This weeks episode opens on someone treating the walkers to
a little midnight snack. An anonymous
person dangles an enormous rat up to the chain link fence, and the walkers
scramble to gobble it up.
Meanwhile, Karen and Tyreese are engaging in a nauseating make
out sesh in the library. Tyreese starts
to sing, “I’ve got you under my skin”. Please
someone make it stop. All I can think
is, “please let Patrick stumble in and bite them both right in the face, ending
this misery.” Zombie Patrick doesn’t heed my wishes, but he does indeed stir as
Karen makes her way back to her bunk in D Block. He follows her sound, stumbling past Karen’s
cell and into some random guys cell, going straight for the jugular. Do these zombies ever actually eat brains?
The next morning, Patrick is still noshing on what looks
like a human drumstick as the gang starts to wake up and face the day.
Maggie and Glen are camped out in the tower, keeping watch. There’s
that team spirit kids! Glenn gets the Polaroid
out and snaps a pic of Maggie sleeping. She
looks at it and tells him to throw it away.
Chicks still got vanity despite the apocalypse. She doesn’t put up too much of a fuss though
when Glenn says he’s going to keep it.
They’re sweet.
Michonne is leaving.
Any requests? Stale
M&M’s? (Side note - How quickly do
M&M’s go stale? How long has the
world been wacky? I guess at this point
we can kind of go by how old Judith is, and she appears to be somewhere around
7 – 9 months old, so about 1.5 - 2 years total?
I don’t think M&M’s go stale that fast. Mmmm now I want M&M’s. Sorry.
End side note.) She asks why Carl doesn’t wear his hat anymore. He replies by saying it’s not a farming hat,
and he is correct. Carl asks - see you
soon? She says pretty soon.
The fence bends against the weight of the walkers as Carl
and Rick go collect some wormy feed for the pigs. Carl apologizes, and then asks for his gun
back. Rick doesn’t have a chance to
respond, because shots ring out from inside the prison. Michonne impulsively returns on her horse, and
walkers start to stumble inside as Carl goes to let her in. Carl shoots one in the head, as Michonne twists
her ankle while tussling with a few walkers.
Maggie and Carl help Michonne inside and close the gate.
Inside the prison it’s total pandemonium. Wow.
Lots of people dead and turned. Somehow
Patrick is still alive. How on earth
have so many people been turned into zombies? And why are all these people screaming and
doing absolutely nothing? The new people
are all totally worthless and deserve to be zombie breakfast. D block is a nightmare. (This episode brought
to you by the letter D – Dumb, Dismembered and Dead.)
In the midst of the melee, Carol goes to help a newbie who’s
arm has been bitten. She readies him for
an emergency amputation, but sees that his neck has been bitten. And we all know you can’t amputate a
neck.
Daryl, Glenn and Rick continue to clear the area, and Daryl
finally puts an arrow in Patrick’s head.
(Side note - Seriously, how did the people in D Block survive before the
prison? I’m thinking that they’re
possibly all the Woodbury transfers, but that doesn’t explain the guy with the
arm and neck bites, because as an able bodied male he would’ve certainly been a
casualty of the Governor’s army. Maybe
our gang just put all the stupid people in one block.)
The three men survey the damage. A blonde is on the ground, dead but not
turned. Daryl swiftly shoots her in the
head. With a nod, Rick steps into
another cell and readies his knife.
What an evening has wrought.
The gang discovers that Patrick has no bites on him. With the help of a new doctor guy and
Hershel, they ascertain that he choked to dead on his own blood. New doc explains that it’s the flu saying, “Bugs
like to run through close quarters”.
Everyone’s been exposed.
(Side note – Well this blows. This situation reminds me of a chapter in
Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’. In the first
third of King’s novel, a virus runs rampant and kills off the majority of the
population, leaving a small percentage of people alive. Sound familiar? It’s the situation our gang is in, but no
zombies. If you haven’t read it do
yourself a favor and go get it immediately.
The chapter I remember so vividly details that calamity could befall
even those ‘lucky’ enough to have immunity to the virus. King lists casualty after casualty from
falls, heart attacks, fires, drug overdoses, electrocution, etc. This year the gang needs to learn how to
survive the world, because nature – both human and Mother will not let up just
because a virus wiped out the majority of humanity.)
Carol brings the girls come to say goodbye to their
dad. They hold his hand and he tells
them to take care of each other. The
oldest one, Lizzie, says that they should be the ones to let their dad go. Lizzie tries to do it, but she has a panic
attack. Her younger sister, Mika, tries
to talk her through it, telling her to count and breathe. Lizzie can’t bring herself to do it, so Carol
does the deed and ends up with two naïve girls in her charge.
Carl, Michonne and Maggie see Rick coming out of C block,
and Carl tells Rick that he had to use the gun.
Michonne corroborates the story.
Rick ignores the gun issue and explains to them what happened with
Patrick. Rick lets them know that as a
result, everyone who was directly exposed needs to be quarantined. Including himself.
The council meets to discuss the situation. Glenn, Hershel, Carol, Sasha and Daryl. They decide to move into Cell Block A,
otherwise known as death row. This
doesn’t bode well. Karen walks by,
hacking. She wants to go snuggle with Tyreese, death outbreak be damned. The
council tells her in no uncertain terms that she is to be quarantined, and
especially to avoid contact with Judith.
Karen agrees, but not before tattling on some guy named David who is
coughing too. At this point I cannot
wait to see Zombie Karen. Maybe she’ll
off Tyreese too, and this whole annoying plotline can be done with.
Later, at the fence, Carol talks to the girls, and yells at
the older one for being weak and losing her nerve. Lizzie stares out and starts babbling about
how her dad was special and now he’s dead.
At some point it becomes unclear whom she is talking about, and she
asks, “What if they kill Nick?” Nick is a zombie, honey. He’s already dead. Lizzie’s younger sister yells at her, and
tells Carol that Lizzie is, “messed up, not weak.”
Out in the yard, Daryl’s digging graves with a mask on. Rick comes up to help, and Daryl says that he’s
glad Rick is back. He says that Rick
earned the time off, but they need him back.
Daryl’s noticed that every time things get bad, Rick’s, “standing there
with a shovel.” They have a lovely
bro-moment. A’broment’ if you will.
The broment is shattered as Maggie runs up and screams for
their help. The fence is about to give
under the weight of the walker horde. (Side
note – For some reason I wondered here:
What happened to the big groups of walkers from season two? If one of those encountered the fence,
wouldn’t it definitely take the entire fence down?) Rick and Daryl pitch in and
start to skewer the heads of the walkers.
Back inside, Beth proves that she’s actually good for
something as she wraps Michonne’s foot.
Cutie Judith plays in the corner with some red Solo cups. They chat, and Michonne tells Beth that they
should’ve left her out there. Beth says
that they care about her, and when you care about people, “hurt is part of the
package”. Beth asks if any children were
killed. She wonders if there’s a term
for someone who’s lost a child, and Michonne grimaces. Judith starts to scream, and Michonne asks if
she always cries like that. Beth says
that she senses people’s moods.
Back at the fence, the gang tries to stem the tide of
walkers by skewering head after head. Sasha
sees the rats on the ground, and takes the time to wonder if, “someone is
feeding these things?” The fence starts
to give, and the team starts to push it back.
Rick seems to be having an epiphany.
He looks over at the pigs and says he knows what to do. Daryl’s eyes light up.
Carl and Carol chat while Carl makes crosses out of scrap
wood. Carol says that she has to keep
teaching the kids to survive. Carl asks
if Carol is going to tell the parents, and she says no. She says she’s just asking him to not say
anything. Carol: Leader of Children.
Beth sings to Judith as Michonne works her abs. Judith spits up carrots on Beth, and Michonne
is reluctant to take the baby. Michonne
becomes emotional as she looks at Judith’s face, and cuddles the lil one to her
forehead. Michonne begins to cry and
instantly becomes my new favorite. This
is the first time she is vulnerable and open on the show, and I truly hope we
learn more about her past as the season progresses. Once again, I wish for LOST-like flashbacks.
Rick and Daryl go on a mission to get the walkers away from
the fence. They drive out and distract
the walkers by using the piglets as bait.
It’s pretty graphic stuff as Rick digs a knife into each piglet, drawing
blood from each one before letting the walkers devour it. Ugh.
Blood sprays in Rick’s face. If
he’s not infected by now, he’s got some sort of diesel immune system.
Once the walker threat his been diffused, Rick starts to
disassemble the pig pen. Carl walks up
to him, and lets Rick know what Carol has been doing. But Carl puts in his two cents, and says he
thinks that they should let her continue teaching the kids how to use weapons.
Rick agrees, and gives Carl his gun back.
He peels off his bloodied shirt and throws it onto the burning remains
of the pigpen. With a dramatic flair, he
secures his holster on his hip and surveys the landscape.
The sheriff is back in town.
As thrilling as the sight of shirtless Sheriff Rick is, the
episode has one more surprise in store for us.
Tyreese goes to bring a lovely bunch of wild flowers to Karen in her
confinement, and sees a trail of blood leading to two bodies burnt to a crisp. He notices a metal ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’
bracelet on the wrist of one of the corpses, identifying it as Karen. Tyreese howls in agony and drops to the
ground.
A few notes – Thank goodness Karen is dead. I couldn’t stand that Karen/Tyreese storyline
for one minute longer. Also, since Tyreese
was playing tonsil hockey with Karen while she was infected, does that mean
that he’s not too far behind? Is that
little weirdo twerp Lizzie feeding the walkers?
If not, who is? Lastly, does Rick
get a spot on the council just because he decided to strap his gun back
on? Will Carl start wearing his hat
again?
