The 'Walking Dead' Brain-Dead Move of the Week: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of Rick's Way
Every week on The Walking Dead, someone does something stupid that needlessly endangers the lives of themselves and others. Here, we commemorate those decisions in the hopes that they won’t be repeated. But of course, they know they will be.
Poor Carter. He barely got an episode’s worth of screentime before he got his face chewed off by a walker. But as we know all too well by now, the most dangerous thing you can do in a zombie apocalypse is question the methods of Mr. Rick Grimes.
Alexandria seems safe enough, but it turns out there’s danger lurking nearby: a rock quarry filled to the brim with thousands of swarming zombies, fenced in at either end by a pair of parked tractor trailers. Shouldn’t Alexandria have known about this, since it’s just a couple miles away? Yeah, we never said they were great at this whole “zombie” thing.
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But this quarry seems like a pretty fortuitous situation to us; as Michonne pointed out, the sound of all the walkers in there draws more walkers in. Sure, the tractor-trailer roadblock can’t hold forever, but why not reinforce it and keep the zombies where they are? Or just thin the herd a bit to keep it manageable? After all, it’s worked fine so far.
But Rick doesn’t like it! He is convinced the herd will get loose and come after Alexandria. (The quarry is miles away, and Alexandria already has big walls surrounding it, but okay.) Carter suggests keeping them in the quarry — like we just said! — but Rick quickly shoots him down, and a still-traumatized Deanna backs Rick. This is a Ricktatorship, Carter; best to just fall in line.
Rick’s plan, meanwhile, is just ridiculous: Lure the zombies out of the quarry and lead them along a 20-mile-long path lined with parked cars away to… somewhere far away, we guess. But all the walls and barriers they build to keep the zombies on the path out of town, they could just use to keep the zombies in the quarry!
Carter’s thinking the way we’re thinking (he built Alexandria’s walls, after all), and even suggests to some fellow Alexandrians they should band together and kill Rick “before he kills us.” Not a terrible idea, as it turns out. But oops! Eugene was listening in, and soon Rick knows Carter has it in for him. (Rick’s right, though; Carter really should’ve set up some lookouts before talking murder.)
And once you’re on Rick’s bad side, you usually end up dead. (Just ask Shane. Or Pete. Or… jeez, Rick’s killed a lot of people, hasn’t he?) That’s why we have to give Carter our Brain-Dead Move of the Week: While executing Rick’s plan, one of the zombies wanders off the path and pounces on Carter, chowing down on his face. (Ew.) And because he dared to scream, Rick plunged a knife into the back of his skull to shut him up.
Oh, don’t try to tell us Rick didn’t take pleasure in doing that. He probably thinks this whole ordeal just proves his point, that the people of Alexandria are too weak to survive without him. But they were getting along just fine before Rick walked in… and now there’s a massive herd of walkers heading straight for them, thanks to Rick.
Can we get a recall vote on the Ricktatorship? Help us, Morgan; you’re our only hope.
Runners-up: Eugene, for letting Heath and his truck inside the Alexandria gates, simply because Heath threatened to beat his ass. Just because you admire someone’s “hair game” doesn’t mean you should trust them, Eugene… Abraham, for acting even more foolhardy than usual and jumping out of a car with Sasha and trying to distract zombies on his own. Sasha put it better than we could: “Idiot!”
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.