God, sex, a funeral and Jabba the zombie—this week’s episode of The Walking Dead had all four.
Discussions of God came from the expected direction of Rick and Hershel, who was quick to point out the hand of God on the sheriff’s family throughout all their trials. Rick, for his part, just sees it as God’s strange sense of humor.
The funeral, of course, was for Otis, the unfortunate victim of Shane’s newly discovered moral expediency when his life is on the line. Shane was pressured into eulogizing his first murder victim, offering kind words for the man who’d just saved his life and was thanked with a bullet.
The sex, however, was a bit more unexpected—to Glenn as much as to the show’s audience. A routine trip to the local pharmacy turned into an impromptu adventure for the delivery guy who had had his own spiritual awakening last week, while the farmer’s daughter Maggie shared her own loss of faith. They shared a little something more this week.
As Rick pleads for safe haven for his people, Hershel hints at certain rules that need to be followed, and we get the sense that Glenn might have just broken one in aisle three.
But Glenn’s most memorable moment this week involved the episode’s only zombie, more of a Floater than a Walker after falling into one of the farm’s wells. Glenn volunteered for a trip down into the well as bait to lasso the bloated flesh-eater, though I’m not sure who was going to taste-test that water once undead Don Rickles was removed. Of course, nothing went quite as planned as Glenn got dropped within inches of the beast, and when they finally have him halfway out of the well, he bursts in two, spilling his guts back down into the water in one of the show’s goriest moments (which is saying something).
Like the encounter in the church, the scene offered a little campy comic relief compared to the more nightmarish attacks of the zombie hordes that keep popping up. But the tension was much higher in all the scenes without Glenn, as one teeth-gritted conversation after another. The sweetest was an earnest moment from Daryl, who might have found a lead on Sophia and brings Carol back the Cherokee Rose that gives the episode its name.
For the most part, the episode was simply a catch of breath, and even the final twist at the end came as little surprise. We’ve had plenty of funerals; all we need now is a birth.