After a cliffhanger ending last week, “The Walking Dead” returned with a vengeance Sunday night — in every sense of the word. With a herd of hungry Hunters on their tail, and with one of their party having already lost a drumstick in the worst possible way, there was no question that a showdown was coming between Rick Grimes and the scheming, man-eating Gareth.
Here’s everything that went down on “Four Walls and a Roof.”
He who tastes best laughs last
Poor, poor Bob Stookey: After waking up to discover that he’d been turned into human barbecue, he has to suffer the added agony of listening to Gareth monologuing, super-villain style, about the finer points of cannibal gourmandise. (If you’re wondering, women taste better than men, and attractive people taste better than ugly ones.) But Bob has a special surprise up his sleeve for his slavering kidnappers: a nice, festering zombie bite courtesy of last episode’s underwater walker.
Yep, that’s right, Hunters: Bob, by his own delighted description, is tainted meat. Tainted meeeeeeat!
The Hunters, who have been frantically eating Bob kebabs for the entirety of the show’s cold open, react to this news by theatrically screaming and blowing chunks all over the place, and it’s fantastic. Sasha’s face when she realizes that her sweetheart is about to die, on the other hand, is not so fantastic.
So that’s Gabriel’s big secret
People are watching from the woods, Daryl and Carol are still missing, and the survivors have just discovered the newly be-stumped Bob left outside the doors of the church: It can’t be coincidence that Father Gabriel just happened to come on the scene right before all this bad stuff happened, right? Actually, nope. It’s just a coincidence. Confronted by Rick, Gabriel admits his dirty shameful secret: that when the plague hit, he locked the church doors and hid inside while the dead ate his screaming congregation.
Glenn is all kinds of stepping up
He’s not a mercenary revenge monster like Rick, or a beefcake alpha mustache like Abraham, but Glenn does have a special talent for diplomatic leadership, and he’s not afraid to use it. After Rick and Abraham nearly come to blows over a disagreement about whether to flee to Washington, Glenn literally inserts himself between them and convinces Abraham to stay for another few hours — while also putting his foot down with Rick. When the bus leaves for D.C., he and Maggie are going to be on it.
Rick keeps a promise
With hours still to go before daylight, Rick leads a small group into the woods to ambush the Hunters. Which is a terrible plan that makes no sense, because of course the Hunters are just watching and waiting for this opportunity to pile into the church and eat Baby Judith like a piece of popcorn chicken. And sure enough, they do — enter the church, that is. They stalk down the pews, weapons drawn, when suddenly they hear the baby crying…
…and from out of the darkness, a silenced bullet blows several of Gareth’s fingers off! Because the terrible plan that made no sense was actually a brilliant trap, and now, the creepy people-eaters are cornered with nowhere to go. Gareth tries to reason with Rick, promising that if they just let him go, he’ll never come back and try to eat them. Rick points out that this just means Gareth will go wandering down the highway and eat someone else, which is not exactly better. Plus, he did make him a promise, remember?
And then, as promised, Rick chops Gareth into tiny pieces with that pretty machete with the red handle on it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a title
With blood splattered all over the pews, Father Gabriel emerges, and looks horrified at the way the church has been defiled. “This is the lord’s house!” he gasps.
“No. It’s just four walls and a roof,” says Maggie, thus providing us with the episode’s title. Also, as a guy who’s been copying the Bible word for word for the past year-plus, shouldn’t Gabriel be pretty well-versed in righteous violence by now? The Old Testament is, like, 90% angry smiting.
Bye bye, Bobby
Although Bob’s death isn’t the most agonizing ever to occur on “The Walking Dead,” it is really sad to see him and Sasha saying their goodbyes. He confesses that he didn’t tell her he’d been bitten, because he knew that once she knew, they’d be focused on his death.
“I knew it would become all about the end, and I really liked the middle,” he says. And because Bob doesn’t like long drawn-out goodbyes, he doesn’t give her one; instead, he just checks out right in the middle of a conversation.
Michonne’s sword is back, and so is… ?
Although Michonne claimed in the most recent episode that she didn’t miss her katana, let’s be real, she just looks better when she has it in her hand. And as she clutches it, there’s a rustling from the bushes. Who is it? Daryl! And he’s got someone with him, but we don’t know who.
“Come on out,” he says. But then the screen goes black and the credits roll, so he could have just been talking to a groundhog or something.
What did you think of “The Walking Dead” this week? Let us know in the comments below.
No Comments