The Walking Dead: “Them”

Shane Ryan and Josh Jackson review The Walking Dead each week in a series of letters.

NOT THIS WEEK, THOUGH!

Josh is unfortunately gone on a vacation, my heart is broken, and I’m forced to review The Walking Dead alone. I’m not even going to insert that little foot-and-bone graphic we normally use…it just doesn’t feel right. I thought of writing fake emails from Josh, but that seems journalistically questionable, somehow, so instead, here are 15 observations from last night’s episode.

1. Abraham drinks alcohol the same way I ate an avocado for the first time, at age 23—with curiosity, a little suspicion, and ultimately deep satisfaction. And yes, it’s true that I never had avocados, or guacamole, or any other avocado derivative for the first two decades and change of my life. My parents were evil.

2. Maggie was super harsh to Father Gabriel. “Don’t forget the biggest fuck-up of your life,” she says, essentially. Not cool, Maggie—he already had his moment of divine reconciliation. Also, this was a huge missed opportunity for Father Gabriel to drop a Jackson Browne reference: “Please don’t confront me with my failures…I had not forgotten them.” Bonus points if he used a creepy Nico voice.

3. Maggie in general isn’t doing great, but Sasha is even worse. These are the “emotional” moments in the show that I don’t like—hey, let me just act out my rage by putting literally everyone else in mortal danger. And just when Rick’s classic side-stepping plan was working to comedic perfection.

4. I laughed in spite of myself when Rick actually used the words “The Walking Dead” in his monologue. I liked the lesson from his grandpa, about killing yourself inside to survive a trying period, but there’s something so meta about saying the show’s title in the context of a normal conversation that it comes off hilarious. I want to hear this in other shows. “Say what you will about Sterling Cooper Draper Price, but one thing’s for sure: Get us together, and we’re a bunch of MAD MEN.”

5. That being said, the scene where everyone rushed to the barn door to stall the zombies was insanely powerful. Really atoned for a semi-bland episode. Felt like I was watching The Perfect Storm, but without George Clooney distracting me with his disgustingly handsome face. Did I say that out loud?

6. Which is another point I want to make—nothing really happened until the barn scene, beyond starvation. It is interesting, though, how rarely the show deals with the issue of food. I also would like to know more about who is sleeping with whom when the cameras aren’t rolling, but that’s a battle for another day.