What is the good that comes out of this bad?
Good question Sasha!
We see a good man go down in Bob in a house of worship.
"Nightmares end," Bob states before he passes. "But they shouldn't end who you are."
Well said, Bob. Well said.
And we see the group split up, one to wait for Carol and Daryl, the other, to D.C. to find a cure or something for this plague.
It's a bittersweet episode indeed. But at least Daryl comes back at the very end... with Carol? Maybe? We're left with a mild cliff hanger there.
The good news is the cannibals who had eaten Bob's leg are turned into chum by Rick & Co. - including gabby Gareth.
Who would have thought he'd be dead so quickly? He was oddly entertaining - for a cannibal.
Anyway, as noted, Gareth sure likes to talk a lot. He and his buddies ultimately don't kill Bob immediately. Instead, Gareth goes right on rambling as he did last episode. He talks about his mom Mary dying and wishing he had gotten to Carol but she drove away with Daryl. He also notes how women are yummier than dudes. "I think pretty people taste better, too," he says. (I suspect that's all in his mind.)
Bob then starts laughing. The Terminus survivors think maybe it's time to finish him off. He's getting delirious!
No He shows them his injury he gotten from a walker at the watery food bank last episode on his shoulder. (Now we know he left the church to cry because he knew his time was almost over anyway.) "Tainted meat!" he yelps joyously.
The Terminus survivors are grossed out. Are they infected now, too? Gareth decides to leave Bob near the entrance of the church to be discovered rather than eat the rest of him. He thinks this will throw Rick's crew off, make them vulnerable to attack.
Then he stupidly thinks it's the right time to ambush the crew by strolling into the church. So the five of them enter and again, Gareth is Mr. Loquacious. He mentions names of folks he knows are in there to try to unnerve them. Then he hears Judith cry. That's helpful!
But Rick, hiding in the pews, kills two of the Terminus dudes. Then Abraham, Sasha (who wants revenge on Bob) and Rick face off with Martin (the one Tyrese didn't quite kill), the one female and Gareth, who had just lost two of his fingers, courtesy again of Rick's bullets.
Even in his pain, Gareth wonders, "You could have killed us." Why didn't they?
"Didn't want to waste the bullets," Rick says, John Wayne like.
"We used to save people," Gareth says, in his last attempt at saving his own life. "Things changed. They came in... You don't have to do this. We can walk away and never cross paths again. I promise you."
Trust Gareth? No thanks, bud.
Besides, Rick, at the trough episode one, had promised he would kill Gareth with a particular red dagger. And he does. Savagely. Abraham and Sasha are equally rough on the other two. They're cannibals. They deserve it.
Gabriel, the priest, looks appalled. "This is the Lord's house."
"No," Lauren says. "It's just four walls and a roof."
Not-so-priestly: Gabriel earlier admitted he was a coward back in the day and had locked the church's doors and wouldn't let anybody in. His parishioners were eaten by walkers. That haunts him to this day. He later says to Michonne that the imagery came back once he said it out loud. Michonne semi-commiserates with him. "That won't stop but it won't be all the time," she tells him.
Welcome back! Carol episode one found Daryl's iconic crossbow and got it back to him relatively quickly. But what became of Michonne's sword? One of the Terminus survivors had it and Michonne joyfully was able to get it back in the church!
Bye, bye Bob: Earlier, Sasha and Tyrese have a conversation about her going out to kill the folks who ate Bob's leg. Tyrese thinks she should stay with Bob as long as possible. She gets to not only kill a Terminus cannibal but also get to say goodbye to him. He is happy, given the circumstances. What a nice guy, that Bob. Tyrese ends up having to stick a knife in his brains after he dies. Sasha gives him the honors.
Banana split: There is also an oddly dopey scene with surprisingly bad dialogue where Abraham declares after Bob returns that it's time to just leave and go to D.C. He says the church bus was fixed and he, Rosita and Eugene are leaving. Rick says not until Daryl and Carol come back. There is tension. "Carol saved your life. We saved your life," Rick growls.
"I'm trying to save yours. Save everyone's," Abraham says. (Which Michael Bay movie did they steal that line from?)
Tara offers to go with them if they wait a little longer. Then Glenn and Maggie agree to do so, too.
Abraham says they'll wait 12 hours. And they do. At noon the next day, they leave in the bus in a strange split without a lot of emotion. You'd think Rick and Co. would be more upset that they may not see Maggie and Glenn ever again. And vice versa. It's not like they have cell phone coverage any more and stay in touch via text or Facebook. (91 percent of "Talking Dead" fans in a poll thought this was stupid.)
The justification? The split is for a good purpose: to ... save... the... world! Or whatever Eugene thinks will happen when (or if) they arrive in D.C. And maybe they'll reunite later anyway.
This scene is proof that not every "Walking Dead" episode is going to be a gem through and through. At least Bob got a good send off.
TALKING DEAD
What were Gareth and his friends eating as Bob's leg? It was pork.
Andrew J. West, the actor, agreed, with Conan O'Brien two weeks earlier that perhaps his character Gareth was a frustrated barista manager before the apocalypse. Guest Mary Lynn Rasjkub ("24") thinks he was someone she could have met in a Portland music club and then eat unknown meat items at a food truck. Slash: "Genius college student who never got laid. He was charming to a point. You wanted to like him for a second."
Mary Lynn also had a friend who found Gareth oddly alluring despite his cannibalistic ways: "He could eat me any time."
WHO DIED: Only a few churchyard walkers got the ax. Instead, the big deaths came to human beings: the five Terminus folks and poor Bob.
NEXT WEEK: Beth is back! But what is she doing in a hospital room in Atlanta?
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