On its surface, last night’s episode of The Walking Dead, “Them,” may have seemed like a filler episode, and if it felt like an echo of the Frank Darabont-era The Walking Dead, it’s because it was. “Them” may have been a transitional episode that failed to advance the plot besides the introduction of Aaron in the final moments, but the episode was nevertheless interesting for the way it provided a book-end to the Season 2 episode, “Pretty Much Dead, Anyway.”
That was the feeling that many of the characters were experiencing through much of last night’s episode. Still grieving over the losses of Beth and Tyreese, starving, thirsty, and exhausted, Maggie even wondered, “How much time do we have left?,” implying that they were “pretty much dead, anyway.” There were moments during the episode in which Maggie felt like giving up. Daryl burnt a cigarette ash on his hand just to see if he could still feel something. Meanwhile, Sasha — like Noah — didn’t know if she could make it anymore, either.
Struggling all episode to keep moving, to stay alive, and to find their fight, the echoes to that Season 2 episode — where Carol’s daughter, Zombie-Sophia, was shot and killed — came full circle when Rick delivered that speech in the barn. “This is how we survive,” he said. “We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead.”
But Daryl, who remembered the last time they were confronted with a barn — the one on Hershel’s farm, the one full of zombies, full of “The Walking Dead” — shot back, insisting, “We ain’t them.”
Walkers trying to get out of the barn:
Walkers trying to get into the barn:
Hershel, you’ll recall, was under the impression in that Season 2 episode that the walkers in his barn were just like them, only they were sick, and most everyone — except Shane — was reluctant to kill off the horde because they still held onto the flicker of hope that they could be saved. It was then that Rick had to prove to Hershel that they weren’t like them. The walkers were already dead. Rick putting a bullet in Sophia’s head reinforced the line between the living and the dead, illustrating that there was no coming back once that line had been crossed.
Daryl’s rejoinder last night, meanwhile, was a reminder that they may have been sick from exhaustion, but they weren’t dead. They had not crossed over that line. They weren’t “them.”
It would take a horde of zombies trying to get into the barn in “them,” and the survivors — bolstered by Daryl, Maggie, and Sasha (who, numbed by their grieving, felt closest to death) — to remind them that they were still alive. That, by God, they still had some fight left in them.
It also took a miracle tornado that Gabriel had forsaken earlier in the episode to save them from those walkers. They would live to fight another day, and with clean-shaven, L.L. Bean-looking Aaron introduced into their lives, they may soon get a chance to finally clean up and feel alive again, too. For Rick, who is looking like Grizzly Adams these days, a razor can’t come soon enough.
