The Walking Dead New Episode Review: 'Spend' Sets Up Season Finale Clash

Season 5 of AMC's The Walking Dead continued Sunday night with a new episode entitled "Spend" that set the table for a battle within Alexandria for the season finale in two weeks.

Ever since Rick Grimes said he and his group would just take Alexandria by force if the residents there proved to be too weak, viewers knew that the situation was going to go sideways inside the walls of this community. It became a matter of when, not if. And after the events of "Spend," it looks like "when" will come within the next two weeks.

First, we have the situation that occurred outside the walls when Glenn, Tara, Noah, Aiden, Nicholas, and Eugene went on a supply run. The power grid inside Alexandria had started to fail, so the group went to retreive some components to get it up and running again. Of course, things went horribly wrong because this is The Walking Dead and because the Alexandrians are about as inept as one could be possibly be in a zombie apocalypse.

Aiden, to his credit, at least deferred to Glenn for much of the mission because he recognized that Glenn knew what the hell he was doing. Of course, that didn't stop him from shooting at a zombified soldier and blowing up a grenade that could have taken out everyone in sight.

So Aiden gets impaled in three places, while Tara gets knocked out and needs medical attention immediately. Here we got some decent character development for Eugene, who overcame his cowardice when his back was against the wall and helped save his friend's life.

When it came to saving their friend's lives, Nicholas and Glenn came up short, mostly because Nicholas is a horrible person and a weasely coward. He straight up tells his friend Aiden that they're cowards. That's just who they are. They leave people to die, even their friends. Aiden admits as much to Glenn and Noah (with regard to the four people who died on a previous run) before zombies rip him apart in an extremely gory scene.

A few minutes later, Glenn, Noah, and Nicholas were literally trapped in a revolving door of death, as zombies bared down on them from all sides. Eugene managed to clear away the zombies outside with a well-timed honk of the van's horn, but the ones inside were still biting away. And sure enough, Nicholas bailed as soon as he had the room, which left Noah to turn into walker food.

The look of horror and despair on Glenn's face as he was trapped in that little chamber and watched his friend get ripped to pieces was one of the most harrowing scenes the show has done in a while. People die on this show all the time, but juxtapose the brutality of Noah's death with the serenity of Alexandria and you understand that The Walking Dead will keep upping the ante on gore to remind us all that this world is still a nightmare.

At the end of the episode, Father Gabriel showed his true colors as an ungrateful, weak man and told Deanna that she made a mistake in letting Rick's group through the gates. His words seem to have landed with her, and now the stage is set for an impending showdown between the two sides, particularly because Glenn and Nicholas are going to tell very different stories about why Deanna's son is dead.

Oh, and Carol wants Rick to kill Pete. So there's that.

Notes:

- Noah died because he expressed hope. Seriously, do NOT express hope on this show.

- The Ricktatorship could be in full swing before the end of the season, particularly if he actually goes through with killing Pete.

- On that subject: It appears that he's beating his wife and kids, and killing him might seem extreme. But what do you do? Exile him? He could come back in force. You can't lock him away because there are no jails. You can't separate him from his family inside the community. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of options here, as cold as that sounds.

- Maggie overheard Father Gabriel's backstabbing. What will she do?

- Abraham seems to have found renewed purpose, so good for him. Also, did he find a flail at that construction site?!

What did you think of "Spend"? Let us know in the comments section.