The Walking Dead Review: “Strangers” (Season 5, Episode 2)

Rick and co. agreed to follow Abraham and Eugene to Washington over the course of a fabulous feast. Gabriel leads the others to town where the food bank’s shelves are still full stocked but with only one thing standing in the way. Well, actually, it’s more like a dozen things. After last week’s fiery zombies, Greg Nicotero and his make-up crew got to go the other way with waterlogged zombies that looked like human-shaped, half-melted candles. There’s was also a bizarre skeletal grandma-like zombie that freaks Gabriel out at the sight of her. The flappy, putrid, slimy make-up job on the zombies this week was sublime, raising the bar again for a show that, on the practical effects side of things, rarely drops the ball. And zombie kill of the week goes to Michonne, who takes out a walker with a beater from an electric mixer to the eye.

Which brings us to Bob. Poor Bob. He and Sasha were making the most of their rest-bit, and seemed quite happy to have some quiet time together, even if it was a quiet surrounded by the greater group. Bob was part of the crew that went into the food bank, but at one point he’s dragged under the water by a walker in the flooded basement. As the others celebrate, he asks for a second kiss from Sasha and goes outside for a walk and starts crying, but before you can say “Was he bitten?” he’s knocked on the back of the head and taken away. Terminus has survivors.

Gareth (and was that Martin, the guy Tyreese “killed” for threatening Judith?) along with others have captured Bob, and eaten his leg. The “Previously On…” segment made a point of showing Gareth has only winged by gunfire when Rick and everyone busted out of Terminus, so it should have come as no surprise that the cannibals would be back so quickly, but taking Bob’s leg? First of all, can one have their leg sawed off after a simple knock to the head and not wake up in the process? Apparently, you can. Secondly, how embarrassed are those guys going to be when they find out that Bob is, ahem, contaminated meat? We don’t that for a certainty of course, but it would add an extra level of cruelness for one of the most optimistic members of the group to be culled before he turned into a zombie.

That wasn’t the only cliffhanger for the week as Daryl and Carol sped off in pursuit of the mysterious blue car with the white cross that took Beth. I’m not sure where this aspect of the story was going because until the car just happened to race down the road near where Daryl was trying to talk Carol out of taking a car and leaving the group, Beth seemed all but forgotten. With three of their ranks missing, it seems unlikely that the survivors are going to leave the church anytime soon, and that may be for the best with cannibals, kidnappers and even Morgan lurking about, and those are just the threats we know of. Lord knows what Gabriel and Eugene are still hiding…