Violet recaps Season 5 Episode 10 of The Walking Dead, titled Them, where the group is desperate to find food and water! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of The Walking Dead, Season 5 Episode 10: Them
The episode opens with Maggie crying alone, Daryl digging up a worm and eating it, and Sasha finding a bunch of dead frogs. The three meet back up and look defeated, then head back to the rest of the group empty-handed. It’s been a day and a half without food or water. They still have 60 miles to go.
The group has been traveling by van, which runs out of gas. They get out and walk. We learn that it’s been 3 weeks since Atlanta. Daryl goes off to look for food, and Carol insists on going with him. Father Gabriel approaches Maggie and offers to talk with her about her father or Beth, but Maggie lashes out against him. Meanwhile, a horde of walkers have been following the group, although the group doesn’t seem too concerned.
Daryl isn’t having any luck finding water. Carol gives Beth’s knife to Daryl, and advises him to let himself feel the loss of Beth. She kisses him on the forehead.
Back with the group, they stop by a bridge, and one by one, lure the walkers close the edge and push them over. But the, Sasha decides to confront one and stab it in the head. This forces the others to do the same. Michonne tries to get Sasha to stop, but she doesn’t listen, and Michonne gets upset with her. They take out all of the walkers, despite their lack of energy.
The group continues down the road, and finds a group of cars. Maggie searches one, and finds a walker in the trunk, bound and gagged. She shuts the trunk. Glenn finds her, and he opens the trunk back up, and stabs the walker in the head.
Daryl returns to the group empty-handed. The only thing the rest of the group found was booze. Abraham drinks it. Just then, a pack of dogs approaches the group and barks at them. But Sasha shoots them all dead with her sniper rifle. The group feasts on the dogs for dinner. Noah seems reluctant, but Sasha tells him don’t think, just eat. Father Gabriel removes his priest collar and burns it.
The group continues walking. Maggie talks to Glenn about Beth, and doesn’t seem to want to keep fighting to survive. Glenn encourages her to keep fighting, and convinces her to drink some water. Sasha and Abraham criticize each other, and Sasha says they’re not friends. Glenn tries to offer Daryl some water, but he won’t take it, and instead goes off to look for water. Daryl sees a barn as he sits down and smokes a cigarette. He soon puts out the cigarette on his hand, and begins to cry.
When Daryl returns to the group, it seems that someone left them some bottled water, with a note reading “From a friend.” The group doesn’t trust it, and thinks there might be something in the water. Eugene tries to drink some water anyway, but Abraham knocks it out of his hands. Then it begins to rain, and the group is overjoyed to have water. They quickly get to work trying to collect water. But they realize it’s a really big storm, and need shelter.
Daryl brings them to the barn that he found. Maggie finds a walker inside and kills it. She wonders why the woman didn’t shoot herself with her gun. Carol says, “Some people can’t give up. Like us.” Sitting around a campfire, the group discusses the state of world. Rick shares a story about his grandfather, who fought in WWII. The moral of the story is that they do what they have to do, and then they get to live. The way they survive is “to tell ourselves that we are the walking dead.” Daryl replies, “We ain’t them.” Rick agrees, but Daryl walks off.
Daryl notices that the barn doors which are chained shut are loose – and that a horde of walkers is heading straight toward them. The others notice what’s going on, and all run toward the doors to help hold them shut.
The next morning, they wake up and everyone is fine. Maggie notices that Daryl is still awake. He tells her that her father and sister were tough. Then he gives her the music box that Carl had found, which he has now fixed. She wakes up Sasha, and they go outside to find that the storm has knocked down a lot of trees and killed or pinned many walkers. Sasha is amazed that they were unharmed by the storm.
Then they go watch the sunrise together. Sasha says she doesn’t know if she can make it, but Maggie says they both will. Maggie winds up the music box, but it’s not working. Then a man approaches them, introducing himself as Aaron, saying he’s a friend, and asks to talk to the person in charge – he already knows his name is Rick. Aaron says he has good news. Suddenly, the music box starts playing.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 5 Episode 10 of The Walking Dead: Them
Maybe I won’t complain about the show come up with excuses to split the group up anymore. For once, the entire group was all together, as it should be… But since the group is so large, I found the story a bit disjointed this episode, with the show trying to deal with featuring every character at least once in somewhat of a significant way. In order to provide for so many small exchanges between random sets of characters, things felt spread a little too thin.
At the same time, it was interesting to see what issues were brought up between certain characters that hadn’t noticeably been there before, or that may have developed recently that we didn’t know about. For example, I didn’t realize that Sasha and Abraham were “not friends.” I mean, I guess they haven’t really had much screen time to interact with one another, but I didn’t expect there would be so much animosity between the two. Although, I guess going hungry and thirsty for so long is enough to make anyone snap at each other.
I suppose the bigger underlying theme here is one of loss, and moving on. Sasha and Maggie have both recently lost loved ones, and they found solace in each other at the end, albeit briefly. However, it feels a little like a case of “too little, too late” for Maggie’s reaction to Beth going missing and her subsequent death, though they did try to explain this away in her conversation with Glenn.
Overall, this episode was really slow, and seemed like it had a lot of symbolism that I’m not really sure what to make of – like the music box. I guess this episode was supposed to serve to show us that the group is struggling to survive, though some of them aren’t sure that they want to anymore. It also tried to get all profound with Rick’s declaration that “we are the walking dead.” While I’m glad that the show made an effort to stop and show us the emotional and physical struggles that the group is going through, it didn’t make for a very exciting episode.
However, it did get interesting at the end when their new “friend” Aaron showed up. Undoubtedly, he must be “friend” who the bottled waters were from, and he must have been following and spying on them if he knows Rick’s name. But is he a good guy, or a bad guy? Is there much of a difference anymore in this world? It seems like at this point, everyone is doing whatever they can to survive. I am definitely curious to see what this guy is up to.
Josh’s Thoughts: The Walking Dead, Season 5 Episode 10: Them
I didn’t like this episode of The Walking Dead at all. I thought it was really boring, and really felt like it was a waste of an episode. It was pretty realistic, I will give the episode that. I am sure that in an actual zombie apocalypse, there are plenty of moments where people are scrounging for food and water an unable to find any, and are too exhausted to do much, but I don’t think many people want to see that part of it. We want to see the more exciting parts, dealing with hordes of walkers and the human confrontations between different groups.
This episode turned killing walkers into simply stepping aside so they would tumble down a cliff. Way to take the most exciting part about walkers and make it about the most boring thing ever.
I understand this episode was about character development, and setting up how bleak it is for the group now, but there has to be more consistent tension and excitement. I just am not seeing that so far in this second half.
As for this newcomer Aaron, I know who he is from the comics, but I am curious to know what they change. I am hoping for the sake of the show, we get to meet a new group of people, that is either helpful or not, and see how that interaction goes.
One thing I predict for this season is quite a few more main character deaths. The cast of the show has gotten pretty big, so I think AMC might come up with ways to trim it down to a more manageable size. I guess we will see what happens there though.
Scenes from The Walking Dead, Season 5 Episode 11: The Distance
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Walking Dead:
