The Walking Dead Recap: Lurching On

Photograph: Gene Folio/TWD Productions/AMC

Concluding night's episode of The Walking Dead was the outset entirely Frank Darabont–free episode. (If you're wondering about the new showrunner, Glen Mazzara, his flashback backstory tin can exist read hither.) The manner I run into information technology, his biggest challenge will be making united states root for the living characters on the show instead of the undead ones. It'due south non going to be easy.

We brainstorm where nosotros left off, staring down the barrel of Grime'south gun seconds after he put down Sophia (by the way, I was asked recently why I call him Grimes. It never even occurred to me not to. Doesn't everything about him make you desire to call him by his last name instead of his first? In my head, it's always being sort of barked between clenched teeth). I don't know how it works when one showrunner passes the torch to another, simply information technology makes me happy to imagine Darabont calling "Cutting!" so the entire cast freezing in identify while Mazzara puts down his coffee, walks over, takes the clapboard out of Darabont'southward hands, and yells "Action!" to get everyone moving again.

It does not brand me happy to see that farm once again. I had hoped that the show would pick upwards a little farther down the line … at the very to the lowest degree the next day… with the crew huffily making their style down the road, trash-talking Hershel.

Instead, cue to a sobbing Carol, waving Daryl away and and then running off, her retreating cries overlapping with those of the Daughter Hershel. And then real quick, "Cut!" once again, because I but have to point out how staggeringly undeveloped this girl's character is. She puts Sophia to shame. If I were given an application to fill out on her behalf on which I was required to check a box next to this girl'due south gauge age range … you know, 10–eighteen, xix–34, 35–50 … I would take to pull the burn down alarm or something. Similarly, in reply to the following question that I am now posing to myself, "Practice ii unlike actresses play the Daughter Hershel and the Widow Otis?" my response is no, the same actress plays both, employing what I presume to exist the aforementioned applied science equally the kind used in the Parent Trap or Sister, Sis.

This twin creature staggers over to one of the female zombie bodies (she is saying "Mom. Mom." but I refuse to formally acknowledge this human relationship, in the same way that I don't refer to two postcards hanging on my fridge as cousins) and flips it onto its dorsum. The zombie isn't totally dead, though … or rather, information technology's and so dead that it's undead … and it rears upward and goes for the Girl Hershel'due south throat. It's a good little jump-out-of-your-seat moment, the kind where you know what'south going to happen but that's what makes it and so nervus-wracking. The zombie lady seems curiously potent, belongings on tight even every bit 4 strong men drag the Daughter Hershel away. T-Canis familiaris of course starts violently boot the zombie's head in, even though almost every single person, definitely including Carl, is armed, but I am willing to overlook this because how fast everything happens. I feel much less generous when it comes to the pickax that Andrea then uses to slice through the zombie'southward skull, while her confront makes THAT FACE, that confusing i where she appears to be smiling even when sad, horrible events are happening.

Moving along … even though I know that is insulting to the spirit of this show … next we are on Hershel's porch. I estimate anybody is feeling like shooting those befouled zombies earned them a advantage, because they are getting to practice their very favorite matter: argue! Shane is yelling at Hershel nigh whether or not he knew Sophia was in the befouled; Grimes is yelling at Shane for yelling at Hershel; then Shane decides to yell at Grimes for forcing them to look for Sophia for so long (which makes me recollect that Grimes is the Darabont character in this scenario and Shane is the Mazzara). Information technology's bad enough that everyone is back to their onetime means so apace, but the fact that the wordsSophia and search are even beingness said together out loud make me wish fourth dimension travel were real only so I could go back and un-invent linguistic communication.

Next there is some business involving a funeral. Glenn says the line, "Merely this was Sophia," and we, the audition, pretend not to hear it. They decide to "bury the ones we love and burn the residue." I was under the impression that, like, half the people in the barn were related to the Hershels in some way, but I judge not. Even so, doesn't information technology seem pretty harsh considering how touchy-feely the Hershels were about these zombies when they were even so moving? And also, what else do these people accept to practise all day except dig graves?

Oh wait, I forgot. They have some stomping to exercise. So much stomping in this episode! Specially by Lori. She stomps around the open graves that everyone else is digging. She stomps from room to room. She stomps across what I think is the same field where she took her pregnancy test. Meanwhile, Shane is all door slammy today, peculiarly in the scene with Dale where he actually gets into his truck just to slam the door then gets out once again. I wonder if these guys realize that at that place is an Off Broadway play called STOMP that they'd be perfect for, that is very zombielike in the sense that it doesn't die and is probably still up and running even in their earth.

I know I'm supposed to exist talking nearly plot-advancing moments, only really there were very few until the stop. Dale has very specifically figured out how Shane killed Otis. Maghie told Glenn she loved him, off-photographic camera. Daryl is feeling fed up. Carl is resting. Ballad gets in a fight with a metaphorical bloom. T-Dog'due south character is fading from existence the way the Marty McFly'due south siblings fade from that photograph. Hershel had his showtime drink in 25 years (even though I went and rewatched the scene from the last episode where he is having a cozy dinner for 2 with his Bible and he is definitely drinking an amber liquid out of what looks like a beer glass), and at present he'south on a bender in boondocks. Grimes and Glenn decide to team up and go on a rescue mission, just similar old times. This causes both Maghie and Lori to become into a stomping frenzy, so pissed that the boys desire to help the man who owns the nice house they are standing in, who also happens to be Maghie's father. The merely mode Grimes tin can calm Lori down is past saying a sentence that nearly caused me to become into a catatonic state (I'm hither every nighttime, ladies and gentlemen). That sentence was this: "We need Hershel for the baby."

You see why that'southward then upsetting, right? I don't fifty-fifty need to point out that babies accept 9 months before they are born, right?

I guess since seeing as how it looks like we're going to be on this farm for a while at present, maybe we could take this opportunity to find out more than well-nigh some of our vaguer characters. Maybe we could even, oh, I don't know, only talk to each other for a flake?

Either that or i of them could fall into a catatonic state, which is what proceeds to happen to the Daughter Hershel. Because there wasn't enough artificial drama on this show as it is. We definitely needed the gang to freak out over the well-beingness of some other blank girl. And then we needed to spend v minutes watching Lori try to convince Daryl to become searching for the guys who just went off searching for the doc. It's just one huge whirlpool of pointless drama, pulling everything in its path nether with it, culminating in Lori flipping her car over as America gasps and wishes and feels bad for hoping that she didn't survive.

Which brings usa to the last act of the show, in the town saloon. Information technology takes a moment for my optics to adjust to the light of this new world. It's similar when you're playing a video game and yous've spent forever on the same, impossible level and and then you finally vanquish the bad guy and become to advance to the next scene. There'due south Hershel at the bar, calmly sipping his whiskey. He tells Grimes that when Carl survived he thought it was was the miracle he'd been waiting for. It made him able to keep hoping that the zombies in the barn could exist cured. Merely now he realizes that it was a bait and switch, and that Grimes's coiffure are like a plague who have no responsibility for their actions. Oh human, did I love hearing that. Preach it, Hersh.

And then no sooner are the words out of his oral cavity that I experience my own form of a miracle. Sparkling new characters in the course of a fun-loving guy and his overweight sidekick. They accept a seat, have some drinks, unravel a bit of data most what'south happening in the world. I imagine a whole new show from hither on out, sort of similar Cheers only with more zombies and less sexual tension. We might never have to go dorsum to that farm again.

Pretty soon, though, things plough dark. These new faces plow out to be guest stars instead of featured players — the former bait and switch. Mazzara wants to infuse some horror movie suspense dorsum into the show and his intentions are evident in this scene. Fifty-fifty though I personally didn't find it that tense, I appreciated the effort. It ways that the show is trying to expand and go nigh something bigger. Likewise, it's a no-turning-back moment for Grimes, which hopefully means he'll be less of a handwringer from here on out. No matter what happens, though, I'one thousand skeptical that information technology will be monumental plenty to justify killing off the first people I haven't wanted to impale on this testify in a very long time.

The Walking Expressionless Recap: Lurching On