The Walking Dead
Season 5, Episode 7
“Crossed”
Rating: A+
“Wait! Wait! We can get her back! We can get Beth back!” Noah told Daryl as he drug him away and out of sight of the hospital’s people, as they load an unconscious Carol into their car. “What’s it gonna take?” He asked. “A lot. They have guns. People.”
“Yea? Well so do we.”
Our survivors are preparing for war. The first leg of the episode sees a panned shot of the church, giving everyone a moment to say their bit, as the music projects tension and intensity. Michonne and Carl stay behind with Judith and Father Gabriel, boarding up the church as our small band prepares to mount a rescue operation that will finally reunite Beth with the group.
Maggie and Glenn are still with the Washington group, Eugene still laying unconscious where Abraham left him. When Rosita tries to get Abraham to talk to her, he confronts her, eyes blazing murder. Maggie calmly aims her gun at his head and tells him to sit down, or she’ll put him down. Something broke inside of Abraham, again. We saw hints of this in the episode where the truth about Washington came out. Now he is truly listless, a soldier without a cause, stranded in the middle of nowhere with the only true hope to cling to being survival. There is no cure, there is no rescue, and he is not leading a world-saving mission. As the others begin the long trek back to the church, Maggie stay behind. “Get over yourself.” she tells him, as he sits, broken on the side of the road. He’s got to find a purpose again, to keep his demons away, and to keep from becoming one himself.
Father Gabriel’s damage runs deep. As Michonne and Carl board up the church, Gabriel desperately scrubs one of the blood stains that has dried into the wood of the floor. Carl throws him a bag of weapons, and offers to teach him to fight. Gabriel refuses, and they have a conversation, once again, about the nature of survival in this world. What one has to do. Who one has to become. A killer, hardened and deadly. Gabriel doesn’t want to accept that that is what the world has become, even if he’s seen it time and again.
Meanwhile, in the hospital, Carol is barely hanging on. Beth makes the mistake of arguing with Dawn and one of her subordinates, which results in Dawn ordering Carol to be taken off of life support. Then something strange happens. Dawn hands Beth the key to the drug closet, and tells her that she is going to save that woman’s life. “I thought you were weak, but you’re not weak. You’re strong.” she tells Beth when Beth asks the obvious question as to why she’s doing this, and it’s true. Beth is strong. She’s come a very long way from the sad girl who tried to kill herself in season two. She’s also come along way from the hardened, apathetic survivor we saw at the prison. She has something she is working toward, and nothing, especially not some makeshift police force, is going to stop her from getting back to her group, to her family.
The assault on the hospital is not without it’s follies. Their initial plan, to let Noah get caught and then use his captors as hostages, almost goes off without a hitch until another of Dawn’s officers sends the whole thing to hell. What follows is a tour of hell, as the group follows them to a burned out FEMA shelter. Littering the ground are half devoured, half decomposed walkers. One of the coolest features this show has is the attention they pay to decomposition. After 5 years, the walkers in this universe don’t look remotely human anymore. Anything resemblance to their former selves that was once there has long since rotted away.
Sadly, this is the first half of an episode, leading up to next week’s mid-season finale. Then it will be all she wrote for 2014, and a forever wait until February or March for it’s return. The Walking Dead has had an extraordinary first half of it’s fifth season. This show has always been really good, but this season has raised the bar to truly great television, week in and week out. Once again, I cannot wait until next week.
Stuff And Things
– I find myself praying that Noah doesn’t die literally every episode.
– Beth, I wouldn’t trust any drug recommendations Dr. Death there makes.
– Trying to feed someone to a walker? that’s really messed up.
– Zombie Kill Of The Week: Daryl ripping off a walker’s head and using it as a bludgeon. I mean, wow.
