Warning: There are spoilers for this week's episode in the recap and review.
On this week's episode of The Walking Dead, the episode begins with Nicolas' body getting eaten by walkers while Glenn crawls under the dumpster, with walkers reaching for him. Glenn has to wait for the walkers to leave, which is a day later. Enid tosses him a bottle of water and Glenn makes his way into a building. Enid reveals to Glenn that people attacked Alexandria. Glenn tries to find Enid in the building, but she's nowhere to be found. Glenn sees her running away outside and goes after her.
Back inside Alexandria, Rick lets Morgan know that they're going to have a talk later on. Rick chats with Maggie about the town. Meanwhile, Glenn finds a dead Alexandrian, who has turned. Glenn puts him out of his misery. Rick and Carl teach one of the young Alexandrians how to shoot. It's more about aiming and technique than actual firing though.
Rick and Morgan have a talk, with Michonne there as well. Morgan explains his new life as someone who is a pacifist. There are walkers building up at the walls of Alexandria. The training for the people of Alexandria continues. Eugene and others are being taught how to use machetes. Glenn catches up with Enid and says he's going to take her home. Enid pulls a gun on Glenn, but he disarms her. The two start heading back to town.
One of the kids that Carl and Rick were teaching to shoot sneaks into the supply house and takes some bullets. Enid and Glenn get back to the outside of Alexandra and see all the walkers. Spencer, for some reason, military crawls on a rope above a whole bunch of walkers. The rope breaks and he falls to the ground. Walkers are all over. He starts climbing up the rope and makes it up safely.
Morgan wants to get a wound check out. Morgan reveals it isn't his wound he wants checked out, so the local doctor goes with him, probably to check on the Wolf he has captured. Carol swings by to drop off the baby and goes to spy on Morgan. She confronts Morgan about who is in the cell.
In the street, the boy who the guys taught to shoot follows Carl and pulls out a gun. Rick is helping reinforce the wall. Everyone spots the green balloons that Enid had. Maggie comes running to Rick. She says it's Glenn. Then, the building falls and knocks down the wall.
"Heads Up" was a whole hour building up the mid-season finale. It was all set-up and it all is leading to something fantastic, but overall, it turns out to be a pretty bland episode. The set-up works and it's really interesting, but we've been gone from the main Alexandria story for three weeks.
There's this sigh of relief along with this heavy sigh of frustration as the opening to the show tells fans everything they already knew: Nicolas' body fell on top of Glenn. We talked about it as well, but still remained pretty skeptical about the theory because no one is safe on The Walking Dead, right Tyrese, Lori, Shane, Hershel, Dale, Andrea, etc?
Because we were gone for three weeks and waiting to learn the fate of Glenn, the past few episodes felt like a distraction. Don't get me wrong, those episodes were good and the episode about Morgan was great, probably the best of this year, but the way the season was put together, with this large gap of singular stories, takes away from the impact and connection the viewer has with the people of Alexandria and with Glenn. It's now almost a month after the Wolves attack on Alexandria and that's not fresh in people's minds, so it's a race to play catch-up to remember what happened with the individuals within the town.
Glenn and Enid's story was enjoyable. It wasn't a home run but it's nice to see these characters come together in order to try and get back to Alexandra, and as stated before, it's just nice to see what happened with Glenn. On top of that, I'm more excited to see Glenn and Maggie reunite, as Glenn has been gone for a while.
One of the things we saw coming was the eventual head-to-head Morgan and Rick were going to have because how Morgan's views of the world have changed. It all starts to come to a head here as Morgan, Michonne, and Rick talks about Morgan's new views on life. Then, Carol finds out Morgan is keeping someone hostage and she's smart enough to put it together that it's one of the Wolves. Again, this is all great build-up, and luckily, this story is one of the better ones of the episode.
This week's The Walking Dead was the weakest of the season. Because of the break and a few solo adventures, the impact of the people in Alexandria and what happened to Glenn is a bit lessened. Needless to say, it's tough to figure out how to fit all those stories into the over-arcing season and this is how it played out. While next week is looking like to be one heck of a way to go into the mid-season break, the build up to it was a bit dull. Not bad but not a great episode.
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