The Walking Dead 5×09

The Walking Dead finally returned from its mid-season hiatus and in short, damn. In length, it will require spoilers so please turn back now in case you haven’t seen the newest episode. Still here? Cool. Death seems like it will be coming swift and quick this season. We already lost Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) and Beth (Emily Kinney) to a zombie bite and a headshot so it seemed like they would let our emotions settle for at least an episode or two before they took another character from us; and one of my favorites. Tyreese (Chad Coleman) will no longer be the moral compass that I, and many others, have come to associate him as for the group. In a way, the episode started with his death but the audience just didn’t realize it. The basic story of this episode is that Rick (Andrew Lincoln), Michonne (Danai Guria), Glenn (Steven Yeun), Noah (Tyler James Williams), and Tyreese go back to the town that Noah is from to see if his group is still there. As you can tell from the beginning of this piece, not everything goes well. Upon discovering that the town was either overrun or attacked, Noah breaks down and it’s up to Tyreese to be the comforting one. Rick gives the halfhearted “I’m truly sorry”, but there’s that underlying pissed look he had that this town was another dead end. While Tyreese stays with Noah, the other three decide to gather what they can before they head back to the others. This leads to some interesting dialogue between the trio. Glenn comes off as still pissed about Beth’s death and the reason he came along was to try and get his thoughts off of her. Rick is forever the optimist as he believed that the town would still have been intact. Then Michonne had the most interesting character reveal. She appeared tired of their style of survival. She wanted a place to settle down again and was adamant at times of trying to rebuild this town. Meanwhile, Noah manages to get away from Tyreese for a bit but he was only running to his old home. Ever the protector, Tyreese goes in first to clear the house of any lingering threats. As he does so, it will lead to his fatal bite and it gets interesting from here. He begins seeing past characters trying to convince him one way or another that this was what was supposed to happen. It’s a great piece as we get to see why Tyreese did the things he did. It was his collective conscious validating the choices he’s made throughout his time on the show. In a way, the cannibal and the Governor were right in that he didn’t have what it takes to adapt and survive. But Tyreese countered in a great way to the Governor by saying he would never sacrifice his being no matter the cost. If it meant losing his life, then so be it; but he’ll be damned if he changed from the good person he stayed true to. In the meantime, Noah races back to the others so they can try to save Tyreese. During their scramble back to Tyreese I noticed something about Michonne as they were fighting off some walkers; she wasn’t able to slice through it as easily as we’ve come to know. This could be nothing, but I took it as her mental and physical fatigue of just fighting to survive. She brought this up earlier as she suggested they go to D.C. still; to which Rick surprisingly agreed. As they got to Tyreese they chopped his arm off, a la Hershel, in hopes of saving him. However, they still thought they had to drive him back to the rest of the group in order to save him. While it would have been rudimentary, I think they could have used something in the kitchen of the house to try to cauterize the wound quicker. That time spent dragging him back to the car and attempting the drive back was what made him bleed out. This was easily one of the best episodes of this season and it will be interesting to see where the rest of the season ends up and who will survive.