The Walking Dead: ‘Spend’ Recap and Review

After many fans complained about the slower pace of last week’s The Walking Dead, the show surely shut the critics up after this week’s intense episode.  Episode 514, Spend, provided more intensity than one would expect.  With how cozy the group had gotten in Alexandria, I started to think that things would be pretty easy for everybody for a little while, but that was proven wrong in a flash.

The people of Alexandria showed how weak and cowardly they really are in this episode, which goes a long way with providing a logical motivation for why Rick and the other newcomers are quickly taking charge of the safe haven.  It seems pretty obvious that the people behind these walls haven’t seen or dealt with nearly as many atrocities as our main characters.  If the Governor had decided to attack Alexandria with his tank rather than the prison, walls or not, he surely would have won.

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For example, early on in the episode, Sgt. Abraham Ford accompanies a group of Alexandrians to a construction site to gather materials to expand their walls.  After the inevitable attack from a random group of zombies, a young girl named Francine falls from her lookout perch and is nearly taken by the walkers after her comrades leave her to die.  Ford is initially the only one who comes to her aid, thoroughly impressing the others who just sat on their thumbs.  Francine provides a knuckle sandwich to one of the cowards that left her to die, which thoroughly impressed Abraham.

Jessie’s son, Sam, approaches Carol asking for more of her addictive chocolate cookies.  Despite how warmly she treated all children earlier in the series, Carol is now extremely distant to young Sam, to the point of being straight up mean.  It’s obvious she’s choosing not to bond with another child again, still dealing with the anguish of her own daughter’s death, and later, Lizzie and Mika’s.  She’s ready to intimidate Sam into just leaving her the hell alone until she surmises that Sam’s dad is abusing his family.  She figures this out after Sam asks for one of her stolen guns for the purpose of “protection.”

Meanwhile, Eugene, Tara, Noah and Glenn, along with two Alexandrians, Aiden and Nicholas, all go on a mission to retrieve some parts for the city’s downed power grid.  They wind up in a warehouse where they are confronted by an armored walker.  After Aiden shoots one of the grenades on the former soldier’s uniform, everything quickly goes to Hell.

After the blast, Aiden is quickly revealed to be a goner.  He is impaled on a pair of spikes, with one going directly through his midsection.  Glenn and Nicholas attempt to pry him off, but I knew it’d be to no avail as Aiden would simply bleed out even if they had managed to lift him.  I think the humane thing to do would have been to just put a bullet through Aiden’s brain, sparing him the agony of being eaten and ripped apart.  But after Glenn and Nicholas waste too much time arguing, they are forced to abandon Aiden, causing him that painful death that could have been avoided.

Tara was also injured in the blast, forcing Eugene to grow a pair and start carrying her to safety.  He even takes down a few walkers, albeit very nervously.  Still, shaky Eugene has more balls than the most able-bodied men in Alexandria, and kudos to him for standing up.  He even returns with a music-blaring vehicle to draw walkers away from a revolving door where Noah, Glenn and Nicholas had wound up trapped.

And, in this revolving door, we would witness one of the most disturbing and graphic scenes from the entire series.  Once again proving themselves to be the most cowardly group of post-apocalyptic survivors on the planet, Nicholas pushes on the revolving door enough to free himself, opening the other side which contained Noah and Glenn.  Once the walkers grab Noah’s leg and pull him out, you knew he was done for.  His implied death wasn’t enough for AMC, though, as they then found it necessary to first shove Noah’s face against the glass door, causing Glenn (and millions of viewers at home) to watch him slowly get his freaking face ripped off.  It probably wasn’t necessary, but it certainly has got to satisfy the gorehound horror fans who think the show has been too “soft” lately.

It’s horrifically sad that Noah died, but I guess I started having my suspicions once Noah started talking about his future earlier in the episode.  He expressed his desire to stick around for the “long haul” and learn architecture to help with the walls in Alexandria.  The Walking Dead is known for developing characters in significant ways just before killing them off, so there were definitely a few alarm bells ringing.  Still, what a waste to see him ripped apart so savagely, and after Beth even sacrificed her own life to secure Noah’s escape from Grady Memorial.  It’s even more tragic when you consider that if Beth had just left with Rick’s group, causing Noah to stay behind as a ward, it would have been shitty, but at least both of them would still be alive.  And so would Tyreese, come to think of it.

Father Gabriel secretly goes to Deanna and tries to tell her she is wrong for letting in the people in his group, citing the horrors he has seen while with them.  Deanna seemed dismissive of the priest, understanding that Rick and the others would have had to do some horrible things to stay alive as long as they had.  However, Maggie Greene was eavesdropping nearby, unbeknownst to Deanna and Gabriel, so one has to wonder what she will do with this information.

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The craziness of Spend culminated with Carol coming to Rick and telling him about the situation with Jessie, Sam and Jessie’s husband, Pete.  It’s established that Pete is abusing his family somehow, and Carol takes it upon herself to remind Rick that in this world, there is only one acceptable punishment for somebody like Pete.  Carol tells Rick that he has to kill Pete, and Rick doesn’t respond but clearly considers the option very strongly.  It makes you wonder, if Rick ends up killing Pete, is he doing to do so secretly from Jessie and Sam?  Then, is he going to hook up with Jessie, totally acting like he has no idea what happened to her husband?  You know, a lot of people are saying that Rick has now gone “full Shane,” but if you ask me, I’d stay he’s starting to get a little worse.

There are only two episodes left in this season and I’m dying to see what the hell happens.  I’m sure that these final two episodes are going to be even crazier, as AMC will no doubt have something planned to keep us salivating for Season 6 in six months.  Could the season end with the introduction of Negan?  Or will it end with the tensions between Rick’s group and the native Alexandrians boiling to a destructive head?

The Walking Dead airs Sunday nights on AMC at 9/8c.