Thursday, November 26, 2015

The Walking Dead S6E7 "Heads Up" 11/22/15

FINALLY THEY TELL US: Glenn is not, in fact, dead.  When Nicholas shot himself in the head and fell off the dumpster, pulling poor Glenn with him, Glenn landed on the bottom with Nicholas on top of him and it was Nicholas's guts the walkers were digging into.  Glenn, after screaming for a bit, managed to drag himself underneath the dumpster and hide there, killing enough walkers so that the dead bodies fell all around the dumpster, blocking access.  Eventually, the herd wanders off, bored, I guess, and a filthy and very thirsty Glenn drags himself out from under the dumpster.  As he collects Nicholas's pistol, there's a shout, "Heads up!" and Enid, standing on top of a neighboring building, tosses him a water bottle.  Glenn's all, Enid?

He climbs into the building through an easily accessible window (WTF WHY DIDN'T HE AND NICHOLAS GO IN THERE TO ESCAPE THE HERD?), looking for her, but she doesn't want to talk to him.  He asks what happened back in Alexandria, with the air horn and the gunfire, what happened to Maggie.  Enid's like, people died, it wasn't walkers but people, and you should go.  She bolts and Glenn chases after her, wanting answers.  As he searches for her, he finds the dead Alexandrian who got caught when Michonne's group was scaling that fence.  Well, the Alexandrian is more undead but Glenn finishes the job, a little sorrowfully because he's a good guy.

Back at Alexandria, life is getting back to "normal," with people shoring up the walls, keeping watch over the hundreds of zombies outside.  And Rick is back to being a sanctimonious asshole, telling Morgan they "need to talk" and generally being Mr. Bossypants.  When he sees Father Gabriel putting up flyers for a prayer circle, Rick tears them down, which is a pretty dick move - and even Carl thinks so - but Gabriel is unfazed and keeping posting them.  Rick and Carl take Ron to practice with a gun.  He's not allowed to do any actual shooting because (a) too noisy and will attract walkers and (b) waste of ammunition.  Rick shows him how to load and aim; Carl is more than a little condescending ("You'll be scared") but I'm not sure he means to be.  Also, WTF SOMEONE CUT CARL'S HAIR and he needs to STOP wearing that fucking sheriff's hat.  It was sweet when he is a little kid but he just looks ridiculous now.

Later, Rick, Michonne and Carol sit down with Morgan.  Rick says how he got attacked by the Wolves at the RV and that Carol told him that Morgan let some of the Wolves go.  (In Morgan's defense, those Wolves could have been other Wolves, out and about, and not the ones from the Alexandrian attack.  I mean, they were but it could have been other Wolves.)  Morgan explains his "all life is precious" creed, and how it saved him.  Everyone else is all, it's a nice sentiment but things are not that easy (Morgan: "It's not easy!"), plus the Wolves burned people alive.  I get Morgan's point but those Wolves really are bad news.  Afterwards, Rick takes Michonne aside, telling her about a plan he's formulating to draw the herd away from the walls.  When she asks him if he's going to include the Alexandrians in this operation, he doesn't want to, not trusting them.  She's like, I think you need to get over this us vs. them thing.

Glenn finally corners Enid and, after she draws a gun on him and he disarms her, convinces her to return to Alexandria with him.  She doesn't want to go, doesn't want to trust anyone, doesn't want to let her walls down and get close to anyone, but she does go with him, extremely reluctantly.  Along the road, they find some green helium-filled balloons that had been left out as part of the original draw-the-herd away plan.  Enid takes them, tying them to her pack and saying that maybe they can use them to distract the walkers.   When they get back to Alexandria, they are dismayed to see the herd swarming around the walls.  Enid is particularly disheartened, but Glenn's all, the walls are still up and I will not let you die.

Alexandria's infrastructure is falling apart a bit, pieces of the clock tower periodically falling to earth.  While Rick and some Alexandrian dude (whose name I don't know/don't care to know) work to shore up the walls,  Elsewhere in town, Ron sneaks into the commissary and steals some bullets.  I think Carl is going to regret having given Ron the shooting lesson.   Back out at the wall, Rick and Whatsisname observe Deanna's son Spencer trying to get past the walkers: he's rigged a cable from the wall to an outside-the-wall building with a grappling hook and is pulling himself across.  Everyone is yelling at him to stop and go back.  The grappling hook of course slips and he falls, landing on a bunch of zombies.  While Spencer scrambles to climb up the cable - and Rick, Morgan and Whatsisname scramble to pull him back up, Tara climbs to the outside of the wall for a better shot and starts shooting the walkers.  When Spencer is finally pulled to safety, the first thing Rick does is shout at Tara, "What the hell were you doing? You've already almost died once for these people!"  She gives him a disbelieving look and then awesomely flips him off.  Rick turns his attention to Spencer, who is bemoaning the loss of one of his shoes.  Rick's all, WTF, dude?  And Spencer said he thought he could get out, get to a car and lead the walkers away (which is basically what Rick's preliminary plan is).  When Rick says, "if you have an idea like that, you come to me," Spencer just looks at him and asks, "Would you have listened to me?"

Morgan stops by the infirmary and talks with Dr. Denise.  She's been putting together cheat sheets on chalkboards, things like how to deal with infection, etc.  He asks her how stocked with antibiotics they are, saying that he has to dress a wound but doesn't want to waste the medicine if it's not necessary.  When she says she'll take a look at his arm, he says it isn't his wound and he doesn't want to get her involved in anything she doesn't want to get involved with.  But she wants to help and, after gathering supplies, she and Morgan head out, trying to be surreptitious about it.  But Carol is there, babysitting Judith and lurking on a porch, and is immediately suspicious.  She runs to hand the baby off to Jessie - and while she's in Jessie's house, Sam (still hiding upstairs) calls down to her, asking if the people who came were monsters?  Carol: "The only thing that keeps you from becoming a monster is killing."  Which, yikes.

Judith-less, Carol goes to the house Morgan and Denise went into.  As she's trying to unlock the door, Morgan opens it.  Carol growls at him, "Who the hell do you have in there?"  Meanwhile, Carl walks down the street, oblivious to the fact that Ron is stalking along behind him, gun at the ready.  But before anything untoward can happen, two things happen.  First, a bunch of green balloons is seen floating through the sky and Maggie just KNOWS that Glenn released them.  Second, the clock tower finally falls - and when it falls, it crashes right through the wall, opening the floodgates.

Getting to know what happened to Glenn aside, this episode felt a lot like place setting, putting things into place for what's to happen next.  I'm not crazy about the Morgan vs. Carol conflict because they're both good characters who have been through a lot, and they're putting Carol into the villain role.  As they say in this episode, things aren't black and white, they're not so simple.  Also, Rick just drives me effing nuts, he's such an asshole.  What are the chances we could just stuff him under a dumpster for an episode or two?

Previously on The Walking Dead / next time on The Walking Dead

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