Remember Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me?” It’s a pretty grim documentary about the suffering of local citizens after the closing of the GM plant in Flint, Michigan. And Moore shows us that suffering up close. We even see people being evicted from their homes and even video footage of citizens getting shot by police—and in the days before cell phones and police body cameras that was pretty shocking. (Spoiler Alert for The Walking Dead up to Episode 510 and all of Roger and Me.)

But what was the film’s truly visceral moment? A nice, but slightly ditsy, woman was trying to make ends meet by selling rabbits. Pets Or Meat, read the sign. She even let Moore’s crew film her preparing a rabbit for stew. As moviegoers across the land covered their eyes in revulsion.

It says something profound that we react so extremely to watching the suffering of domestic animals while remaining largely indifferent suffering of our fellow humans. What exactly? That’s really another essay.

But the producers of The Walking Dead understand how to push our buttons, and in Episode 510, entitled “Them, Scott Gimple and Co. played the Pets or Meat card. More about that in a moment.

So far Season 5 of The Walking Dead has been an absolute bloodbath. They killed three core characters, Bob, Beth, and Tyreese. (Note, fans of The Wire, that fellow Wire fan Bob Kirkman killed off two alums of that show, but not until he added Seth Gilliam, who played Ellis Carver on the HBO classic.) The writers also killed off a whole bunch of bad guys—the Termites met a particularly gruesome end, while Dawn and her bunch just got what was coming to them.
Maybe they realized the writers realized they were falling behind Downton Abbey in terms of body count, but throughout season 5, the bodies were a falling.

But somehow, all that bloodletting wasn’t really enough. Through the first half of “Them,” we see our merry band at their lowest ebb. They began the season back in October ready to become a half-rack of ribs for a band of Cannibal Hipsters (Cannibal Hipsters? Didn’t I see them opening for Vampire Weekend at a little club in Williamsberg?) Somehow they fought their way out of that jam like superheros, and despite that, things have gotten worse. A lot worse.

Sure, Rick and Friends are grieving. But they’re also hungry and thirsty and tired and traveling largely unprotected through a land populated by walkers and psychopaths. Danger lurks, but it’s not The Governor or the Termites or Dawn’s Rent-a-Cops. Now it’s just a generalized foreboding, the sense that a pre-teen walker can just sneak up behind you and..suddenly, you bought Hershel’s Farm, so to speak.

Sasha finally said what the audience has been thinking: They, not the zombies, are the realWalking Dead.

And taking cues from a generation of horror movies, the writers created tension a plenty in this episode. Movement in the back or the corner of the frame or music that swells, all make us wonder if the talented sadists who make this show might now kill off Maggie or Sasha or Carl or whomever just because they can.