The Walking Dead 5-9 Recap: Humanity and Tragedy |

Beware Spoilers!

The second half of The Walking Dead season 5 comes out chomping at the bit, with a stark reminder of both how good the show can get when it needs to, and that the writers can do whatever the hell they want to. “What Happened and What’s Going On” certainly surprised the poop out of me. It’s my fault, really— I got too comfortable in the past few episodes, and with Beth having just recently died I figured things would be calm for a while. Now I know the truth: no one is safe.
Before we get into the recap, let’s check in with Dale.

Dale!

Beth! My, you’re getting tall!

I’m a grown woman, Dale. A lot of people seem to forget that.

Oh. Uh… hey! Tyreese! Looking good, as always!

the-walking-dead-season-5-chad-l-coleman

We’ve never actually met, but thanks for being polite.

It’s good you two got here when you did; I need your help with something.

I found this old couch and I really want to move it back to my RV, but I need help. Beth, help me carry it. Tyreese, you open doors and sing some Chumbawamba to keep us motivated.

That doesn’t really seem like the best use of our skills.

And I don’t know any Chumbawamba.

Tyreese, less yapping and more Tubthumping.

Thanks, Dale! Now, onward, to the recap!

“What Happened and What’s Going On” opens with a quick, but confusing, montage of images. There’s a shovel digging in the dirt, Father Gabriel conducting a funeral, a framed picture of a house with blood dripping on it, and a wide open door with blood smeared on the walls, and Lizzie and Mica staring and smiling. Some images go by so quickly you may not give them much thought, and the others you might assume are from Beth’s funeral.

Wrong.

Amidst the montage, we get a few snippets that do make sense, and find out that Rick’s Rebels decided to go to Virginia so that Noah can return home and maybe Rick’s Rebels can find a place to call home. As they arrive, Rick and company are setting up all kinds of contingency plans in case things are bad in the Virginia Community- after Woodbury and Terminus, they’re not taking their chances no matter how “safe” people say a community is.

Carol and the others stay back to act as a potential rescue/escape team while Tyreese, Glenn, Michonne, Noah, and Rick enter the town. Inside, everything is fine and everyone’s totally alive and not dead at all. Oh wait, I mean everyone’s dead and the town’s in ruins because it’s The Walking Dead. While Rick manages to find a silver lining in this horror by explaining how this trip was honoring Beth, so it wasn’t a waste of time no matter its outcome, Noah collapses in tears. Tyreese consoles the crying Noah by doing what he always does best- finding the hope. He gives a touching speech about how Noah can choose to live and do something good, that this isn’t the end, and how he came close to giving up, too, but by coming around he ended up saving baby Judith and reuniting her with Rick, so he feels good about that.

Michonne, Glenn, and Rick split off from Tyreese and Noah to do a sweep for supplies. They find some weird shit, like a ton of half corpses- the waist down corpses. Where the hell are the top halves? They discuss what’s next and decide to go to Washington…. and that’s when they hear Noah screaming for help.

Noah and Tyreese were checking out his old house and found Noah’s family, all dead (naturally). His mom is one of the most horrible-looking corpses to ever appear on the show, all waxy and rotted with her head bashed in, and while Noah grieves over his mother, Tyreese wanders off to find the boy’s brothers. The first is dead in his bed and the second is a zombie shuffling behind a closed door. Tyreese takes a moment to himself to stare at the pictures of Noah and his brothers, feeling the full weight of the tragic loss of this family, of these two, happy boys, and just getting lost in the horror of it all. As he does, Noah’s zombified brother slips quietly behind him and bites a chunk out if his arm. Nooooo!!! OMG!!! Tyreeeeeese! At this point in the episode, I blame myself. As Tyreese was walking down the hall, alone, I got an uneasy feeling, but then thought then thought, “Oh, they won’t kill Tyreese. Beth just died and Tyreese is an important character. He’s safe.” The Walking Dead just slapped me in the face with a sausage and now I know better. Plus, here we see Tyreese, arguably the best, noblest, most human member of the group, brought down by his own humanity. Who else would have let the tragedy of this destroyed family distract them enough to not notice the zombie kid? Tyreese, you were too good for this world.

From there, we spend most of the episode with Tyreese bleeding out, reflecting back on some of the dead folks whose lives most impacted him during the zombie apocalypse and each one visiting him like the ghosts of Walking Dead past. Interestingly, the first person Tyreese hallucinates is the Terminus cannibal he let live— I guess he feels so guilty about the trouble that guy brought he couldn’t move on without dealing with it first. After that we get sisters Lizzie and Mica, smilin’ Bob, singin’ Beth, and the Governor being an a-hole as usual. Like the beginning of the episode, the scenes of Tyreese talking to ghosts weaves in and out a bit with some chaotic, flickering imagery; the ghosts all offer their own advice on how Tyreese should feel. The Termite and the Governor ramble about Tyreese’s regrets, blaming him for his mistakes and pointing out that, if he’d done things differently, maybe he (or Beth, or Bob) would still be alive. Lizzie and Mica comfort Tyreese, and Bob calls The Gov and the Termite on their bullshit, saying that things happened the way they needed to, and it’s okay. And Beth? Well, she mostly just sings. All in all this sequence is incredibly stirring; watching Tyreese struggle to find some semblance of meaning in the horrors he’s faced while coming to terms with the end of his life is an emotional bombshell that keeps going off.

Rick’s Rebels do race to reach Tyreese and manage to take off his bitten arm, but their race to get him to the medical supplies so they can cauterize the wound proves fruitless; they’re just not fast enough. After one last conversation with the ghosts, Tyreese fades away in the rescue car mid-ride, and the group pulls over. And then? Surprise! All the images from the beginning were actually from the end of the episode showing Tyreese’s death and funeral.

This episode of The Walking Dead manages to be devastating in a way few shows ever manage to; despite the pervasive tragedy in this zombie-filled series, I don’t know that any death has ever been so mind-blowingly sad as Tyreese’s, and a lot of that has to do with what a likable, bastion of hope and humanity he was, and how Chad Coleman portrayed him with such warmth and intelligence. With two major character deaths in a row, the truth should be ever-so clear: The Walking Dead plays for keeps, and you should never relax because anything can happen at any time.

Likes:

How damn smart Rick’s Rebels were to split up before getting to the Virginia community.
That look of resigned sadness on Glenn’s face when he scouts over the wall and sees that Virginia’s completely borked.
Tyreese fights for his life for awhile, “I’m not giving up. Ain’t nobody got to die today.”
Remember those zombies Michonne and company found their top halves missing? In their race to get Tyreese medical attention, they find the tops when they hit a truck and the half-corpses spill out with roman numerals carved in to their foreheads. So creepy! What the hell is going on!?!

Dislikes: