Rambling TV: The Walking Dead recap + thoughts on True Detective

It was middle finger night on The Walking Dead/True Detective last night.

The Walking Dead - episode 4.11: Claimed

Still in the annoying bottle format, this episode focuses on two groups. Rick's and Glenn's. Let's start with the latter.

We see the newly introduced Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene driving off in their truck with Tara and a passed out Glenn in the back. Tara is doing one of the smartest things I've seen someone do on this show in a long time, and is writing down the directions from where they came. Note the big "BUS" on her hand.  Glenn finally wakes up and demands that they stop the truck so he can leave and search for Maggie. Abe drops that bomb that Eugene knows what started the apocalypse and they are on their way to Washington D.C to fix it. Glenn doesn't care, he just wants his wife. Abe tries to tell Glenn that she's probably dead, which Glenn responds to by punching Abe in the face. (I love Glenn)

Abraham ain't got time for that, so he jumps on Glenn and they began to beat the holy hell out of each other. While doing this, a heard of walkers shows up, and Eugene starting firing at them. (and the truck) While they all stop fighting and come together to take out the walkers, they're not going anywhere in that truck anymore. Abe questions Eugene on how he could possibly take out the truck ("son of a DICK!") when he had scene stronger things in the war that didn't. Eugene replies as if he were a robot that he's just ignorant with weapons.  Rosita decides that since they don't have anything else to do, they'll follow Glenn and Tara on their search for Maggie.

Back to Rick, Carl and Michonne's group. Carl and Michonne are having breakfast. She makes him laugh when she wishes they had soy milk, which gets him into an old story about a friend that had to drink it. He mentions Judith's name, then clams up and walks away. This scene was really sweet, but Chandler Riggs' awful delivery was a tad distracting.

Rick thanks Michonne for making Carl laugh, and says he can't be his father and his best friend, so he needs her. He apologizes if that's a lot to throw at her, to which she responds "I'm done taking breaks." I hope this made Rick realize that too. Like Carol said, "You can be a farmer Rick, but you can't just be a farmer." Michonne and Carl go out on a run and convince Rick to stay and heal up.

On their run, Michonne tries to cheer up Carl, even squeezing a ton of crazy cheese in her mouth. (which is fucking disgusting, ew) Carl isn't having it, Michonne causally mentions that she had a three year old son and he found her hilarious. Carl is flabbergasted and asks a million follow up questions. She says she'll answer them one room at a time, but only after they've cleared the room.

Her son's name was Andre, he died after "everything happen." She's never told anyone else but Carl. She better not tell Rick because he'll think she's cold for not mentioning his name and he'll throw her out. As they're going through the house, Michonne finds the owners and their children all dead in bed in a desperate murder/suicide. She closes the door quickly, and Carl assumes it's a dead baby in the room. "No, a dog." she replies.

Rick falls asleep upstairs and is awoken by men's voices. He quickly grabs his watch off the counter (Well, Carol's watch that she gave him. I loved seeing that by the way) and hides under the bed. Someone eventually lays on top of it. Another enters the room and choke holds the guy in the bed because he wants it for himself. This guy spots Rick under the bed before he passes out. Once Guy #2 is asleep, Rick sneaks out from under the bed and is ready to kill the guy that saw his face, then he ends up hiding in the bathroom, and runs into Guy #3 on the shitter. Rick kills him, opens the door just a tad so when he re-animates, he'll cause some problems, and jumps out the window. Guy #4 is out on the porch, bouncing a ball. Rick see Michonne and Carl approaching, so as he's about to kill this other dude, someone screams in the house and he runs off anyways. Rick runs to Carl and Michonne, and they walk off. The last scene is them finding a sign for Terminus. Remember, that's where Carol and Tyreese and co are heading too.

I'd like to go back to those intruders in the house. I couldn't understand a damn word any of them were saying, but thanks to closed caption and some good listeners, we find out some of the things they are talking about. They're obviously beating a man up at the beginning of their entrance, because we hear him grunt. They talk about finding a woman's shirt (Probably Michonne's) and talk about who's going to have a "turn" with her first. Great, creepy rapers. But the most interesting part is at the end, when they apparently encounter the walker in the house. Someone shouts "stop her, stop her. Kill her. Kill her!" This produces an interesting theory. (This is TWD of course. Where the viewer is expected to fill in all of the blanks) Do they have hostages? More importantly, do they have Beth and/or Daryl as hostages? The next episode's sneak looks like it's solely Beth and Daryl (Ugh) So it's possible these groups are closing than they think. 

Rick, Michonne and Carl don't even seem interested in looking for any other survivors from the prison. If they were already "this close" to some of their former family members, how would that make them feel? I said this before, but I liked the focus on Carol's watch in this episode. I hope this gave Rick a much needed reality check on what he did to her. He told her she'd survive, yet he's just had to hide from some awful people that are clearly rapists. He sentenced her to this fate as well.

I'm really, REALLY, hoping that next week's episode isn't only Beth and Daryl, but it looks like it. Daryl doesn't talk, which means Beth will provide most of the dialogue and Emily Kinney cannot carry a scene. This is going to be brutal. Give me Tyreese and Carol's group, please. (Actually, give me all the groups because these bottle episodes are really killing the pacing)

True Detective - episode 1.6: Haunted Houses

*Marty beating up the dudes they caught with his daughter in the rubber gloves was hilarious. I can look past the police brutality this one time.

*Oh look, it's that nice girl that Marty gave money too a few episodes back to make her life better, oh God, now they're fucking...

*Shea Wingham is back! He's drunk, he found kiddie porn, almost got blamed for said kiddie porn and now is a mess.

*I cannot believe Rust told that lady to kill herself. Holy shit!

*Rust goes in to question the little girl he saved from the Meth lab, who now looks suspiciously like Lorde. "The man with the scars was the worst. He made me watch what he did to Billy." When he questions if the scars were on his face, it triggers something and she totally loses it. Interesting. Who have we seen with scars on this show?

*Maggie - let's talk about Maggie. She finds Marty's cell phone and sees that he's still having affairs. She dresses herself up nice and goes to a bar, but doesn't have the courage to go home with a random. So she goes to Rust's house, practically throws herself on him, then after they quickly fuck, Rust's realizes that he's made a terrible mistake, and kicks her out. When Marty gets home, Maggie is sitting alone at the table with a glass of wine. You know this can't be good. She says she knows about his affair, then taunts him when she says she fucked his partner. Marty nearly strangles her until she mentions that she'll tell the girls.

I'm torn here. I had a feeling Maggie is what came between Rust and Marty, but the way this happened has me split. I don't blame Maggie for being so enraged about her husband's affairs that she goes out to see if she can do the same thing. But her picking Cohle for the job? That's cold. But it also is the one thing that would piss Marty off the most. I'm torn, what do you think of her motives? Justified given the situation, or totally bat shit crazy?

*Then Maggie had the lady balls to tell the police Rust and Marty's fight had nothing to do with her.

*Did you see that spear that Marty gave Rust in the parking lot? That was beautiful. That was some Edge in WWE worthy shit right there.

*The episode ended with our friends seeing each other again in present time. They're off to buy each other a beer. Rust also hasn't fixed his tail light in 10 years and apparently has never been pulled over for it either.