I said last week that the premier felt more like a prologue than the opening shots of a great season….if that was true than this week’s episode ‘Infected’ delivered on the promises a premier usually brings. While not as explosive as some might have wanted this episode did one thing very, very well and that is to return to the levels of tension and gore we've come to expect from TWD.
We left off at the end of last episode with new group member (inmate?) Patrick wandering into the showers while everyone slept and dying of an unknown sickness. I’ll tell you now, that didn’t end well. Remember last week when I told you how everyone within the prison walls seemed to be getting a little too comfortable…yeah that’s done. In a scene that was far more tense than I expected, Zombie Patrick wanders into a cell block where all of the inhabitants are fast asleep. Feeling so safe they are sleeping with their cell doors open the newly christened walker makes his way into a cell and proceeds to go to town on a sleeping community member’s larynx, killing him silently. It dines on the body for quite some time until everyone else starts to wake up, hearing the movement the zombie makes his way out to the main cell block. Just as he leaves we see his last victim awaken and get up to follow him to the buffet awaiting them in the hall. I should probably mention that the scene where the second zombie gets up is one of the most disturbing visual effects we’ve seen to date, as he swings his legs to the floor and stand up the entirety of his lower internal organs fall to the floor in a sickening lump. After Rick, Daryl and the rest quell the riot caused by the 5 or 6 zombies that resulted from this surprise attack we are left with the reality that there is a plague of sorts unleashing itself on the group…as if they didn’t have enough to worry about. While this is the main storyline we follow in ‘Infected’ there are also a few subplots that are sure to make big waves in the season to come.
First is the opening shot of the episode, where we see some mysterious figure feeding rats to the walkers, which seems innocent enough until about halfway through the episode. Just after the riot is squashed we barely get a moment to breathe before finding out that the horde just outside of the prision is piling up in one spot and is about to bring down the fence. What follows is one of the most tense five minutes of the show thus far as five or six survivors, including three of the shows most loved characters, Rick, Darryl and Maggie, struggle against the horde to hold up the fence and thin the massing pile of zombies. While holding the fence up Rick looks over and sees what brought them all to this spot, the rats we saw earlier. Someone on the inside appears to be saboteur. Is this an agent of the governor? Some random crazy person? A threat we have yet to discover? I’m sure we’ll find out soon but my money’s on Bob Stookey (Lawrence Gillard Jr.) being part of it, something is very off about that guy. Oh, this is also a good time for you vegans to go to the bathroom or get a snack…..the diversion they use to move the herd will make you think twice about that side order of bacon you have every morning.
A Dash of Dissent: Rocky’s Thoughts on “Infected”
Guys! This episode actually didn’t suck! I AM SO PLEASANTLY SURPRISED. Yes, there are definitely still storytelling plotholes, and yes, some profound lack of logic on behalf of our merry band of zombie survivors. But overall, I think things really moved in the right direction with this episode—more character development, more gripping action scenes, more meaningful conversations. All things The Walking Dead hasn’t done so well until now! So let’s briefly consider my five favorite/least favorite parts of this episode. And for once, the former outnumbers the latter.
+ Good stuff: Glenn continues being the cutest motherfucker imaginable by taking Polaroid-style pictures of Maggie as she sleeps, which is exactly the kind of dumb shit young 20-somethings in love do to each other. The level at which I adore their relationship is off the charts.
+ Also good: Carl shooting a gun again! I am generally in favor of badass killer Carl, the persona he has in the original comics—he’s a tough-as-nails survivor, doesn’t have time for his dad’s shit, and has no qualms with threatening other kids who try to push him around. Carl won’t play that. So seeing him move further away from the whiny brat originally on the TV show toward a more assured, logical mini-adult is a good step. He’s not as ruthless as he needs to be yet, but getting his gun back is a solid start. (This also means he’ll put his cowboy hat back on, right? Because Rick and Carl aren’t doing any farming anymore now that those pigs are gone.)
+ Kind of good: Well, there goes Tyreese’s girlfriend Karen! I’m fine with this overall because I think Tyreese is a character who needs more development on his own, not just in relation to his sister or to his girlfriend, and we all know Cutty Wise is capable of so much. But how his sudden singleness went down is too unbelievable. Somehow someone in the prison was able to drag Karen out of her living area, grab another person (I couldn’t tell who?), and kill and burn them both—without anyone else noticing? At all? I’m not totally against the dissent-from-within storyline, especially because I think the writers are tweaking a character from the comics to make this TV adaptation happen (and it’s a creatively inspired move, if I’m right), but I think twists like this stretch our acceptance too much. A mysterious person feeding the walkers rats to encourage them to push against the fence, weakening the prison’s defenses? That makes sense; it’s low-level espionage. But downright murder and burning, going totally unnoticed, for hours on end? That just wouldn’t happen, even if the prison is a big place and Karen was in another cell block. Doesn’t Maggie basically live in that tower high above the prison, with a vantage point of everything going on below? She wouldn’t have noticed the smoke? No one else was on the perimeter and would have seen the scuffle? I shouldn’t have this many questions about this development. More realism, please.
+ Basically meh: I still think those little girl characters are awful and so, so unnecessary, but I do appreciate Carol telling the one, “Honey, you’re weak,” after she couldn’t kill her father. OK, that was a fucked-up sentence to write, because it suggests that a small child should have been comfortable murdering the only parent she has left. BUT THIS IS A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO TO SURVIVE. Hopefully these girls will get the gist of it eventually and not just drag story momentum down with their dumbness.
+ And a final blergh: No one, in all this time they have been in the prison, has ever thought about reinforcing the fence? Because I would think that when the Governor so easily just annihilated that shit in his most recent assault on the prison, Rick or Michonne or Daryl or the new fancy democratic council in charge or WHOEVER would think, “Hey, maybe we should take some materials from inside the prison and use them to support the fences because obviously zombies pushing against them would be a problem.” But no? Oh, OK. And additionally, how is it a good idea to feed the pigs TO THE ZOMBIES, therefore creating the long-term expectation of food from this location? Sure, I loved the artsy shot of pig blood spraying Rick full in the face as much as any other Terrence Malick aficionado. And I understand that the pigs might be sick and feeding them to the zombies is a way to get rid of them. But why not draw the zombies further away from the fence before doing so? And why not use the food to lure the zombies into some kind of murder trap? Maybe burn them or something, so no ammo gets wasted but the end result is still zombie kills? Don’t just waste an important food source for no reason. Poor choices, Rick and Co. Poor choices.
