal with death, to face death.

He knew he had to try, to save lives, to fight for his own, to be a good person. He made the choices he made for himself, just like everyone else on this show did at one time or another. Earlier when Glenn talks to Rick about getting separated from Maggie, about how he felt reuniting with her and having that be the best thing ever-dealing with everything from their prison break to Terminus, and then learning about the lies told to get to Washington-it’s almost as if Glenn is explaining away how one can’t view any one moment in this world as part of a domino effect that makes any sense, that has any reason.

As Tyreese’s vision goes in and out, a flash to reality shows Michonne chopping off his bitten arm as Rick gives the order to make the clean cut quickly and go. They race out of the house and we see what Tyreese sees-Michonne and Noah checking on him, Rick holding him up, walkers coming at him, trees, and sky. As they make it to the car, they get him inside and he sits against the window staring up at the sun through the clouds. “Turn it off,” he says as he hears reports coming in on the radio, like the reports he turned off as a kid when the world was still a big, scary place, but it wasn’t standing at his front door, and it wasn’t there in his bedroom, and it wasn’t up to him to decide if someone lives or dies. It was only up to him to eat his cereal and be a kid. Beth is behind the wheel (not really paying attention to the road-but I guess when you’re dead, you can drive recklessly) and Mika and Lizzie are sitting next to him smiling. Please, stop it, creepy children. He looks to the front of him and there’s Bob, with that assuring, genuine smile, reminding him that it’s going to be OK now.

At that, we see what was really being buried at the beginning of the episode. It wasn’t Beth; it was Tyreese. Sasha shakily takes the shovel and says her final goodbye. Rick shovels the rest of the dirt hurriedly like he always does when it’s time to bury a friend. Yes, so many people have died on The Walking Dead. But this episode’s insight provided a first-hand glance at the other side. When Rick and the gang are trying to get the hell out of dodge in the woods and their car gets stuck, and they unintentionally crash into the back of that truck that lets all those half bodied walkers to fall out-that’s the indication that nothing is ever quite what it seems. You don’t have to know what’s going on, you don’t have to know-you just have to be in it, or not. What Tyreese’s death showed us was that even through the muck of death that runs rampant in this new world, there are still safe places for souls-there is still something to believe in. There is still sanctuary.

Tune in next Sunday for another episode and follow me on Twitter @the_hoff. What do you think will happen next? Will the gang make it to Washington? Will Noah survive to see another day? Will Beth sing us another song? Tweet me and let me know!

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