#TheWalkingDead Recap: “What Happened And What’s Going On” [Season 5, Episode 9]

Saying good-bye to Beth is everything you thought it would be and more. It leads to an emotional outpouring from just about everyone we see, and those we didn’t expect to see. We have tears and pain, we see flashes of other lost characters, like Lizzie (smiling) and Mika (with a bleeding wound, who tells us that “it’s better now”). There is a photo of a house similar to “the grove” cottage – and our opening segment ends with a pool of blood gathering as blood drips from above. This is either one of the most artistic openings for the show, yet, or the writers were eating “special brownies” and no one wanted to tell them they were hitting a cross between “Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits.”

Our survivors are split up, again, and are keeping in contact using walkie talkies. Rick, Michonne, Tyrese, and Glenn are taking Noah home as Beth wanted to do. Tyrese tellsNoah about the “high cost of living” his father talked to him about, when he was young. As citizens of the world, he and Sasha were told they could never turn away from the bad news, no matter how much they wanted to. They had to know the truth about what was going on. It was their obligation. The talk makes me queasy because I don’t know if it means that Tyrese is giving his last words of wisdom (as most of our beloved survivor family has done before leaving) or if it’s an indication that Tyrese – who sat out many of the tough times the earlier part of the season, is back in the game. We learn that Noah still has a mother and twin brothers he believes are still out there in their gated community compound outside Richmond, Virginia. Tyrese hopes, for his sake, they’re alive.

The compound looks secure from the outside, but when Glenn climbs the wall to take a peek, it’s clear that the place is gone. Noah rushes over the wall. The place is burned out, the streets are littered with dead and a few walkers – that is, until Michonne reaches them. Tyrese tries to comfort Noah by telling him that he can stay with them, now – but Noah is inconsolable. Later, Rick and Glenn talk about Glenn’s skepticism about the compound; Glenn knew it would be gone. Rick talks about Beth and Dawn. He says that he knew that Dawn didn’t mean to kill Beth, but he wanted to kill Dawn (stunning admission from Rick). Rick doesn’t know if it matters that he was the one who killed her. Still in shock and in the street, Tyrese tells Noah how he tried to deal with his pain over constant loss by stepping into a crowd of walkers. He then chose to live, which allowed him to bring Judith back to Rick.

He wants Noah to choose to live. He tells him this is not the end, but you wouldn’t know that from Noah’s face.

Noah makes a break for his old home, followed by Tyrese, and we later hear Noah crying that he tried to make it home sooner. It seems that he found his mother. There is a twin behind a bedroom door and one lying dead in another room. In the blink of an eye, Tyrese is bitten when he looks away and focuses on pictures on a wall. Noah’s brother somehow freed himself from the bedroom. Noah kills the child and heads for help. WHY didn’t the writers have Tyrese have Noah help amputate his arm as they did with Hershel’s leg? While in a hallucinatory state, we learn that Lizzie and Mika were talking to Tyrese.

He hears Judith crying. The Terminan that Tyrese saved Judith from taunts him – reminding him that he told him he would probably be next. Bob is there and is comforting, of course. He reminds Tyrese that the Terminan is wrong that he had to die because he was the kind of person who saved babies (in essence, not the warrior who fought back). Bob reminds Tyrese that it’s all random, as he was killed in a food bank. We see The Governor who tells Tyrese that the girls are wrong, it’s NOT better now. As The Governor approaches and morphs into a walker, it’s clear that the walker Tyrese imagines is real. He gives him the already bitten arm to feed on while he grabs something to hit it with, and “saves” himself. The others are out in a field and notice the landscape littered with body parts. Michonne realizes that Eugene might have been on to something. There may be a chance for them in Washington because they’re not living where they are, they are merely surviving.

Just then they hear Noah, who is trapped by walkers. They rescue him and then run to find Tyrese, who is still imagining. Beth is singing as alternate images of the prison pop up. He also imagines  Noah’s twin brothers, random stories on the news which reflect the survivor’s lives. The Terminan is still taunting him as everyone else is telling him it’s ok if he doesn’t want to go on.  The Governor says he showed them that they had to adapt, and they didn’t. He mocks him for forgiving Carol after what she did to the woman he loved. Tyrese rejects The Governor and tells him he forgave Carol because it’s not over. He cries and then stands up and says that he didn’t turn away, that he kept listening to the news so that he could help. He’s not giving up. He says no one has to die, today. The blood on the picture, the one similar to “the grove” cottage? It’s Tyrese’s blood.

The girls hold his hand as he seems to fade. They morph into Rick, who holds out his arm as Michonne cuts it off. YES!  THANK YOU! They rush him to the front gate and kill all approaching walkers. Through Tyrese’s hallucinations we see a flashback to Carol taking Lizzie out to “look at the flowers” along with the other characters who have been haunting his dreams. The group struggles trying to get him to the SUV, which they parked away from the compound. Of course, it is temporarily stuck in the mud. They break free hitting a truck that contains the torsos and heads of the bodies they found earlier.

They’re able to get away. Tyrese hears a news program about cannibalism breaking out and asks them to turn it off. Bob, Beth, and the girls are in the car with him. NO!  NO! They tell him it’s ok, it’s better now. The SUV stops , everyone gets out, and Tyrese is taken out of the car.

They keep him from turning. Fr. Gabriel gives words of comfort, graveside. Rick closes Tyrese’s grave…reminiscent of the last burial, when the two men worked together to bury their dead. Once again, this show has broken my heart, but I know I will be back for more heartbreak, next week.

Bob, Beth, and now Tyrese. I don’t love the writers, this week. It’s possible that I will next week.  I’ll you know, then!

 

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