The Walking Dead Watch: “Spend”

“Spend,” episode 14 of the fifth season of The Walking Dead, doesn’t skimp on the gore. Perhaps the title is a nod to what the producers anticipated having to do to pull off so many stomach-churning (also, stomach-dismembering) visual effects. Or perhaps it’s a nod to the writers’ willingness to let blood toward the end of a season. Whatever the case, this isn’t one to watch while eating.

The group is now more or less fully integrated with the Alexandria community. Daryl is out recruiting. Abraham is working on the construction gang. Noah wants to be an architect. Maggie is part of the town government. Glenn, Tara, and Eugene are doing scavenging runs. And Rick and Carol are preoccupied with the mundane whodunnits of small-town life.

Carol and Rick slowly suss out that something’s not quit right about the town doctor. He’s probably hitting his wife, Jessie, and maybe their son, Sam, Carol decides, before telling Rick the family drama is going to end in bloodshed. Meanwhile, Abraham shows himself a born leader at the construction site by saving one of the workers and taking command of the terrified crew.

But most of the action occurs at the warehouse where Deanna’s son, Aiden, leads a scouting party to find parts to fix the community’s power grid. Things go fubar almost immediately: Aiden is impaled on some metal shelving when he accidentally sets a grenade off; Tara is also knocked unconscious. While Eugene takes care of Tara, Glenn, Noah and the coward Nicholas try to un-impale Aiden to no avail. They fail, and he gets slowly, squishily eaten from the middle out by a pack of walkers.

When Glenn, Noah and Nicholas find themselves trapped inside a revolving door, the coward Nicholas makes a run for it, sacrificing Noah in the process. He gets slowly, squishily eaten from the face out by a pack of walkers. Glenn, Eugene, Tara and the coward Nicholas make it out alive.

The show ends with a prophetic warning. Gabriel tells Deanna that Rick’s group is corruption itself and to be wary for what is sure to come in episodes 14 and 16.

Zombie Kill Count
1 bullet to the head by Noah; 1 knife to the skull by Tara; 1 rifle shot to chest-mounted grenade by Aiden; 1 knife to the head by Noah; 1 shot to the head by Glenn; 9 shots to the dome on the construction site; 7 swings of a construction implement by Abraham; 1 shot to the head by Eugene; 4 shots to the head by Noah; 3 shots to the head by Glenn.
Estimated total: 29

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