Told You, I Did!

Welp, I knew this was going to happen. 

A few weeks ago in my epic takedown of The Walking Dead season finale, I denounced pinheaded showrunner Scott Gimple for completely botching Negan's introduction, and giving us one of the worst and most ill-advised cliffhangers in TV history.

In case you don't remember, Negan captures our heroes, lines them up and decides to kill one of them with his trusty barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat he calls Lucille. He can't decide, so he plays "Eeny Meeny Miney Moe" to choose his victim. 

In the comic (SPOILER ALERT!) he chooses Glenn and literally smashes his head open with Lucille. In the season finale he picks a victim, but the audience isn't privy as to who it is. For some unfathomable reason, Gimple chose to show us the scene from the victim's point of view, hiding their identity until the Season 7 premiere. 

In addition to being a giant middle finger to the viewers, this cockamamie idea simply cannot work. We're living in an era in which absolutely nothing is secret. This is an age in which people use their phones to snap photos of their genitalia and email them to one another! So how in the name of Zeus' Mighty Nose Hair did Gimple think he could keep the identity of Negan's victim a secret until Octorber?

Well, it looks like I was right. Last month actor Steven Yeun, who plays Glenn, quietly began filming a movie called Mayhem, about a virus that causes people to act out their wildest impulses.

Then earlier this week Yeun joined the cast of a scifi movie called Okja, about a girl who befriends a genetically modified pig (?). The movie also stars Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano, and is currently shooting in Seoul, South Korea.

Season 7 of The Walking Dead begins filming on May 2. So unless Yeun is going to attempt a very epic, around-the-world daily commute, I'd say this is a pretty good sign he's no longer going to be on the show. 

There's a chance that Yeun's role in Okja is a small one, and he could be back in the States by the time the series starts filming again. But it's a very minute chance. Which means Glenn was Negan's victim. Which means that any impact that his death may have had is now rendered moot and meaningless. Which means that Scott Gimple is an incompetent boob who just botched the most famous moment from the comic book, and needs a good firing.

The Walking Dead Season 6, Episode 7: Heads Up

This week's Walking Dead was yet another "pause before the storm" episode. That makes four in a row now. Thank Christ next week is the fall finale so we can finally get the main plot (you remember, the horde of zombies heading toward unprepared Alexandria?) back on track.

Of course the big news this week is the fact that Glenn's still alive. Told you so! His fate came as no surprise to most viewers, who figured out the twist several weeks ago in the episode Thank You. The way he survived played out exactly as we all predicted, and was frankly a bit anticlimactic. I'm glad Glenn's not dead, but the whole thing seems like a huge cheat. This series already has more than enough real deaths— teasing us with fake ones feels cheap and unnecessary.

Plus one of these days Glenn's going to die for real, and the event will be lessened by this little stunt.

This episode set up all the various pieces for next week's bloodbath. I have a feeling the cast is going to be significantly smaller as we go into the winter hiatus. I predict most of the Alexandrians won't survive the hour, including Deanna and Spencer. And I have a feeling the Ron/Carl showdown will end badly, with Carl marked for life, just as he was in the comic.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:

This week we rewind yet again to the early hours of the terrible, horrible, no good very bad day. We pick up with Glenn and Nicholas trapped on top of the dumpster, as seen in Thank You. Nicholas shoots himself, and his dead body knocks Glenn off the dumpster into a sea of hungry walkers.

But wait! It seems Glenn's not quite dead yet! As the walkers snack on Nicholas' entrails, Glenn slides underneath the dumpster (good thing he's skinny!). He kills a few walkers that grab for him, which forms an undead shield around him. After a few hours the walkers get bored and wander off. He cautiously crawls out from under the dumpster and encounters Enid, who tosses him some water. Enid wants to go off on her own, but Glenn convinces her to come back with him.

Back at Alexandria, Rick criticizes Morgan for letting the Wolves go during their attack (mostly because after they escaped they almost killed Rick). Morgan defends his actions, saying he's convinced not killing is the right thing to do. The writers finally remember Rosita's on the show, and have her teach the Alexandrians how to use machetes.

Rick teaches Ron how to shoot a gun (bad), but refuses to give him any bullets (good). Ron breaks into the armory and steals some (bad again). Deanna gives Rick and Michonne her fanciful and unrealistic expansion plans for Alexandria. Morgan talks Dr. Cloyd into treating the Wolf leader he's secretly holding in the jail. Carol sees this and confronts Morgan. Spencer tries to sneak out of Alexandria to draw the walkers away, but is almost eaten.

Meanwhile, Glenn and Enid find the signal balloons Rick was using for the walker parade. They reach Alexandria and see its surrounded by zombies. Glenn releases the balloons to signal he's still alive. Ron begins stalking Carl with his newly-loaded gun.

Just then the church tower, which was damaged in the Wolf attack a few weeks back, collapses and tears a hole in Alexandria's wall. Uh-oh!

Thoughts:

• I was sure this week's episode would be another flashback, showing us how Rick escaped the RV and how Michonne managed to get Scott and Heath back home. Apparently not, and those events are being left to our imaginations.

• Now that we know Glenn's alive, Steven Yeun's name has reappeared in its rightful place in the opening credits. I told you they were trolling us the past few weeks by showing the watch but leaving his name off.

• Once the walkers got bored with trying to eat Glenn, they wandered away and cleared out. Boy did they! In Thank You there were several hundred of them crammed into Glenn's dead end alley, but in this episode the entire town is mysteriously void of even a single walker. Where the hell did they all go?

• Glenn happens upon the zombified David, the guy who couldn't wait to get back to his wife in Thank You. If you'll remember, he was with Michonne's group and couldn't make it over the fence before being swarmed by walkers.

The way that scene played out, one would think David would have been torn limb from limb. And yet here he was sitting in front of the fence, pretty much intact. How the heck did that happen? Did the walkers just take a few polite bites from him and then move on? His horrific screams in Thank You would indicate not.

• I assumed Enid was a Wolf spy, who fed intel about Alexandria to her group. Apparently not! This episode implies she's just a sullen loner who left the town to be on her own.

It's possible she was a Wolf, but fears reprisal if she goes back after telling them the Alexandrians would be easy pickings. Or maybe the Wolves were all wiped out in their attack, and there's no group to go back to.

Another possibility— maybe she's not with the Wolves, but the even more dangerous Saviors?

• Speaking of Enid, Glenn forces her to come back to Alexandria with him. If she doesn't want to go, I honestly don't see how it's any of Glenn's business. And his reason for forcing her— because Maggie would want him to save her— is pretty weak. It felt like these two characters were paired up just because the writers needed to eat up twenty minutes of runtime.

• Hey, we finally see Carol this week! I was beginning to wonder if she'd barricaded herself in her house, furiously baking casseroles.

• Rick holds an impromptu little tribunal to judge Morgan for letting the group of Wolves go free instead of killing them.

Um... Rick does know that there were five Wolves surrounding Morgan, right? And at least one of them was armed? Did he really expect Morgan to kill all five with a damned stick?

• Father Gabriel made a rare appearance in this episode, putting up ads for a prayer service. Rick then appears, tearing down the signs as he walks by.

What the heck was up with that? I get that Rick has no love for Gabriel after all he's done, but tearing down a preacher's signs just made him look like an asshole.

• What happened to Heath? He's a major character in the comics, so I was glad to see him finally show up on the series. Then after appearing in what, two episodes, he's suddenly become MIA. Surely they didn't kill him already, and offscreen yet?

• As I suspected, Rick teaching Ron how to shoot is a very bad idea. After just one shooting lesson he's already got a bullet with Carl's name on it.

As for Carl, he was quite the smug little douche this week. During Ron's shooting lesson, every word out of Carl's self-satisfied, priggish little mouth seemed designed to irritate. Was that on purpose? Do the writers want us to side with Ron?

Also, Carl still needs a haircut. He looks ridiculous with his Mary Tyler Moore flip. Don't worry, if things happen like I think they will, he'll get a haircut next week, and more.

• Ron distracts Olivia (in the oldest and most obvious way possible) so he can sneak into the armory and steal a handful of bullets. Um... why the hell isn't this room locked? Other than to give Ron easy access to it, of course.

I can see the dimwitted and ill-prepared Alexandrians not thinking to lock up their guns, but there's no way in hell Rick would allow such an idiotic system to stand.

• Deanna presents Rick and Michonne with her wildly fanciful expansion plans, that look like they were drawn by a ten year old. 

This scene had the feel of character development about it, so you know what that means on this show. Yep, Deanna's a goner.

• I'm still flabbergasted by Dr. Cloyd's lack of basic medical knowledge. Does she really need a mnemonic device to recognize signs of infection?

I realize she's a psychiatrist and only had a year of medical training, but infections seem pretty basic.

• Sometimes cold hard reality intrudes into the world of TV production. Like when an actress becomes pregnant, but her character isn't supposed to be. When this happens, producers have to scramble to hide the actress' rapidly expanding belly. They usually do this by shooting them from the chest up, dressing them in layers of bulky clothing, or filming them standing behind couches and such.

Or it you're The Walking Dead, you have your actress straddle a bar stool and hold the backrest in front of her gut. Yep, that's Tara, played by Alana Masterson, who was pregnant during the filming of this season.

You can also place a hastily erected and ridiculously obvious plank of wood in front of your "expecting" actress.

I have to admit Tara's "salute" to Rick was one of the few times I've ever laughed while watching The Walking Dead.

• Spencer tries to crawl above a mosh pit of walkers with what appears to be a Batarang. It goes about as well as you'd expect. This seemed like an idiotic stunt even for Spencer, and seemed like it was wedged into the episode just to give it a few much-needed seconds of walker action.

• Last week actor Norman Reedus (who plays Daryl) said that the mysterious cry for help we heard on the radio was not Glenn. I assumed he was lying in order to prevent spoilers, but it looks like he was telling the truth!

So just who was it that we heard? I have no idea. There've been so many flashbacks and episodes airing seemingly out of order that it's impossible to sort out the timeline. For all we know, Daryl might have been hearing the last survivor of Alexandria after next week's attack!

The Walking Dead Season 6, Episode 6: Always Accountable

OK, The Walking Dead, enough's enough!

This is the third week in a row the series has wasted our time instead of telling the story it started at the beginning of the season. At this point it's like the show's sitting and diddling with its smart phone while it waits for the big mid-season finale to arrive.

Filler episodes are nothing new on TV. In fact they're necessary now and then. A show can't barrel ahead at 90 mph ALL the time. Occasionally it needs to stop and focus on the characters, so the audience will care about what happens to them.

The problem with these Walking Dead fillers is they're happening at the worst possible time. The first three episodes of the season built up a palpable, relentless sense of dread and momentum. An enormous herd of zombies is heading straight toward the peaceful and unprepared town of Alexandria, and nothing can stop it. But rather than give us a satisfying payoff to this ominous plotline, the series has spent the last three weeks calmly examining various side missions and introducing new characters! It's infuriating!

Why do they keep doing this to us? Because the show's counting down to the goddamned mid-season finale, that's why. The writers realized the "Marching On Alexandria" story wouldn't fill up eight entire episodes, so they're padding to make it fit.

It's no secret I'm not a fan of this new trend of dividing seasons in half. In my day (!), TV shows aired their episodes one after another, week by week. Then when they were done, they aired 'em all over again in the summer. By then it was just about time for the new season to start. It was a good system and we liked it (!).

This trend of splitting seasons in half, with three or four months in between, is killing TV. Just when a show finds its rhythm, it's time for the mid-season break and all that momentum gets flushed right down the crapper. Why not let storylines develop naturally? If it only takes four episodes to resolve it, then so be it. Write another storyline then! Don't pad out the first one and make the audience doze off.

Splitting the season also raises the very real possibility that the audience will find something else to do (or worse yet, another show to watch) after the seriesgoes on hiatus, and won't come back in the spring. You'd think the networks would be scared silly by that prospect, but they keep on doing it anyway.

In the end it all comes down to ratings I suppose. Having a two big finales a year no doubt means huge ratings, and that translates into dollars. So no matter how much the audience may hate the trend, it ain't gonna go away.

This week The Walking Dead rewinds yet again, as it precedes last week's show. After a strong linear start at the beginning of the season, the series is now apparently airing episodes in random order.

Even though this was a filler episode, it might turn out to be an important one. This week's episode may have just introduced the new threat for next season, as well as a couple of important characters from the comic. Time will tell.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:

This week we see what happened to Daryl, Abraham and Sasha on the terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day of the walker parade. The three lead the walkers the arbitrarily decided "safe" distance of twenty miles from Alexandria without incident. They then double back out of site of the horde and head back. On the way they're ambushed by a group of men that open fire on them. Sasha and Abraham's car crashes into a wall, and they leap out and strafe their attackers, killing them. They then head off on foot.

Daryl wipes out on his bike, but manages to escape the gunfire. He flees into a burned-out section of the woods and collapses. He's then captured by two women and an armed man who knocks him out. When he wakes up again, his captors force him to his feet. The Trio recently fled a group, and think Daryl's come to take them back. They tell him they "don't trust his people" and they're not returning. Daryl has no idea what they're talking about, much like the audience at this point. The man admits he started the fire to kill the walkers in the forest. 

Daryl manages to grab a pack containing his confiscated crossbow and escapse. He runs further into the forest and stops to rest. As he looks through the pack, he finds a cooler labeled "insulin." He realizes that Tina, the youngest woman of the Trio, is diabetic. He then returns to the Trio and returns Tina's insulin. He takes the man's gun as payment.

Just then a truck comes barreling through the woods. A group of men, who we never see clearly, are searching for the Trio. A man named Wade, who again, we never see clearly, wants to bring them back so they can "repay what they took." Daryl improvises an escape. 

Daryl and the Trio continue through the woods and find a burned out cabin. Tina says she used to babysit two boys here (in the middle of the woods?). She sees their lifeless bodies in the rubble, and as she places flowers on their heads, they spring to "life" and kill her. As they bury her, Daryl asks the man Rick's three questions, evidently thinking he'd make a good addition to Alexandria.

Daryl's apparently not a very good judge of character, because just then the Duo (heh) steal his crossbow and motorcycle. Daryl tells them they'll be sorry, much like a petulant child. He then finds a large fuel truck (that miraculously still starts) and drives away.

Meanwhile, Sasha and Abraham hole up in a building, hoping expert tracker Daryl will find them. There's a lot of emotional rigmarole between the two, which I'm not ashamed to say I didn't entirely understand. Sasha says she's in control now (despite the fact that last season she was positively suicidal) because she realized she's "responsible for her actions." 

Abraham goes out scavenging, and finds a rocket launcher with several rounds of ammo (!). He returns to the office and tells Sasha that he's been living his life "paycheck to paycheck" and now sees he has a long and fruitful life ahead of him (uh-oh). He then actually hits on Sasha, apparently forgetting he's been shacking up with Rosita. Amazingly Sasha seems more bemused than repulsed by his advances. Luckily for her, she hears Daryl driving by in his new truck.

The episode ends with the three heading back to Alexandria. Daryl tries to contact Rick or any of the others on his radio. Through the static he hears an unknown voice call for help. Gosh, I wonder who that could be?

Thoughts:

• It's pretty obvious that the group hunting the Trio are supposed to be the Saviors. In the comic, they were a large group of survivors who lived in an abandoned factory, surrounded by a fence studded with impaled walkers. Their leader was Negan, a psychopath who offered "protection" to nearby survivor groups, in exchange for half their crops and supplies. Any group that refused Negan's protection would be severely punished or killed. 

AMC just announced that actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan was cast as Negan, so I'd say it's a pretty good bet this episode just gave us a preview of the Saviors. 

So why did the writers go out of their way to hide the faces of the Saviors? The man in charge of this little scouting party was named Wade, who I don't think was ever a character in the comic. Have they not cast the Saviors yet, and were forced to use no-name stand-ins? 

Another possibility-- in the comic, Negan liked to disfigure anyone who disobeyed him. Were these Saviors horribly scarred, and the writers want to save that revelation for later? I honestly don't know.

• We never learn the name of the man who captures Daryl, but his two female friends are Shelly and Tina. Shelly was a character in the comic, but Tina was obviously a redshirt who was created specifically to die in this episode. So what about the man?

I think we just met Dwight! He's another character from the comic, who was Negan's right hand man. Dwight was married to Sherry, until Negan claimed her as one of his many "wives." Also in the comic, Dwight's weapon of choice was a crossbow. At the end of this episode, Maybe Dwight stole Daryl's crossbow. Given this evidence, I don't see anyone else the character could be,

In the comic the entire left side of Dwight's face is disfigured, courtesy of Negan. Don't be surprised if the next time we see Maybe Dwight on the show, the same thing has happened to him.

• After Daryl escapes from the Trio, he stops to catch his breath. A mossy-looking walker appears, and Daryl struggles-- really struggles mind you-- to remove his crossbow from the pack he stole in order to kill it. He finally frees the bow and shoots the walker a split second before it attacks.

I guess Daryl must really be tired after his ordeal, because it apparently never occurs to him to simply walk away from the zombie until he gets the crossbow free.

• Once again The Walking Dead plays fast and loose with geography to help the plot. Alexandria has been up and running since the beginning of the apocalypse. The Saviors settlement is only about twenty miles away, and somehow the two groups have never crossed paths. Luckeeeee!

• Tina was a goner even if she hadn't been eaten by plastic-wrapped walkers. She was diabetic, and though she had a supply of insulin, it wouldn't have lasted forever. Plus the longer it's left unrefrigerated, the less effective it becomes. It's probably tough to find viable insulin in the zombie apocalypse, so Tina's demise was inevitable.

• Sometimes I'm puzzled by what this show's censors deem acceptable and what they don't. Case in point: Daryl tricks a Savior named Cam into getting attacked by a walker. He's bitten on the arm, and his fellow Savior, er, saves him by chopping off his limb with a machete.

Note that during the amputation scene, the camera chastely cuts away to show us Daryl and the Trio's reaction. 

So... decapitating and dismembering zombies in the goriest fashion possible is A-OK, but showing a human getting his arm chopped off is verboten. Got it.

• By the way, there was a lot of very black humor in that amputation scene. The guy who performs the operation takes the time to pull the watch off Cam's disembodied limb before tossing it away like the dead meat it is. He then radios back to Wade, informing him that "Cam got a boo-boo." He then helps the stunned Cam up and tells him to, "Walk it off!" Yikes!

• Here's something that only a graphic designer would notice: Take a good look at that logo on the fuel truck. Notice the kerning in the name "Pattrick." It's perfect! Whoever the art director is on The Walking Dead realized that it would look weird if the two letter Ts had a space between them, so they merged them together to make the logo more visually pleasing. Kudos!

• Ever since he was introduced, Abraham's been one of the least developed characters on the show. He finally got some character building moments in this episode, so you know what that means! Bye, bye Abraham!

• At the very end of the episode, Daryl uses his radio to contact anyone else. Over the static he hears a faint voice call for help.

I'm convinced that was Glenn's voice on the radio, and the show's teasing that he's still alive, as most fans already believe. 

However, in an interview last week, actor Norman Reedus (who plays Daryl) adamantly denied that the voice was Glenn's though. But isn't that exactly what someone would say if they were trying to keep Glenn's fate a secret?

The Walking Dead Season 6, Episode 3: Thank You

Holy Flarking Schnit! This may have been the most tense episode of The Walking Dead yet! I was exhausted by the time it was over! As much as I like the series, it's definitely not easy to watch.

Ever since Rick & Co. arrived at Alexandria, the show's been hewing pretty closely to the comic. They made a huge diversion this week though, as a major character died way before they were supposed to and in a completely different manner. Or did they? 

They've deviated like this before, of course. In the comic, the Governor beheaded Tyreese, and later Michonne had to put his still-living noggin out of its misery. On the show, the Governor did the same to Hershel. Lori, Shane and TV Andrea all had different fates on the show than they did in the comic.

But this divergence is different. This particular character's death wasn't due to happen for quite a while yet, and it famously came at the hands of a major villain that hasn't yet been introduced. If this character really is dead, it's a massive change, and makes me wonder if they'll even bother adding the villain and his storyline.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The Plot:

This week we rewind a bit, joining Rick & Co. just after they've heard the horn blasting away in Alexandria. The vast walker heard has split up, but Rick is determined to salvage the operation. He tells Glenn and Michonne to get the Alexandrian redshirts back home, and to abandon anyone who slows them down. Rick heads for the RV alone to try and divert the walkers if possible.

Things immediately go from bad to worse. In classic horror movie fashion, Annie twists her ankle. The group is surrounded by walkers, while Scott is wounded in the leg. David is bitten in the shoulder, but insists on returning home to say goodbye to his wife. 

Glenn and Michonne decide to stop in a nearby town to rest and regroup. Unfortunately the town is quickly surrounded by walkers. The group hides inside an abandoned pet shop. Glenn volunteers to set fire to a feed store to lure the walkers away so they can escape. Nicholas offers to go with him, since he's supposedly familiar with the town. Glenn radios Rick and tells him the plan, and says, "Be careful, dumbass."

Meanwhile, Daryl, Abraham and Sasha are still luring the front half of the zombie herd away from town. Daryl hears shots from Alexandria and wants to help. Sasha advises him against leaving, but he does so anyway. He drives toward home (I guess), but eventually meets back up with Abraham and Sasha, in a puzzling subplot that went nowhere and existed solely to pad the run time.

Nicholas and Glenn find the feed store, but it's already been burned to the ground. Isn't that always the way? They try to find their way back to the pet shop, but Nicholas is visibly distressed and disoriented. He quickly gets them trapped in a dead end alley. As hordes of walkers file into the alley, Glenn and Nicholas climb on top of a dumpster. Nicholas looks at Glenn, tells him "Thank you" and shoots himself in the head. His lifeless body knocks Glenn off the dumpster and he's seemingly devoured by a huge crowd of walkers.

Rick is attacked by walkers and injures his hand while taking them out. He makes it back to the RV and tries to coordinate the operation by walkie-talkie. He contacts Daryl and Sasha, but Glenn and Tobin don't respond. Suddenly the RV is attacked by Wolves. The very group of five Wolves that Morgan let go last week. I told you that was a bad idea, and it would come back to bite someone in the ass!

Rick easily dispatches the Wolves. As he's looting their bodies, he finds a jar of baby food in one of their pockets and realizes they've come from Alexandria, and probably his home. He starts to head back, but naturally the RV's plot-specific ignition won't start. He's soon surrounded by the approaching walker horde.

Thoughts:

• The Walking Dead really loves symmetry. Over and over on the show, a character who's about to die will utter one of the very first lines they ever said.

Way back in the first episode, Morgan's son hit Rick in the head with a shovel, thinking he was a walker. When he came to, Morgan was standing over him. After getting no response from Rick, Morgan says, "Look, I ask, and you answer. That's common courtesy, right?" In the first episode of this season, Rick visits Morgan in the improvised jail and sees he's practicing his sweet bo staff skills. He asks where he learned it, and gets no response. Rick says, "I ask, you answer. It's common courtesy, right?"

Also in Season 1, TV Andrea had to put down her recently zombified sister Amy. Rick handed her a gun and told her the safety was off. She said, "I know how the safety works." Later in the Season 3 finale, TV Andrea was bitten by Milton, and asked Rick for a gun so she could shoot herself before she turned. Rick hands her the gun and she again says, "I know how the safety works."

At the end of the very first episode, Rick is surrounded by walkers and dives into an abandoned tank to escape. He hears Glenn's voice on his walkie-talkie, saying, "Hey you. Dumbass. Yeah, you in the tank. Cozy in there?" In this episode he tells Rick, "Be careful, Dumbass." Symmetry. Deadly symmetry.

• This episode is a treasure trove of horror movie cliches. Annie stumbles slightly and twists her ankle. Sturgess fires his gun in panic and hits Scott in the leg. David can't wait to get back to his wife, so of course he's immediately bitten. And of course we have the ever popular unreliable vehicle with the plot-specific ignition that only fails at the worst possible time.

• After being attacked by walkers, Rick nurses an injured left hand. At first I thought maybe he'd been bitten, so I rewound the scene to watch it again. Upon closer inspection, one of the walkers looked like it had a machete sticking out of its head. It appears that Rick cut himself on the machete while he was taking out the walker. So he wasn't bitten.

I think it's still going to be a problem for him though. The machete probably had walker gore all over it, and it sliced open Rick's hand. In the comic, Negan-- the villain who out-governored the Governor-- controlled an army that dipped arrows and bullets in walker gore before shooting them at victims, which guaranteed they'd become infected and die.

If the show goes the same way as the comic in this respect, Rick's got a big problem. It's no secret by now that Rick is missing his right hand in the comic. It was chopped off by the Governor, who tortured him for information. Is this how the show's going to introduce one-handed Rick? 

The series has always been vague and inconsistent about how the whole zombification thing works. In this universe everyone's already infected with the zombie virus, which is why anyone who dies for any reason turns shortly after. A bite or scratch from a walker simply becomes infected and kills you. That much we know. What isn't clear is why people sprayed with walker blood and guts don't appear to become infected and die. Getting walker blood in your system seems like it'd be just as bad as a bite, but what do I know?

Robert Kirkman, creator of the comic, admitted that he wrote the "Rick losing his hand" plot just to be shocking, and didn't fully think things through. He's said if he had it to do over again-- and he does, here-- he wouldn't have him lose his hand after all. 

So who knows where they're going with this? It would be a shocker if it happens on the show, but it would also be expensive. Will AMC want to pony up the dough to greenscreen Rick's hand out of virtually every scene from now on? And if they're not going down that road, then what was the point of him cutting his hand? Just to worry us?

• Glenn, Michonne and the others rest in a small town near Alexandria. I'm guessing the name of this place is Mazeville. The entire town apparently consists of nothing but dangerous dead end alleys.

• Michonne, Heath, Scott and David run down one of these dead end alleys. The only way out is over a tall metal fence. Everyone makes it over except for David, who's swarmed with walkers. 

So why does everyone just wring their hands and watch helplessly while David's eaten alive? Jesus, Michonne, stick your sword through the fence and into the poor guy's head to put him out of his misery. She did it to the other redshirt earlier in the episode, why not here?

• As I said earlier, the Wolves who attack Rick in the RV were the ones Morgan "reasoned with" last week, and sent on their merry way. I knew they'd return sooner or later to cause trouble, but I figured they'd come back for Morgan, not attack Rick.

• When Michonne, Heath and Scott make it back to Alexandria, we see a brief shot of them walking past what appear to be burned out buildings. I don't remember any buildings being on fire last week. Did the Wolves torch some houses before they left, while we weren't looking?

UPDATE: Looking at this scene again, that clearly wasn't Alexandria. They walked through an opening in a low brick wall and entered what appeared to be a burned-out village. Where that village might be, I have no idea. Somewhere between Alexandria and the quarry, I guess.

• And at last we come to Glenn and his untimely and shocking death. Glenn, who's been the heart and soul of the series ever since the second episode six years ago. Glenn, who was done in by his own humanity and mercy, as he tried to give Nicholas a second chance.

Glenn's sort of had a countdown timer around his neck for the past couple of years, as the character was killed off in the comic a while back. So despite the fact that I wish he hadn't died, it wasn't all that unexpected. 

He was murdered in the comic by the aforementioned Negan in such a famously shocking and brutal scene, that it's hard for me to believe that the show would alter the manner of his death. Glenn's demise defined Negan-- it got the comic readers to sit up and take him seriously. If Negan could kill the beloved Glenn and get away with it, then no one was safe. If the series ever gets around to the Negan storyline, he's going to be diminished if he doesn't have Glenn to kill.

Glenn's already been almost killed at least four times that I can think of (and probably more). In the Season 3 episode When The Dead Come Knocking, Merle tortured Glenn, then tied him to a chair and left him alone in a room with a hungry walker. In the Season 4 episode Inmates, after the prison is destroyed, Glenn wakes up on a slab of debris, just out of reach of a herd of walkers. In the Season 5 episode No Sanctuary, he's almost killed by a Termite brandishing a baseball bat (in a very Negan-like manner). Later in Conquer, he's at the bottom of a zombie pigpile and somehow escapes. As you can see, Glenn's no stranger to near-death experiences.

But what if he isn't really dead? Believe it or not, there's quite a bit of evidence to support this theory. First there's Glenn's aforementioned run-in with Negan, who hasn't even appeared on the show yet. Surely they wouldn't diverge that much from the comic, would they (On the other hand, doing so would definitely be more shocking for the fans who were expecting Glenn to die by Negan's hand, or bat, as the case may be).

More evidence: we see Nicholas' dead body knock Glenn off the dumpster. The next thing we see is Glenn seemingly torn apart by the zombie horde. But something about the scene seems... off. It's a very tight shot, so all we really see is Glenn's blood-splattered face as the walkers pull guts out from... somewhere. The guts look a little too high to be coming from Glenn himself. Unless his guts are right under his neck. 

What if they're really snacking on Nicholas' guts instead? Nicholas' body could have fallen on top of Glenn and the walkers are really eating him. That could buy Glenn a few seconds to either hide under the dumpster (assuming there's room) or to smear himself with gore and lie very still, becoming virtually invisible to the walkers.

Even more evidence: On AMCs companion show The Talking Dead, any time a major cast member dies, they're a guest on that night's show. Steven Yuen, who plays Glenn, did not appear. The Talking Dead also traditionally airs an "In Memorium" montage featuring shots of recently deceased characters. There was no such montage on the show.

Scott Gimple, the current showrunner, actually issued a statement about the episode, saying, "In some way we will see Glenn, some version of Glenn, or parts of Glenn again, either in flashback or in the current story, to help complete the story." Well, that was certainly vague without being informative, wasn't it?

There's also the fact that so far every major character death on the show has been witnessed by someone else. Glenn would be the first to ever die "alone." Make of that what you will.

There's also the matter that Steven Yuen has been spotted on-set with actors who've not yet appeared on the show. That would seem to indicate that he's not really gone.

I'm torn by this. I don't want the character to be dead, but giving Glenn such an implausible out and toying with the audience like this seems cheap and manipulative. It's beneath the show, and does a disservice to all the other characters who really DID die. Plus if he really is alive, it's just going to diminish his inevitable death at the hands of Negan, if and when it ever happens. I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks whether he's really gone or not.

We won't learn Glenn's fate next week though, as instead we're apparently getting Morgan's origin story, explaining how he became a Ninja Turtle.