The Walking Dead Season 5, The New Bad Guys – Carol and Rick, Oh My

The Walking Dead Season 5

Sasha is out hunting walkers. Deanna is trying to decide if Rick’s group can be trusted, or if she should believe the sniveling, cowardly Nicholas. Rick is out for Pete’s blood. Glenn just wants to make everything work – oh my!

The Enemy Within

Rick, bloody-faced, waving his pistol at the Alexandrians after fighting with the creepy town doctor over a woman, is hardly helping matters. Neither is Carol with her simple black-and-white advice. Neither of them is looking at the Pete situation soberly. They’re not taking their time and trying to handle matters as part of a community. They’re simply reacting, as if every problem in the zombie apocalypse ought to be handled the same way.

Calling for Pete’s head is satisfying on a deep, emotional level. He’s a bad guy, he hits his wife, let’s kill him!

Yes, we all dislike Pete at this point. He’s not only an abusive jerk, he’s really creepy. And he’s drunk all the time, which is bad when you’re a surgeon.  While Rick and Carol think killing him is the answer, Deanna and other cooler heads see that it’s more complicated than that. For one thing, he’s a surgeon and serves a valuable purpose in the community. For another, he has kids and no matter how awful a father can be, not many kids want to see their parents killed. That’s upping the ante considerably.

What to make of it all.

Rick and Carol – the “new bad guys” again?.  I think they’re very crappy diplomats, impatient, and also generally right about the weakness of Alexandria’s inhabitants. But no matter how right they are about that stuff, they’re simply terrible at playing the game. 

But really – how sick and twisted was it when Carol said this to a 10 year old boy – (regarding about the gun she acquired)

“If you do (tell), one morning you will wake up and you won’t be in your bed. You will be outside the walls, far, far away tied to a tree. You will scream and scream because you will be so afraid and no one will come to help because no one will hear you” – YES Walker Dinner is ready!
And that my friends is how you keep youth in line – frankly we could use this tactic with some of the youth today – !

Instead of trying to sway Deanna and the rest of the Alexandrians, instead of getting into their good graces, instead of playing the tiniest bit of politics, Rick takes his mind so completely off of the town and its defense that he can only focus on one thing: Killing Pete. He even brings this up to Deanna as she stands over the grave of her recently killed son.

The Enemy Without

The real enemy lies outside of Alexandria’s walls. And it’s not the walkers Sasha spends the episode hunting.

Some new enemy is out there, not far away from Alexandria, roaming the woods and killing people by leaving them to be eaten by walkers tied to a tree. They also brand their victims with a big “W” for some reason. I like all the mystery surrounding who this could be.

Final Thoughts

A few final observations.

It’s really, really annoying to see Deanna burn the note from Carol and just leave the casserole on the porch. Deanna is the one who invited Rick and the rest of the group in. She’s the one who supposedly understands the risk of sending her own son on runs. People have died before, on runs with Aidan no less. 

Glenn confronting Nicolas was pretty great. “Are you threatening me?” Nicolas asks, trying to act tough. “No,” Glenn answers. “I’m saving you.” It would be condescending if Glenn didn’t have such a good reason to say it. Also, maybe he should have just left Nicolas out there.

The fight scene with Rick and Pete was also a bit of a letdown. Here’s Rick, a trained police officer and hardened survivor, and he can barely hold his own against a half-drunk alcoholic doctor. I’m glad Pete got some punches in, and I’m glad Rick got some punches in, but it was a pretty pathetic fight for all the intensity of its conclusion. Has Rick really lost his groove so badly once again? 

Here it is again to watch if you can sit through it – come on Rick – WT…

Also, what’s with the red balloon?.

Wait till Darryl gets back – he would have floored Pete with one shot…