Walking Dead: “What Happened and What's Going On” Review

A ‘Lil Review

Walking Dead: “What Happened and What's Going On” Season 5, Episode 9 (February 08, 2015)

Tyreese bites the farm!!! The group finally leaves Atlanta!! The Walking Dead is back with another great episode!!

The episode begins with a funeral where the group is obviously mourning the death of a fallen comrade. The audience is oriented to a series of intercut images. Some of the images were from past locations, including the prison, as well as a picture of some twins. The group proceeds to go north towards Noah’s walled community in Richmond, VA, finally leaving Atlanta.

During the car ride north, Noah and Tyreese discuss Beth’s demise last episode. The trade of him for Beth was the right call to make, but it just didn’t work out the way everyone wanted to. Tyreese proceeds to tell Noah that whatever happened, happened the way it was supposed to. Tyreese explained to Noah not to seek revenge, and tells him about listening to the radio to be aware of the world around you, saying it’s your duty to the world. Noah proceeds to snap the CD he had made for Beth.

As they approach Noah’s community in Richmond, the group ditches their car so that they won’t be seen. As the group reaches the gate, they realize that no one is there guarding the community. As they scale the wall, they realize that it has become overrun by Walkers as Noah’s neighbors are either dead or walking around as Walkers. This is a low blow for Noah, who had hope that it would still be standing. As the group proceeds to kill whatever Walkers are roaming around, Noah falls down in despair. After the Walkers are cleared, Rick and Glen discuss how they really wanted this to have a happy ending for they owed it to Beth to get him home.

Tyreese tries to reassure Noah that everything will be OK and not to give up hope. Noah then proceeds to head to his home to see if there are any survivors, with Tyreese trying to stop him following. When they reach Noah’s home, they door has been broken in and we see Noah’s mother dead with a hole in her head as Noah mourns and covers her up in a blanket.

Tyreese hears a scratching and goes to investigate, but as he reaches one of the rooms, he sees a body and takes a moment to look around the room at the pictures of his brothers. Unfortunately Tyreese does not see the Walker behind him until it’s too late as Noah’s undead brother then bites him on his arm. Noah then runs into the room and kills his undead brother and then goes out to try and get help from Michonne, Glenn, and Rick.

Tyreese begin hallucinating as he hears the radio, and begins seeing past dead characters including the person he didn’t kill from Terminus, Bob, Lizzie & Mika, and The Governor. They are telling him “It’s OK.” This seems to be some sort of “afterlife trip” as Tyreese is beginning to suffer from his bite wounds. One of the hallucinations is actually a real Walker that proceeds to try and bite him. In order to kill the Walker, Tyreese has to sacrifice his arm even further to bash its head in.

Tired of running and being on the road, Michonne makes the case for the group to stay in this community. But Rock states that the trees may surrounding the area blocks their line of sight and both Walkers and humans could attack any moment with no warning. As they continue looking is clear they can’t stay because the place is too run down and susceptible to attack. Michonne then makes the case for the group to continue north to Washington, DC. Eugene might have been lying about the cure, but if any place in the country is safe, it has to be DC. Rick agrees that they should continue to DC, after all it’s only 100 miles from them at this point. Then they hear Noah calling for help and run towards him. After saving Noah from a Walker attack, he tells them that Tyreese has been bitten.

Tyreese is continuing to hallucinate with dead characters. The Terminus person and the Governor are basically telling him he’s too weak for this world, and Beth, Lizzie, and Mika are telling him it’s time to let go. Tyreese imagines Lizzie taking his hand in comfort, but in reality it is Rick grabbing his arm and Michonne cutting it off in hope it will stop the infection as it did for Hershel.

As the group is carrying Tyreese out of the house to get back to the car, they have to defeat a small group of Walkers. As they finally get to the car they hit a parked car in front that had a bunch of Walker torsos that had a familiar carving on their heads. Whoever was marking on the trees also was carving on the Walkers. In the car Tyreese continues hallucinating with Bob, Beth, and the girls in the car with him. They all smile at him and tell him again that it’s OK. Tyreese asks the group to turn off the radio, and he proceeds to die. The group pulls the car over to take him out and Michonne can deliver a death blow to him.

The episode ends with the funeral that we thought was for Beth, turns out it actually was Tyreese’s death. Father Gabriel delivers a eulogy as Sasha and Maggie cry in mourning. The group makes a makeshift grave for Tyreese complete with his famous wool cap on a stick as a gravestone.

Thoughts:

This was a very good episode!

While Tyreese in the show was not the same strong masculine character from the comic books, it was still sad to see him go. He was the moral center of the group. Most of the characters has “gone to the dark side” as one would in the world of The Walking Dead, but Tyreese maintained his core and stayed true to himself. As he told the hallucination of The Governor, that character was dead before he was dead, because he went to a dark place. Tyreese was able to maintain his sense of self. He was a good guy before the apocalypse, he remained a good guy during the apocalypse.

Noah is just bad luck! He’s responsible for two of the main character’s deaths within the last two episodes. He needs to tone himself and his actions down before even more are killed by his actions.

One again, The Walking Dead sticks to the “too many black guys rule.” Whenever a new black guys joins the show, another has to die. It would be nice if they didn’t continue to do this, but for some reason that’s the show’s narrative. Father Gabriel joins: Bob dies. Noah becomes (hopefully) permanent: Tyreese dies. I just hope a new Asian person doesn’t join so that Glenn will die.

The hallucinations were great editing and it was nice to see some past characters come back for those scenes.

The misdirection was great! The beginning I really thought that it was Beth’s death.

Comic vs. TV Show:

As previously stated Tyreese on the TV show was a wimpy character compared to the Tyreese of the comic books. In the comic books he was basically the Darryl character, Rick’s right hand man who was a soldier. When Tyreese and Rick had a fist fight in the comic, it was very reminiscent of the fight scene in They Live. After all, Tyreese had to kill his undead daughter with his bare hands, and then willingly killed her boyfriend, and then killed him as a Walker.

Tyreese was also a ladies’ man. He was with Carol.

Before Tyreese cheating on her with Michonne.

He was basically responsible for Carol’s psychosis and eventual suicide. Needless to say he was a much different character. His TV show personal was radically different. This made fans of the comic book not like this interpretation, but he did serve his purpose on the show.

In the comic book Tyreese died while the group battles The Governor when Woodbury stormed the prison. The Governor cut Tyreese’s head off instead of Hershel’s. So his TV show character lasted longer than he did in the comic show and was living on borrowed time.

RIP Tyreese, both comic and TV show.

Until next week!

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AMCTV.com

Walking Dead Comic Book

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