The Walking Dead: The Big Scary U

This week on The Walking Dead we got to see a softer side of the BIG SCARY Negan as he confessed to Father Gabriel in the zombie surrounded trailer.

We’ve reached the 5th episode of TWD season 8 this week titled The Big Scary U. In this weeks episode the series focused more on The Saviors side of the story. The episode didn’t feature as much action as I hoped for, but I thought it did a great job of enriching the current story-line.

Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?

The episode kicked off by rewinding time to right before Rick and the gang pulled up in their armored hillbilly-mobiles. The scene shows Negan and his main lieutenants in a meeting just prior to them pulling up. Gregory is full of his regular cowardness as expected. Its no wonder Simon threw him to the walkers following the meeting.

Fast forward a bit and we come to Father Gabriel and his shitting pants in the trailer. After Negan quotes one of the cheesiest lines in the shows history, he gets the jump on the Padre. Negan wins the scuffle and disarms Gabriel. Negan loves to do one thing more than he does killing. Talking is obviously his favorite things in the world to do. After the brief wrestling match they sit down for some getting to know you time. Gabriel says he knows why he is there, to take Negan’s confession.

At first Big Scary Mr Negan is a bit apprehensive about confessing to the Father. To cut Negan’s chattiness to the point, Gabriel confesses his sins about leaving his congregation to perish, then Negan tells his love story about the real Lucile. The cold blooded tyrant pours his heart out about his sick wife and cheating on her. When she was on her way out he didn’t have it in him to put his woman down. In that situation I don’t know if I’d have what it takes to put my wife out of her misery either. The Big scary Negan also mentions he worked with kids, but only explained by saying he made them strong.

Meanwhile the lieutenants are having another meeting about how to handle the current situation. With the Sanctuary being surrounded by walkers, they’ve cut the air and are using limited the resources. With Negan presumed dead by the Sanctuary workers, an uprising seems very likely. They also realize their is a snitch among their ranks, and everyone is looking at the weakest guy in the room, Eugene. Lucky for Eugene the real snitch, good ole Iron-Face intervenes.

Lets Get Ready To Rumble!

Finally we get to 2 show favorites Rick and Daryl just after their epic car chase scene with the gun truck. Daryl wants to alter the plan, and open the Sanctuary gate so the walkers will flood in. Rick is usually pretty ruthless, but in this case he disagrees because there are innocents inside. This leads to a fight between the 2 long time companions. Daryl totally kicks Rick’s ass, and of course Rick does something stupid. He trows the bag hes holding while hes getting choked out, and somehow it blows up the truck with the guns. Well that car chase was a waste of time wasn’t it? Afterwards, they part ways. Rick is on foot and is sticking to the plan, while Daryl rides off into the sunset.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The next scene jumps back to the zombie surrounded trailer and Father Gabriel’s shit pants. I should note that I went out of chronological order when recapping their conversation just to get to the point. Not long after the dual confession Gabriel makes a play for the gun and scurries to the back room. Negan being the thinking man that he is realizes he is vulnerable, and will need Gabriel’s assistance if either of them are going to survive the situation.

Negan talks Gabriel out of the room and into getting the hell out of there. When Gabe comes out Negan gives him a light punch in the face just to square things up. The walkers tore a hole in the side of the trailer that looks like it could fit 3 zombies at once, but somehow only 1 manged to get through. They cover themselves in zombie guts and make some noise.

This time the tactic doesn’t seem to work as well as we’ve seen in the past. It did seem like the went a little light with the guts covering. They didn’t make it to far before they hit the walkers radar. With a little teamwork the odd couple make it inside.

As they are making their way inside the workers are on the verge of an uprising. The Lieutenants are trying to reason with the workers, but they don’t seem to be buying what their selling. While they are demanding to know where Negan is, one of the workers pulls out a gun and gets shot in the face. Then Negan shows up at the right time to set everybody strait. He says its time to figure out who the snitch is, then get back to saving. He commands that Gabriel gently be taken to a holding room.

Negan conferences with his crew, and Eugene looks at good ole Iron Face like he knows hes the stool pigeon. Since he helped him out when everyone was looking at him as the snitch, it seems Eugene is keeping his mouth shut for now.

In just a brief clip Rick sees a helicopter fly over his head while hes walking through a field. I have no idea who was in said chopper, but that definitely throws a interesting plot twist into the mix. A few episodes ago Carl came across a random guy scavenging for food. Could the writers be leading up to unveiling the next group of survivors?

Big Scary Negan has a talk with Eugene, and adds a little pressure to figure out a way to get them out of the current predicament. Eugene goes to see Gabriel in the holding room. It seems like Gabriel was bitten on the way in from the trailer. He claims he is there to get the doctor for Maggie. Since he is on his way out, he charges fearless Eugene with the mission.

Overall Summery

For most of the shows history I never really liked Gabriel. I thought he was bad for business, and expected him to do something stupid to get a lot of people killed. As the show went on he slowly began to prove his worth. It seems like whenever the show starts focusing on a side characters development, you can expect they are going to die soon. Father Gabriel finally started to gain some respect from the TWD audience, and now its looking like hes coming up on his final episode.

After reading several reviews from the prior episodes of this season, I’ve noticed many people feel that the show is growing stale. I thought last weeks sad King Ezekiel story was excellent. I hated to see Shiva die in the show just as much as I did in the comic. While this episode was a little light on the action, overall I enjoyed seeing the story from the other side of the fence.

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