The Walking Dead Season 5 Episode 2 "Strangers"

You are not safe.

I think it is good that Rick realized that Tara didn't really know what she was getting into with the Governor. It was obvious even then that she was being manipulated. That is why he spoke to her at the confrontation at the prison. After helping Glenn she is now part of the group. The fist bump was a nice touch. Tyreese is so sweet. I like how he is trying to protect Carol by making sure everyone in the group knows what she did in the prison and that she is forgiven. He really is the one that needed to forgive her the most. And if he trusts her than everyone else should trust her too. He feels they should tell them about Mika and Lizzie but he doesn't want to. He needs to forget it (which is understandable).

Michonne goes to kill a zombie wrapped in barbed wire and reaches for her katana and then realizes she no longer has it. So she kills it with her gun. It might be a hard habit for her to break. She spent a long time using the katana as her main weapon. Abraham watches this and says to Rosita, "This right there is why I have been waiting for our moment." I don't know what his end game is but comments like that make me not trust him. What are those two planning/keeping from the group?

That night Rick tells Carol he owes her everything. She says it was Tyreese. He was at the prison and grabbed Judith. She gives him the watch she found in Terminus. He tells her how he saw Sam get killed. He tries to give her the watch and she shakes her head. He is still uncertain about what she did back at the prison, but he knows she knew somethings he didn't. She says that he was right about her ability to survive. He asks her for permission for the group to join her. She nods and he says thank you. That is really interesting. Rick sees that Carol makes decisions he wouldn't make but they ended up being for the better and the only reason he and his family are still alive. Daryl and Carol sit together. He looks over at her and she says she doesn't want to talk about it. She just wants to forget. This echoes what Tyreese said earlier. I like that Daryl doesn't have to say anything. She just knows what he is thinking. They hear leaves rustling. Daryl gets up to investigate but sees nothing. We see a shadow of a person walk by.

The next morning as the group is walking through the woods they hear a noise in front of them. They all raise their weapons to fire but it is just Daryl with some squirrels he hunted. He raise his arms and says, "We surrender." Even in the zombiepocalypse there are still moments of humor. Daryl tells Rick he couldn't find any tracks. Whatever was there should have left tracks if they were watching them. He felt a presence. That is never a good thing. It would be better to find tracks to know what you are dealing with than being left with a sense of uncertainty. Abraham asks Rick if he is ready to get back on the road. Rick says yes and Abraham says as soon as they get back on the street they will look for a car so they can head north. Sasha lists things about their lives she doesn't like (wet feet, mosquito bites, etc.) and Bob gives her the optimist's view of those things (cool feet, feeling alive). They kiss. Tyreese just smiles.

A man can be heard yelling help. Carl immediately wants to go to the rescue. Rick hesitates a moment but then goes towards the sound. The group finds a man on top of a boulder surrounded by zombies. They kill all of the zombies. The man is a preacher. He looks terrified and then throws up. He apologizes and thanks them. He says his name is Gabriel. Rick asks him if he has any weapons. Gabriel says he doesn't need any weapons. The word of God is the only weapon he needs. To which Daryl replies, "Sure didn't look like it." Classic Daryl. Gabriel replies that he called for help and help came. He then asks if they have any food. Carl gives him some pecans (were those pecans from the house where Carol, Tyreese, and the girls stayed?). I think it is interesting when Gabriel comments that Judith is a beautiful child everyone looks defensive as if that were a threat against Judith's life. He asks if they have a camp. Rick says no and asks if he has a camp. Gabriel replies that he has a church. Rick starts with the three questions. Gabriel hadn't killed any walkers or people. When Rick asks why Gabriel replies that the Lord abhors violence. Then Rick asks, "What have you done?" No one survives this long in the zombiepocalypse without having done something abhorrent. Rick says they have all done something. Gabriel says he is a sinner and confesses those sins to God only.

They make their way to Gabriel's church. Rick asks if Gabriel had been watching them earlier. Gabriel says he keeps to himself. People now are just as dangerous as the dead. Daryl says they are worse. Daryl Dixon telling it like it is. Gabriel says he doesn't venture very far but then says maybe he is lying and leading them into a trap so he can steal all of their squirrels. The group sees this as a threat and he is quick to say he has a bad sense of humor. It was all a joke, or is it? When they get to the church Rick puts his hand out to get the keys. He wants to look around first. Gabriel hands the keys over and the group enters the church with their weapons at the ready. They inspect the church but find no one. Just empty food cans and children's drawing about the Bible (the burning bush and 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, interesting choices). Carol finds a room where Gabriel has been copying the Bible into a notebook. Abraham says they found a bus outside and he can fix it in a day or two. Abraham is ready to leave as soon as the bus is fixed. Michonne wants a minute for them to catch their breath and get supplies. Rick agrees that they need food and ammunition. Glenn tells Abraham that one way or another they are doing what Rick tells them to do. They are not splitting up again. Abraham doesn't look pleased. Tara agrees with Glenn. Bob says he wants to go with him but agrees with Tara. They will do as Rick says. Gabriel says he survived because of luck. The world ended shortly after their annual food drive. Since it was just him the food lasted a long time. When it ran out he raided the surrounding area with the exception of one place because it was overrun by walkers. Sasha says they can handle the dozen or so walkers at this place. She and Bob will go with Rick and Tyreese will watch Judith. Tyreese looks like a happy papa bear to be watching Judith.  He says he would watch her anytime and do anything for her.

Rick is grateful to him for that. Rick tells Gabriel he is coming with them even though Gabriel insists that he won't be of any help. Rick tells Carl that he doesn't trust Gabriel. Carl needs to know that he is never safe and that he should never let his guard down. Carl says that not everybody can be bad. I don't know Carl, so far most of the other survivors have wanted to kill you and your group. Carl tells Rick that they are both strong and strong enough that they can help people and deal with the situation if something goes wrong. "We are strong enough that we don't have to be afraid and we don't have to hide." Rick says that Gabriel is hiding something. That much is obvious and in the zombiepocalypse the paranoid survive.

Bob tells Rick that he wasn't wrong about wanting to go back to kill the people at Terminus but at some point if you keep going like that you let go of everything. Abraham will get Eugene to Washington and this world will end and it will be like it was before. Rick says this is the real world. to which Bob replies, "This is the nightmare, and nightmares end." That is very optimistic of Bob but I don't think the zombiepocalypse will be fixed so easily. But he does have a point about losing yourself. You could survive this world but lose all of your humanity. That wouldn't be much of a life.

Daryl asks Carol if she is okay. She says she has to be. He says they get to start all over again with each other. She saved them all by herself. She says she was lucky. They find a car but it doesn't work. Daryl says, "We ain't dead. And whatever happened, happened. Lets start over." She wants to and he says that they can. She looks uncertain. She says they should leave the car their in case things turn out badly at the church.

Tara and Maggie are standing outside of a gun store. Tara doesn't think they will find anything inside at this point. They hear a noise from inside and Glenn comes out with his gun. They ask if it was a walker and he admits he tripped over a stack of boxes and a mop. But he did find three silencers in a meat freezer. The number one rule of scavenging, "There's nothing left in this world that isn't hidden."

Gabriel tells them they have arrived at their destination. It is the local food bank where all the cans of food in his church were meant to go. Rick and the others enter carefully with their weapons at the ready. They find a big whole in the middle of the floor full of walkers and shelves with canned goods. They decide to use the shelves to their advantage and keep the walkers at arms length as they gather the food. Rick forces Gabriel to go down with them. The plan works well at first. Then Gabriel reacts to a walker with glasses on.  He runs away from the group and tries to go back up the stairs but falls and the walker makes its way towards him. Rick gets the others to go with him to save Gabriel. The group kills one zombie after another. Bob gets dragged under water by a zombie. He comes back up and says he is okay. Gabriel apologizes and says he panicked. Rick asked if he knew that walker when she was alive. Gabriel doesn't answer. Rick asks Michonne if she misses her sword. She says it was never hers. She just found it. She says she got good at using it because it was just her and the zombies day after day for a long time.  But that wasn't a life. She misses Andrea and Hershel but not what was before or even her sword.

Rick finds Carl outside. Carl points out to him scratches by the window. It looks like someone was trying to get in. He also found "You'll burn for this." carved into a wall of the church. He says it doesn't mean that Gabriel is bad and that they can handle this. I'm not so sure about that Carl. He must have done something really bad for someone to write that on the wall. When you combine that with his weird guilt ridden behavior all signs point to something bad.

That night the groups feasts. Abraham proposes a toast. They are all survivors. But, he asks them if that is all they want to be? Spend each day just surviving to live another day. He says if they get Eugene to Washington they can do more than survive. They can live. Eugene tells them there is an infrastructure that was built to survive an event like this that is filled with food, a refuge. They can wait it out in safety until the cure works. Abraham asks them to come with them and save the world for Judith and themselves and the other survivors. They all look at Rick. Judith coos and Rick says she is in and they are all in. They cheer. Sasha kisses Bob and he asks for one more kiss. I think he was bitten by that zombie and this is his goodbye kiss. He looks sad and that seems like the most likely explanation for his behavior. Tara tells Maggie that she was part of the group with the Governor. Maggie looks shocked. Tara explains she didn't know who the Governor was or what he was capable of or who they were. She didn't want to keep it a secret. Maggie says she is with them now and hugs her. Of course Maggie understands. She knows that the Governor was a manipulator not to mention that Tara saved Glenn's life. Rick tells Gabriel he knows he is hiding something and that the secret is something he can't hide from. That is his business but "these people are my family" and if his secret will harm them in any way Rick will kill him.

Carol fixes the engine in the car. A walker comes out of the woods and she kill it. Daryl steps out of the woods and asks her what she is doing. She says she doesn't know. They start to walk back when Daryl spots the car that stole Beth. He breaks the tail lights of their car and gets in with Carol and they follow the other car.

Bob sits outside looking towards the church. His smile turns sad and he walks into the woods and cries. Yup, I'm pretty sure he was bitten. Out of nowhere someone wearing a hoodie hits Bob. The camera pans to the tree where a mark has been carved.

Bob wakes up and there is a fire with the man that Tyreese beat up in the cabin in the woods (I thought he killed him but I was wrong, he probably should have killed him). Gareth is there telling Bob to wake up.  He tells Bob that the good news is that he is not dead, yet. Gareth says he didn't want to hurt Bob before or get him away from his group or scare him. They are things they had to do. Bob and his group took away their home. Now they are out in the world trying to survive. To do that they have to hunt.  They didn't start out eating people. It evolved into that. They evolved out of necessity. Now they have devolved into hunters. "I told you. You can't go back, Bob." Nothing happening to Bob is personal. It is cosmic justice for it to be Bob. But they would have done this to anybody and they will. At the end of the day a man's got to eat. Gareth takes a big bite of meat and we see they have cut off Bob's leg and roasted it on the fire. He tells Bob he tastes much better than they expected.

Final Thoughts
- I like the slow motion walking with the intense music in the background.  I feel the show should intersperse that with awesome zombie kills and it would be perfect.
- Was the person in the woods looking at Carol and Daryl someone from Terminus, Morgan, Gabriel, or someone else entirely?
- What did Gabriel do to have someone write that on the wall?  I think he might have locked himself in the church with all the food and when people tried to get in (as evidenced by the knife marks on the windows) he wouldn't let them.  He therefore caused the death of many people, like the female walker with glasses, and feels guilty about it.
- Carol doesn't seem to want to stay with the group anymore. She told Tyreese once she saw him safely into Terminus she would leave. The entire time that Abraham is talking about Washington she is looking towards the door. I think Daryl sensed this from her and that is why he followed her.
- It appears Rick was right about going back to kill the survivors from Terminus.  A lesson they should have learned with the Governor.
- My sister pointed out that it appears that Gareth and Bob know each other.  Could it be that Bob was at Terminus? He never gave any details about the two groups he had previously lived with, except that he was the lone survivor.  Could he have escaped Terminus when the group of rapists took over? Or does the familiarity stem from days of interrogation? We don't know how long they were at Terminus.  I assume it was only a few days since Tyreese and Carol showed up not long after.
- Since the terminus people ate Bob's leg and he is probably bitten by a zombie will they get sick from it? Do we care?
- Why doesn't Maggie seem worried about Beth? Daryl mentions that someone took her but no one seems to care about finding her.
- The group should have grabbed some walkie-talkies from Terminus so they could communicate when on patrol.  This would avoid the confusion about where Daryl and Carol went.  They are safe for the moment, but who knows what danger they are headed towards.
- The Biblical quote on the arch in Gabriel's church is from Galatians 6: 9 "And let us not grow weary of doing good / For in due season we will reap if we do not give up."