The Walking Dead Episode 503 ‘Four Walls and a Roof’
Poor Bob. All I’ve got to say about the last episode. So let’s get to the recap, shall we?
This episode starts with scenes of walkers screaming intercut with scenes of flesh eating. For once it’s not the walkers doing the munching, though, they’re just inside a school looking out windows looking out jealously as the former Termites/Hunters and Gareth eat Bob’s leg around a campfire inside the building.
Gareth is talking to Bob, a speech about how it might be dangerous to be there where the walkers trapped in the school can look at them, but at least you can see the threat and get some perspective.
He walks over and puts his hand on the glass. You can see his face reflected in the window over the walker’s faces.
“The glass is going to break, sooner or later. Nothing lasts too long any more,” Gareth says.
Gareth explains that the Hunters were the ones that marked the trees, so they could find their way back.
“So stupid, right? Back to what?” Gareth says.
Gareth explains that it Terminus wasn’t just a trap, the Termites were going to offer Bob and the others a choice of “join us or feed us.” With a line about how bears eat their cubs Gareth makes it clear that the Termites ate children. He also mentions a detail some of the more eagle-eyed among you might have noticed last episode, that the Hunters very nearly grabbed Carol before she drove off with Daryl after Beth.
He says women taste better and implies that they’ll eat Sasha. As he rambles Bob starts sobbing, then laughing, then laughing hysterically.
“You idiots,” Bob says, and pulls down his shirt to show a wound on his shoulder he got from the water walker in the last episode.
“I’ve been bitten you stupid pricks! I’m tainted meat!” Bob says.
The Hunters start furiously spitting and making themselves throw up as Bob laughs. As they’re freaking out and blaming each other Bob screams “Tainted meat! You eatin’ tainted meat!” and Gareth kicks him in the head and knocks him out.
End of teaser. Whew, we kind of expected this scene from the comic to show up, but not so vividly adapted. Great start.
Sasha is wandering the woods alone looking for Bob. She notes the Mark on the tree. She scopes the woods with a night vision rifle and a walker pops up in it. She takes them out and then Rick and Tyreese startle her. Sasha wants to go look for Bob but there are too many walkers in the woods. Rick says that Bob may be with Daryl and Carol.
The rest of the group is at the church. Maggie is looking at, but not reading a Bible. Sasha enters and confronts Father Gabriel.
“This all connected,” she says and blames him for the disappearances, which he denies.
She pulls a knife and screams in his face “Where are our people?” but then lets Rick take over. Rick tells Gabriel his story doesn’t add up, especially the threat carved on the outside of the church.
“What are you gonna burn for Gabriel?” he yells and grabs him.
Gabriel breaks down and admits his congregation came to the church during the start of the outbreak, the night after Atlanta was bombed. But Gabriel had locked the doors, as usual, the night before and when his congregation came he wouldn’t let them in. The noise of their screaming and shouting and banging drew a walker attack.
He says entire families were calling his name as they were torn apart.
“Begging me for mercy. Damning me to hell,” Gabriel says, in tears.
He buried the bodies, and he assumes Rick’s group was sent to punish him.
“I’m damned,” he says, and cries, repeatedly saying “I always lock the doors.
The group notices someone outside in front of the church and drags them in, fending off some walkers in the process. It’s Bob. They don’t notice that an A, like the letter of their Terminus train car, has been drawn on the church.
Bob tells the story of how he was knocked out and woke up outside the school with Gareth and five other hunters eating his leg. He tells them Gareth said Daryl and Carol drove off.
Sasha wants to give Bob pain medicine but he says “Save em!” He shows her he was bitten and tells her it happened at the food bank. The group reacts with shock and sadness. Father Gabriel offers the sofa in his office for Bob and tells the location of the elementary school, which redeems him a little bit.
Abraham picks a really bad time to say the group has to leave for D.C. “right now” because of the threat to Eugene. Rick won’t leave without waiting for Daryl and Carol, so Abraham says “good luck” and gets ready to leave with Eugene and Rosita.
This starts a fight over who gets the church bus. Abraham points out that he and Rosita fixed it themselves, but Rick won’t give it up. It gets pretty serious and nearly comes to violence, but Glenn and Tara talk Abraham down and convince him to wait until tomorrow by making a deal. Glenn, Maggie and Tara will go with Abraham’s group if he stays the night.
Sasha is nursing Bob, who is already starting to show the high temperature that’s a sign of infection. Bob tries to play “Good Out of Bad” like he did last episode, saying that getting kicked in the head made him forget the pain in his leg.
“We’re not playing that game any more,” Sasha says. She asks why he didn’t tell her.
He says he knew when he told her it’d become all about the end.
“And I really liked the middle,” Bob says. Sasha lays her head on his chest. Excuse me, I’ve got something in my eye.
In the church the gang discusses how to kill the Hunters. Tyreese, who let Martin live to take a bite out of Bob, sits away from the group with a haunted look on his face.
Rick has a wild plan, which Rosita questions a little bit.
“Remember what these people are capable of,” he says.
Rick asks Tyreese if he’s up for the murder and mayhem to follow. He doesn’t answer. But Sasha sure is. She pops out of Father Gabriel’s office for a second to say she wants to go. She’s angry and wants her pound of flesh.
Tyreese follows her back into the office and tells her she can’t throw away the remaining time she has with Bob.
“I wish I had it with Karen,” he says.
Sasha asks if he remembers how angry he was. Tyreese says he faced it through forgiveness, but the concept of forgiving the Hunters makes her more furious.
“You think we have a choice?” she asks.
“Not all of us. Just you,” Tyreese says, and says when Bob opens his eyes he’ll want to see Sasha.
She hands over her knife and tells Tyreese if Bob stops breathing to put it through his brain.
“That’s what Bob would want,” she says.
Part of our group leaves the church and Father Gabriel locks the door behind them. The rest hide in Gabriel’s office in the dark. When the main group heads to the school the Hunters sneak out of the shadows and start to attack the church, Gareth in the lead. They break open the church door really easily, actually, Gabriel’s congregation should have tried that.
Inside the dark church it looks like Carl with his pistol and Rosita are the only defenders of Bob, Tyreese, Eugene and Judith. Gareth enters and calls them out, says there’s no point in hiding and that they know it’s just the weaker members there.
“Rick and the rest walked out. With a lot of your guns” Gareth says.
At one point during this montage Eugene looks at a cutesy plague in Father Gabriel’s office. It says “Stupidity is also a gift of God but one mustn’t misuse it.” That must foreshadow something.
The hunters start searching the church and find the two interior doors locked. Gareth tries to bargain with Gabriel to figure out which one they’re behind, telling him he can open the door and go and take the baby with him. Judith then blows the whole thing by crying.
Gareth is pleased and says that maybe they’ll take Judith with them.
“I’m starting to like this girl,” he says.
Just as Martin is about to fire into the door, sniper bullets to the head kill two of the Hunters.
Rick strides in and tells them to put their guns on the floor. Gareth threatens to fire into the office and points, which gets his fingers shot off.
Rick tells the Hunters to kneel. Gareth complies telling Martin there’s no choice as the rest of our survivors return to the church and disarm them.
Martin, consistent with his philosophy in the first episode, says “Yeah there is,” but when Abraham walks up with a gun and says “Wanna bet?” he kneels too.
Gareth crawls in front of Rick in between the pews, with Rick standing near the altar. There’s some religious symbolism going on here.
“No point in begging, right?” Gareth ask, which gets and icy “No,” from Rick.
Rick says he didn’t kill them when they came in because they didn’t want to waste the bullets.
Gareth talks about how things changed at Terminus after he attacked and how Rick doesn’t know what it is to be hungry. He promises that if they let them walk away they’ll never cross paths again.
Rick says they’d do what they did to Bob to anyone, though.
“And besides, I already made you a promise,” Rick says, and slashes Gareth with a machete with a red handle, from the bag of guns that he hid in the woods, just like he said he would in the first episode of the season.
Our survivors begin brutally murdering the Hunters, savagely ripping at them with gun butts and blades. Rick slashes Gareth with a ferocity that would probably make Jason from Friday the 13th a bit sick. Sasha takes care of Tyreese’s mistake and stabs Martin to death. Abraham and Michonne bludgeon some Hunters to death.
The more sensitive members of the crew, including Glenn, Maggie, Tara and especially Tyreese, peeking out from the office door, watch in horror.
Rick finally tires himself out turning Gareth to jelly. In the aftermath Michonne finds her katana on one of the Hunters. The reunion is more one of disgust than joy.
“It could of been us,” Rick says. Father Gabriel comes out and sees Gareth, who is sliced to ribbons. There’s blood all over the walls.
Sasha just says “Yeah” and the killers walk away into the office.
Father Gabriel, in shock, sees Glenn and Maggie standing in the aisle.
“This is the Lord’s house,” he says, trying to make sense of what has happened.
“No. It’s just four walls and a roof,” Maggie says bitterly.
The next day, the group is saying their goodbyes to Bob.
Maggie says he’ll always be part of them. Bob calls out to Rick, who is holding Judith, and the others leave.
“I just want to say thank you,” Bob says. He says he didn’t know if there were any good people left before the prison and Rick took him in.
Bob reminds Rick of his optimistic speech encouraging Rick to help Eugene find the cure in the last episode.
“What I said yesterday I ain’t revising it. Even in light of current events. Nightmares end. They shouldn’t end who you are. And that is just this dead man’s opinion,” Bob says.
“I’ll take it,” Rick says.
“Just look at her and tell me the world isn’t going to change,” Bob says of Judith.
At about 8:39 AM by the clock on Garbriel’s desk, Bob wakes with a smile and Sasha is there. He was smiling in his sleep and says he thinks he was dreaming and he thinks Sasha was smiling back at him in the dream.
She asks him what’s the good that comes out of this bad, but he doesn’t answer. He’s dead and she breaks down crying for just a second, then steels herself for what she has to do. She pulls out her knife, but Tyreese enters.
“Give it here,” Tyreese says. She kisses Bob’s hand and Tyreese tells her to leave. With anguish across his face Tyreese stabs Bob in his head.
Outside Sasha fashions a simple wooden cross for Bob’s grave. Abraham hands Rick a map with his group’s route to D.C. and tells him that things will bounce back when Eugene gets there.
“You should be there for it,” Abraham says.
“We will,” Rick says, after others in the group agree. And Tara, Maggie and Glenn make good on their word and leave with Abraham in the bus.
Rick unfolds the map and sees that Abraham has written “Sorry I was an asshole. Come to Washington. The new world’s going to need Rick Grimes” on the map.
He walks over to where Tyreese is digging graves for the Hunters and pitches in.
“I never asked how it was for you, getting to Terminus?” Rick says.
“It killed me,” Tyreese says.
There’s a pause as they resume digging.
“No it didn’t,” Rick says.
It’s night. On the church steps Michonne is looking intensely at her sword. Father Gabriel comes out and says he can’t sleep and she puts it away like she’s embarrassed.
He says that saying what happened before out loud he sees it all again and hears them again.
“That won’t stop, but it won’t be all the time,” Michonne says. She hears a noise. Gabriel runs inside and Michonne goes to check it out, drawing her katana.
It’s a dirtier than usual even Daryl, coming out of the woods. She asks where Carol is and Daryl just says “Come on out.” We don’t see who comes out. End of episode.
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