The Walking Dead: Cuffing and Hunting Seasons

So let’s list some horribly awkward things that can happen when you have sex with someone for the first time.

Stranger bursts in while you are still butt ass naked? Yep. Worse yet, he only bursts in after escaping from your woefully inadequate holding cell and going through your whole camp like he’s the love child of a cat burglar and an IRS audit.

Stranger tells your bedmate’s kid that you were just having sex by using the phrase “I’m… waiting for your mom and dad to get dressed.” You are not his mom. You are only barely dressed. You still smell like sweat and spearmint.

You walk out half-dressed and your kid just looks at you like “get dressed?” while you zip up your pants and avoid eye contact.

All of your friends walk into the you-getting-dressed scene and seem more concerned about your coital status than the stranger who has broken into your house. They stare from you to the dude you just bedded to his kid to you. Despite the trench coat wearing intruder holding your painting in his hands.

Later, you have to awkwardly say to your kid, “I was gonna tell you about me and Michonne, but it just happened. It just happened. Last night.” I was cringing like please don’t ramble your way into listing positions. Can you for once try to establish and maintain healthy boundaries?

And then when he looks at you like, “Wasn’t you just killing Pete because you were trying to literally steal his wife?” you have to be say, “This is different.”

Which is to say: fuck your afterglow, Richonne. There’s work to do.

On other pseudo-cuffing season notes: Why is Abraham being weird and awkward around Sasha when dude spent half his screen time inside Rosita? What is his endgame?Who is he trying to get killed? Or is TWD about to get Heinleinian with its array of family structures?

What the fuck is this dude talking about?
“When you were pouring the bisquick, were you trying to make pancakes?” Um… yeah?
“When I see rain coming, I’m wearing Galoshes. I’d double-up.” So, you and Rosita are wearing protection? Or is this a stripped roleplay we’re talking about?
“Ugging bumplies” Pig latin?

It’s like he can’t say one sentence without lapsing into an old timey country lawyer who is actively having sex with a Tamarian.

 

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Okay so, white Jesus wants Alexandria to trade with his group. Without much questioning, they hit the road in the RV to go to his camp and the awkwardness continues.

Abraham is (still) daydreaming about babies (and Sasha) and in general being a creeper, while Rick and Michonne are being cutesy and holding hands and some other people, Jesus’s friends, are crashing their van and dying a fiery death.

Rick and the crew (minus Maggie who is holding a gun to Jesus’ head and Carol who isn’t in this episode or last week’s) run into save the van crash survivors. And white Jesus repeats, for the second time, that his group isn’t made up of fighters. (But notably, they do have an OB/GYN).

And that’s really true. They’re runners. They’re giving half their supplies to Negan. And when their shipment was light, he kept a dude (Craig) and sent his brother, Ethan, home with a shank for their leader, a smug bag o’dicks named Gregory.

Before Gregory gets stabbed, he introduces himself as “the boss” – unless you are Bruce Springstein, this is a shithead move – and tries to be a hardass in negotiations with Maggie. Why Maggie, you ask.

I asked the same thing. While I’m not mad to see her get more screen time and be something other than (though based on how many references to her pregnancy were made, it wasn’t much more than) an incubator, it was odd that Rick relinquished control to her. Other than him saying he “shouldn’t and [she] gotta start doing these things” ostensibly because Gregory is a prick and Deanna once had faith in her, there’s no real reason why Maggie is thrust forward as chief negotiator.

Except. Except that I’m guessing that the mission they sign up for by the end of the episode, kill Negan in exchange for half of the Hilltop’s supplies, will get someone killed. And Glenn can only resurrect so many times. Even if it’s not Glenn (I think it will be), Maggie is going to have to own that decision, that guilt. If that’s not the writer’s long game, then it’s just out of character.

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What wasn’t out of character was Rick telling Jesus, a man whose life he had saved and whose friends’ lives he’d saved, “We need food. We came all this way; we’re going to get it,” That is how you threaten a person.

Jesus has the audacity to say “Ammo isn’t something we urgently need.” Word? Negan not running you for your shit regularly? You don’t have dudes with spears (spears!) on your wall. How the fuck you don’t need ammo in the post-apocalypse? Is it ‘cause you heal people, Jesus? Because you always need ammo. Fuck, I could use ammo right now and I’m just typing on my couch.

Mid-”we don’t need ammo,” (some of) their people come back from Negan’s “drop-off your shit here” line, the rest are dead or hostages. So wounded Gregory makes the Alexandrians-as-mercenaries deal that just doesn’t feel right.

Exhibit A: Terminus. I can’t take anything away from the survivors. They do defense like nobody’s business. But if we count, getting back at the Terminus survivors as an effective offensive move, then, well, they still lost Bob. And it was like 7 people who weren’t fighters. The Terminus heads lured people because when real fighters showed up, they got massacred; that’s why the Terminus people turned to cannibalism in the first place.

Exhibit B: The Hospital. It wasn’t even a real battle. It was a hostage exchange situation. AND THE HOSTAGE THAT THEY WENT THERE TO SAVE STILL GOT KILLED. This was not a success.

And if we’re being technical, I wouldn’t call their stand at the prison a wild success either, since, y’know, it scattered all of them to the four winds and they lost their home. So now, they’re about to go up against a small country whose gross national product is other people’s shit and they out here just just a bit too confident.

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All I’m saying is Maggie tryna carry to term, Michonne tryna share toothpaste, Rosita out here making jewelry for her dude, Denise makin’ going away packages for Tara. And Rick about to send them to war with a bigger, stronger, more prepared, and more ruthless army. Um, okay.

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