Comics/Graphic Novels

Recap: The Walking Dead 5×07 – Crossed

Welcome to the official Panels The Walking Dead weekly recap! I did these recaps occasionally for iFanboy back in the day, and I am thrilled to be bringing them here to Panels. In the discussion, please be mindful of spoilers from the comics, let’s let everyone get their reveals the old-fashioned way.

I’m going to try something a little different this week. Since there are several storylines happening completely independently, I’m going to batch those sections of the recap to make it less disjointed. I think the way they do it on the show works OK, but I think it makes for a weaker recap if I go in their order. Let me know if you like this style in the comments!

Sasha is making pews into kindling. Tyreese and Daryl are disassembling the organ. Gabriel complains, because his building is more important than people’s lives. This would be intended as a joke if it wasn’t already well established. Rick doesn’t want to go back to Atlanta, and Michonne gets to say a line. Rick realizes the show is about him, so he leaves Michonne behind with baby Judith. Looks like the gang is ready for retaliation against the church after they rescue the women. Carl continues working after the rescue squad leaves. Gabriel continues to be useless.

Daryl fortifies the church

We’ll stay with the folks at the church and catch up with Rick’s Rescue Rangers in a bit.

Carl (a child) tries to make Gabriel less useless. He fails, mostly. Gabriel gets a case of the vapors and has to go lie down.

Michonne then takes a turn at un-uselessing Gabriel. He seems really genuine in his appreciation. Then we see that he’s pulling up the floorboards in his office. Mystery!

Gabriel finishes his hole and uses it to… escape the church. He steps on a nail, I hope his plan is to get a tetanus booster. He does not patch the hole, effectively undoing all the work Carl did fortifying the place. He has somehow gone from simply useless to actually undoing the useful things done by others.

Leaving Carl and Michonne behind

Gabriel nearly gets eaten, and even though he stops the attack, he can’t finish off the zombie because it’s wearing a cross. Now I’m no theologian, but either she’s already in the afterlife, since she died, or her soul is trapped in some sort of zombie purgatory until she dies a final death. Either way there’s no reason for Gabriel not to finish her, other than to continue his streak of pointlessness.

Back at the fire truck, hard to say how much time as passed. Eugene is still knocked out, apparently the hit he took caused a bit more than a bump. Abraham is still just stoic on his knees. Tara has made up a team name, GREATM, because she likes Band of Brothers, increasing my opinion of her significantly. Rosita and Abraham spat, but Maggie pulls a gun on him before it can get violent. The women of this group are doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, it’s refreshing.

Team GREATM, well GR&T, goes to get more water. Rosita makes a water filter, something Eugene taught her to do. Again with the cool survival tricks! Then they notice that there are fish in water, so they make a net and catch some. Fish is a healthy and delicious source of protein in the apocalypse.

Abrahams knees must be killing him, he’s been kneeling on pavement for hours, even in yoga I need a pad for more than a minute or so.The other three only said they were going for water, why is she not concerned about how long they’ve been gone? Maggie finally gets through to Abraham, and Eugene wakes up. As Eugene stirs, Abraham finally takes a sip of water. A very optimistic ending for this arc, but where will this group go from here? Back to Atlanta, onward to DC? I doubt we’ll find out next week but I am curious.

Now to Atlanta, where Rick explains his strategy to his Rescue Rangers: speed, silence, and surprise. Rick explains the best case, Tyreese explains the worst and suggests and alternative; a little kidnapping and a little trading. I like that they’re having an actual discussion here with pros, cons, and actual thought about alternatives. Daryl wants to do it Tyreese’s way.

In the hospital, Beth overhears Dawn talking to a cop about whether or not it’s worth saving Carol. Beth snaps at the cop who still charges his DVD player everyday, wasting resources worse than Carol. Dawn says to unplug Carol, and then blames Beth for it. Beth’s accent becomes extra southern when she’s upset. Dawn gives Beth the key to the medicine cabinet so she can save Carol on the DL. This feels like a trap.

Beth interrogates Dr. Steve about what medicine to give Carol. After some tension, he suggests the generic form of adrenaline, because adrenaline is trademarked. That’s not in the show, that’s just a fun fact from me to you.

Noah is bait

The Rescue Rangers baits some cops using Noah. It’s weird to remember that Rick was also a cop before all this started. The cops notice it too. Another car drives up, snags the cops, and takes off. This plan went south quickly. I was actually hoping we’d get to see some hostage negotiation. The getaway car gets zombie stuck in the wheel well so the cops are back to running, except the driver who hides until Daryl find him and they fight. Daryl comes way to close to being bit until he eye gouges a zombie to use their skull as a bludgeon. Gross. Rick shows up and almost kills the guy, but Daryl talks him down. The plan is back on, hooray!

Daryl talks Rick down

The cops try to undermine the plan because politics. One offers to take out Dawn themselves and then hand over Beth and Carol, but the nice cop who Noah likes disagrees and gives them some real advice.

Beth bribes a guy with strawberries to fake getting sick so she can get to the medicine cabinet. When Beth walks by he’s suddenly fine in a way that could not be more obvious. Maybe the cops will think he’s healed magically by attractive blonde teenagers. Correlation does not always mean causation, people!

Meanwhile, there’s yet another subplot happening where Sasha is still upset about Bob. Her and Tyreese seem to resolve it, and I’m left wondering why it was forced into an already very full episode.

Sgt. Bob (the nice one) tells Sasha about a buddy of his he zombified on the street. Sasha offers to shoot him, because that’s what you do with zombies, crosses or not. This episode has had enough hopefulness in it that I suspect something bad is about to happen…

Yup, Sgt. Bob attacks Sasha. I really hate that I saw that coming. The end. Until next week. The actual end. Of half the season.

Next week most, if not all, of these threads should come to some sort of conclusion as part of the mid-season finale. AMC is not sending out any screeners, so I’m guessing they’re planning something horrible. Any predictions from our readers here? Leave them in the comments for discussion!