Spoilers after the jump!
No! Like T-Dogg before him, Tyrese falls victim to the Walking Dead's "there can be only one black dude" trope. No...wait, there's preacher man and Noah left in the group, so maybe that trope is dead and gone.
Ahh - no wait - it's "there can only be one tough black dude" - that's the trope, and neither preacher man nor Noah fit that bill. Tyrese replaced T-Dogg, and my money has it on Morgan finally joining the group and replacing our dearly departed hammer wielding friend Tyrese.
I was sad to see Tyrese go - I liked his character, though this past season he's been kind of a downer...all depressed and mopey. Surprised to see him get killed off, too, what with Beth getting offed in the episode prior to the break. I'm going to wager the actor took up another gig so they needed to kill off Tyrese.
And the big man goes down due to a real rookie mistake...going into an unknown area with someone clueless and then not paying attention. That's always when the creepy little kid zombies pop outta nowhere and take a bite out of your arm.
Survivalist Sidebar: Tyrese's unfortunate demise highlights the dangers of not having an adequately capable battle buddy to watch your back. Noah's not a bad guy, but clearly not capable of protecting himself, let alone someone else. Without someone to watch Tyrese's back, he was ambushed by kiddo walker, injured, then left to bleed all over the place, tangle with another walker...and ultimately it killed him.
Running solo will get you killed, and running with people who are essentially a liability will get you killed even faster. In many, many cases, loved ones - children, maybe spouses, relatives - may be that kind of liability in a crisis situation. Honest self assessment here, folks. Not that we're going to abandon our responsibility to protect those loved ones, but we also shouldn't count on them as that battle buddy / capable backup unless they really are.
Back to the episode: Downer of an episode in general (what else is new?), though I did appreciate how they faked us out in the beginning (they're burying Beth, right?), and then came back around in the end. Guest stars in the flashback were all creepy, especially the Governor. Forgot what a good actor that guy was.
Glenn picked up his baseball bat, which I think was kind of a trademark brain smasher for him in the comics. We'll see more of that in episodes to come.
Also - what was with the truck load of zombie torsos? Who does that? Why?
That's it for my thoughts - how about you?