T-Dog, Bob, Tyreese, now Noah: A black man’s safer at a Klan rally than he is on this show. Michonne’s probably untouchable, but if I’m the actress who plays Sasha, I’m updating my resume right now.

Why didn’t anyone put Aidan out of his misery by shooting him in the head before he turned into zombie chow? I understand why no one shot Noah: Glenn was the only one who could have and he and Noah had run out of ammo when they got trapped in the revolving door. But they still had shots left when Aidan ended up impaled — and Glenn clearly wanted to save him, the hard feelings from their first trip outside the walls together aside. You would think a group like Rick’s would have a strong ethic of mercy killings when a man is down and there’s no way to reach him before the zombies get there. Instead Glenn left the poor guy to get eaten alive. I don’t get it.

I also don’t understand why the gross-out factor in this episode went to 11 when it usually hovers around a three or four. Aidan getting torn apart was probably the most gruesome death of the series … for about 20 minutes, until poor, sweet, hopeful Noah got his face ripped off right in front of Glenn. I’m not complaining — it’s clever to run major grossouts so close together since the audience assumes the writers will space them out and it was gutsy to use one of them on a likable character for whom the audience expects a better end. This show tends to give its heroes heroic deaths, where they linger for awhile and/or have “profound” experiences. (See, e.g., Tyreese.) Nothing glorious about Noah’s. He got sold out by a nobody, less than an hour after the show had set him up as the future architect of Alexandria, and endured the most graphic mutilation that the show’s attempted. You never saw it coming. What a sweet subversion of viewer expectations.

And yet, and yet, all the goodwill they built up with me for how they handled Noah was pissed away by how they handled the already irritating, predictable Rick/Jessie/Pete love triangle. Last week I wondered if the writers would have the balls to let Rick kill Pete in cold blood to clear his path to Jessie. That would be a bold way to transform him from hero to antihero, a path he’s been on now for the better part of three seasons, and the audience would forgive him given the “survival of the fittest” morals of the zompocalypse. As it turns out, nope — looks like they’re going to wuss out by making Pete an alcoholic wife-beater/child-abuser, the sort of guy whose murder no one would shed a tear over even before the zompocalypse. Rick’s essential goodness must be preserved at all costs; of course his romantic rival is a scumbag who has it coming. What a neat, conscience-clearing development for horny Papa Grimes. All I can do is cross my fingers that this too is actually a grand mindfark in the making and that, despite the hints dropped by Jessie’s son, it’s not actually Pete who’s abusive. The little guy never explicitly said to Carol, you’ll notice, that it was his dad who was hurting him. (Actually, he never said anyone was being hurt, only that he got angry sometimes and wanted a gun for someone else.) What if … Jessie’s the abusive one? What if Rick kills Pete on the assumption that he’s a wife-beater only to find that he was innocent and that his new would-be girlfriend is damaged and violent? That would be a glorious twist. Odds of it happening: One in a thousand, I’d guess.

Exit question via the Atlantic: I never thought I’d ask this, but is the show maybe moving a little too fast this season? They got to Alexandria three episodes ago; thanks to Pastor Gabriel’s backstabbing and Aidan being killed while out on a run with Glenn et al, it seems likely that Rick’s crew and the town’s natives are going to end up in a war sometime over the final two episodes of the season. That would be a mighty quick story arc for Alexandria, but the Atlantic’s critics are right that things seem to be happening mighty quickly — Aidan is introduced and then dispatched, Rick spends five minutes talking to Pete and is ready to kill him, Pastor Gabriel inexplicably turns on the group just in time for the season finale. Does “The Walking Dead” — gasp — need to slow down?