The Walking Dead’ recap: ‘Now’ and ‘Then’

Series makes nasty return with season 5 premiere

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  • Gene Page/AMC
  • HUNGER GAMES: Gareth (center) talks to Rick and Bob



There’s a scene in last night’s premiere of the “The Walking Dead” that I won’t forget anytime soon. Gareth and his cronies have Rick, Glenn, Daryl, Bob, and a few randoms bound and pressed up against those bathroom troughs that used to give me peeing anxiety at Braves games in Fulton County Stadium. We watch two men — one armed with an aluminum baseball bat, the other a knife — as they go through the process of knocking their victims into semiconsciousness and then proceed to slit their throats, the blood spilling into the aforementioned trough.

What’s always been true about “The Walking Dead” is that the human vs. human violence is tougher to watch than any of the gruesome walker attacks. In the zombie apocalypse the only thing scarier than the undead looking to make a meal out of you is the prospect of other surviving homo sapiens looking to do the same. “No Sanctuary,” the first ep of season 5, found our crew being introduced into the cannibalistic ways of the Terminus survivors (let’s call them “Terminites”), while also providing a little bit of background on why Gareth and company decided to go from helping people to turning them into part of the daily diet. Here’s a breakdown of the highlights, reunions, and WTF moments from last night’s ep. Warning: Spoilers ahead!

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‘Then’/Now’
We kick things off with a flashback introduced through white text on a black background that reads “Then.” Here, we find Gareth and his crew are being held captive while someone can be heard screaming in the background. OK, so it seems the Terminites may have started off like any other band of survivors, but then, through this captivity, something went terribly wrong. More on that further down.

Back in the “Now,” our band of survivors are still being held captive, but we see them making weapons out of found things like they’re prepping for a shank-off in a prison riot. So to make sure that does’t happen the crew is subdued with an explosive device and things go blank. Rick comes to, lying on the ground, until a man kicks him in the face and back to into unconsciousness. When he wakes up, that’s where we meet the bat-to-head, knife-to-throat tandem ready to bleed our boys dry. Bob tries pleading with Gareth for their lives, but all the latter cares about are the human inventory numbers he’s keeping in a little journal. Before the two executioners can make waste of Glenn, an explosion throws them off. The opening credits roll. Fuggin’ awesomely gruesome way to get things rolling!


Tyreese, Carol, and baby Judith
Even though they’re down one innocent girl and her homicidal-maniac sister, Tyreese and Carol are still running from zombies with baby Judith in tow. They run into a Terminite setting off fireworks and talking on the phone about a “chick with a sword” and the hat he’s going to take from the kid once Gareth “bleeds him out.” Carol and Tyreese hear all that yang he’s talking and tie him up. Carol covers herself in zombie guts and heads to Terminus while Tyreese sticks around and keeps watch on their hostage who likes talking about how he’s going to kill everyone. The dude gets pretty close when walkers descend upon the cabin they’ve taken shelter in and Tyreese is distracted long enough for the guy to grab Judith and threaten to wring her neck. Remember, this “TWD,” children (babies included) can get killed too. He tells Tyreese to go outside and take on the walkers or else. Well, as Rick said at the end of last season: “These folks are going to feel pretty stupid when they realize that they’re screwing with the wrong people.” Chances are, he probably had Tyreese in mind as one to not fuck with. Ever. While the Terminite talks to a lady named Cynthia on the phone, Tyreese kills off every last walker and them comes back into the cabin and merks the potential baby killer. Big up to Chad Coleman for always making Tyreese one of the best, but saddest characters to watch.

Carol
I like Carol. She might’ve shanked the love of Tyreese’s life but Carol’s the character that follows the “kill or be killed” credo to the core, and in a zombie apocalypse there’s almost no other choice than to hunt or be hunted. When a hoard of walkers comes to Terminus, Carol sets things in motion when she uses a gun and some fireworks to set off a gas tank and cause a huge explosion, the very one that kept Glenn and crew from being batted with the Louisville Slugger. She makes her way into a room that looks like a place for a cannibalistic cult to do some cannibalistic cult worshipping and then gets into a fight with one of the female Terminites. Before shooting the woman and leaving her for the walkers to finish, Carol learns that the Terminites were once a peaceful bunch till a group of sexual assaulting murderers came along and fucked everything up, and that’s when they got the “message.” She tells Carol: “You’re either the butcher or you’re the cattle.” We don’t know exactly what the message is except that maybe human meat is a great source of protein?

Carl, Michonne, Maggie, Eugene, et al.
The rest of the gang is still trapped when finally one of the questions we’ve been dying to ask gets thrown at Eugene aka the man with the mysterious cure to save the world. “What is the cure?” To which the man with the golden mullet responds by explaining that he was one of a 10-person government team charged with finding ways to combat pathogenic organisms by what he calls “fighting fire with fire.” Basically, he’s going to take that logic with him to Washington D.C. and end walker world all together.

Rick, Glenn, Daryl, and Bob
The mix of Carol’s handy work with the explosion and flaming walkers running around leaves the two executioners debating their next move, which gives Rick time to break free and shank them. Just know that Rick, the throat biter does not fuck around, and he’s been cold-blooded since that jugular-munching ep. Rick frees the others after walking through the Terminus crew’s butcher shop of human meat. They grab Carl, Michonne, and crew, and escape. I must say the whole Terminus going down in flames a la Sherman’s march was pretty damn awesome. What was maybe more awesome were the reunions that followed. Daryl and Carol hugged it out. Rick, Carl, and baby Judith are back together (somewhere in “TWD” heaven Lori is smiling). Tyreese and Sasha are also reunited. Though Rick wants to stick around to finish off the remaining Terminites, everyone else agrees it’s best to keep moving. On the way out, Rick edits one of the Terminus signs to read “No Sanctuary.”

Back ‘Then’
Our next flashback shows Gareth’s people being pulled out of the room they’re being held in to face God knows what. We see our lady friend that Carol offed, but this time it’s Gareth delivering the “butcher” over “cattle line,” as he talks to her about how they’re going to take Terminus back from their captors. The ep ends in the present day, with a masked man who turns out be none other than Morgan Jones, reading Rick’s “No Sanctuary” sign.

BEST LINE: “Y’all know what to do; go for their eyes first then their throats.” Rick to the survivors as they prepare to fight the Termites

WTF MOMENT: The bleeding out of humans to make into lunchmeat for other humans. Again, won’t soon forget that scene.

RANDOM ASIDES:
- Where is Gareth? The previews for upcoming eps suggest he’ll be back to shake things up for our survivors.
- Where are the people that turned the Terminites into violent cannibals? Sounds like running into them would be a lot worse?
- Could any of this be related to the disappearance of Beth (Emily Kinney)