The Walking Dead, S5, Ep. 3: Four Walls and a Roof

SPOILERS GALORE! BE FOREWARNED! ABANDON HOPE OF NON-SPOILAGE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE!

Have I made my point? Turn away, if you don't want to know stuff.

First, let me make this abundantly clear: when Beth finally frigging returns to the series on which she is ostensibly a regular, and she isn't dressed in leathers and feathers and dragging Channing Tatum behind her on a chain, then an enormous opportunity has been lost and she seriously needs to contact her agent to renegotiate her contract. (Video clip = NSFW/kids)[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w61HI9ewCo]Yeah, just like that.Second: I realize I am probably opening my inner psyche up to be plumbed by armchair psychologists out there, but here goes. This episode had a scene that was incredibly brutal, where Rick Nation slaughters...and by slaughters I mean, HOLY HELL, kills the shit out of...the remaining Terminians, turning them into so much hamburger (pun fully intended). And you know...I was OK with it. I don't know. Does this mean I'm desensitized to violence? Or does my mindset mean that if I survive a zombie apocalypse and end up in a confrontation with a professed group of cannibals who've eaten the leg off a member of my family, set said crippled, half-eaten family member outside my safe house as bait to lure me out, and engineered a home invasion with the intention of killing and eating the rest of my family, I'd not mind killing them with extreme violence, myself?Because woah, the demise of the Terminians was extreme. But sorry not sorry; I thought Gareth & Co had it coming. Every bit of it. "Join or Die" might have worked for Ben Franklin in the dawning of the United States, and to some degree the principle makes sense in a world where survival hangs so tenuously from a thread. There's something to be said for the safety of numbers. But the deal from Gareth wasn't a post-apocalyptic, "In unity there is strength, let us be brothers!" No. It was more "There is no nobility in the world, and I am sociopathically detached from my human side. The only difference between myself and the walkers out there is my ability to calculate environmental threats. But I still want to eat human flesh, and if you don't join me and my group, then you're next on the menu."Can I just point out: that is a gorgeous bit of cinematography.I found it ironic that Gareth thought to plead for his life, promising that if Rick would let them go they would never, ever see him again. What was it he said when Bob tried to bargain with him, tried to tell him that they have a person who believes he can resolve the zombie crisis, while poised over a trough waiting to be bled out? "You can't go back, Bob," he said. Still, it seemed he half-expected Rick to let him go, so long as he promised to never, never ever, try to eat the members of Rick Nation again.As an aside, wasn't there an episode involving The Governor called "Too Far Gone"? Yes, yes there was. I am sensing a theme. Apparently, even in the barking mad world of the post-zombie-apocalypse, there is an edge and you can go over it, and if you do...yeah, it's not good for you.My boyfriend found the level of violence enacted by Rick Nation upon the Terminians shocking, and I know the extreme violence of the scene was brutal and controversial. I get it. They could have been more merciful, more expedient, more humane, less invested in a blood orgy. They weren't. And Rick did get a look on his face akin to that of a velociraptor in Jurassic Park, before delivering Gareth unto his final reward with--as promised in episode one--a red-handled machete.But it is an icky, icky world they live in. Last season, Rick tore someone's throat out with his teeth, and when he did that he seemingly had no choice. This season, he dispatched the somehow-even-worse-than-zombies clan of cannibals, and it seemed that in the interest of humanity, he had no choice. They would move on to the next victim, and the next, and the next. You can't let that live. Though OK, OK, fine, they could have been less crazy-eyed and stabby about it. But they weren't. Moving on.So, Bob. Poor, poor Bob. Poor, I always wanted to hear more about his backstory, about how he managed to survive not one, but two, overrun encampments, wherein he was the only survivor. The viewer got to see just how detached from any semblance of civilization the Terminians were, talking to Bob while eating his leg in front of him. I mean, seriously. Gareth was right, for him (at least) there was no going back.And yes, Bob was bitten, Bob was dead anyway, long before being dragged into the woods and made into a snack. Gareth & Co's eating of him--infected as it was (and thank you, friends, for blowing up my Facebook feed with posts that screamed, "TAINTED MEEEEEEEEAT!", but I digress)--opened the door for us to ask, what WOULD have happened to the Terminians if they weren't killed by Rick Nation? Would Bobmeat have, ironically, killed them? We'll never know. But we can wonder, and wonder what this is foreshadowing. Because I can't imagine introducing the idea of tainted meat and not ever using it again.As an observation...OK, so Bob received a noble death, or at least as noble a death as one can get in this show. He was surrounded by loved ones who sat vigil with him until he died, and he got to have some prophetic last words. He told Rick, "Nightmares end. They shouldn't end who you are."Nice, right?Um.Is it me, or are Bob's last words, basically, "Stay gold, Ponyboy"? (And if you don't get the "stay gold" reference, read and/or watch SE Hinton's The Outsiders immediately and welcome to an immutable icon of American culture. Nice to have you with us.)So at the end of the show, the group is split again, as Abe heads to DC with Rosita, Eugene, Glenn, Maggie, and Tara, and so much for safety in numbers, amirite? Seriously, what is UP with Abe? And with Eugene? They act as though a giant clock that only they can see is ticking. Maybe he's sick of it all and just wants the apocalypse to come to an end (the horror..!), but who doesn't?Rick stays at the church with the remainder, waiting for Daryl, who returns at the end of the episode with a mysterious someone in the woods behind him. Who's he got? I have no idea. Is it Carol? Probably not, considering he got this look on his face when asked where she is:Side note: if she's dead, I will be really, really pissed. #TeamCarolFingers crossed that it's Morgan, because, you know. Morgan. I mean, he showed up for like five seconds at the end of one episode, once. So what's his story? Where does he fit into all of this? Of course I think it would be nice if Daryl is just being cagey about Carol and yes, she's with him and was just back in the bushes having a pee and he was kind of embarrassed about it because lady-business and all. But this show is never nice, and particularly not in the first three episodes of this season, which has been all about how nothing is ever safe. Sure, Rick makes that speech to Carl, but there's also the name of the episodes..."No Sanctuary"...."Four Walls and a Roof" (which is what their church/safehouse gets called). There's no "Hooray, we're home!" in any of it.In next week's trailer, Daryl says he's seen Beth, and she's different. Here's hoping for leathers and feathers, y'all!*Photo of velociraptor from http://es.jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Velociraptor