by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels

4×15:  “Us”

So here we are at the penultimate episode of this long and dreary season, and I can’t help but ask, “… Is that it?”

“Us” is a slow episode where everyone catches up with everyone else and the story for the back half of the season finally takes shape. That’s all fine, it’s just not something we should’ve had to wait till the second last episode of the season for. We should’ve been here maybe two episodes in rather than two episodes out.  Basically, right now everyone’s on the way to Terminus at various speeds. Rick, Carl and Michonne are slowly sauntering their way over as they try to keep their balance on the train tracks while eating chocolate bars.  Glenn’s still insisting that his group of Tara, Abraham, Rosita and Eugene hurry up — especially now that he’s seen some of Maggie’s written-in-zombie-blood messages — even though nobody else in his group really cares about Maggie, and Tara’s still limping along on her perpetually sprained ankle. Daryl’s still stuck with the hunters, finding out that they may be a bunch of Jerks, but at least they’re Jerks with rules (like yelling “claimed” to lay claim to whatever it is they’re looking at, even though breaking that rule four episodes ago is what caused me to call the whole group a bunch of Jerks in the first place.  Jerks.). We’re left to assume that Carol and Tyrese are also still making their way to Terminus as they don’t appear in “Us”, a fair assumption considering that the only reason we saw a momentary glimpse of Rick’s group at all this episode was because we haven’t seen them in a while and we had to be reminded they exist before next episode.

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by Thom Yee

All images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels

4×14:  “The Grove”

One of the biggest problems with the way The Walking Dead show has developed over the last four years is that pretty much every major character death is going to be milked for everything it could possibly be worth.  <spoiler alert> The first thing that really got me hooked on the comicbook was when Carl killed Shane to keep him from killing Rick.  That got distorted on the show, where Carl shot a zombified Shane and, therefore, had little choice and no major remorse, but it’s a real growing moment for comic-book Carl who had to quickly choose between his biological father and Shane, the man who had acted as an uncle and surrogate father in Rick’s temporary absence.  And in the comicbook, it happened in the first story arc, showing readers a lot of what this world is about, whereas in the show, the “Shane is dangerous for the group” thing got way, way drawn out until near the end of season two.

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by Thom Yee

All images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels

4×13:  “Alone”

For readers of the comicbook, by now we’ve gotten to a point in the show where it’s hard to say what’s going to happen with any real specificity.  Though it seems inevitable that most of our group will find the second major safe zone (after the prison) and follow at least the basic spine of that comicbook storyline, there are now way too many divergences to know where the show’s going in the near term.  For starters, Dale was still alive at this point in the comic (his much earlier death on the show was one of the first and biggest shockers for comicbook readers) and he played a major part in where the show seems to be going next.  There was no Daryl or Beth, Bob is an entirely different character, Maggie was never separated from Glenn, Tyreese had previously played a much bigger role and was now dead, Carol died a long time ago, and the only kids left were Carl and Sophia, the latter of whom had just started seeing Glenn and Maggie as surrogate parents (again, Carol — not Sophia — is dead in the comic; Sophia’s still alive to this day).

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by Thom Yee

All Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels

4×12:  “Still”

In television, when you bring in a big change of status quo, like destroying your heroes’s home base and refuge, it’s usually for the sake of new storytelling possibilities.  Sometimes situations can grow stale — be they environmental, psychological, or relational — and there’s often nothing more invigorating than a big, shattering change to shake things up and breathe new life into tired premises.  Well, nothing more invigorating other than quitting the show cold turkey and moving on to something better (for both the creators and viewers).

Based on last week’s preview, I was hoping for this week’s “Still” to be a fast-paced, hard-edged episode, the kind we rarely see, that would remind us of how dangerous the world of The Walking Dead is even without the horrific machinations of the evil that stirs within all of us (as seen through villains like the Governor).  Continue reading →

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels

4×11:  “Claimed”

So last time I neglected to mention the episode-closing debut of Abraham, Rosita and Eugene.  I guess it was because I was so down on “Inmates” overall, and the  misery of the episode so outweighed the trio’s arrival that I probably just forgot about them and the breath of fresh air that they were (and are this episode).  Regardless of how the newbies turn out over the course of their individual developments (and eventual demises), it’s nice to meet a new group of characters who don’t appear to duplicate any of our existing characters, who don’t care about what our heroes have been through, and who have their own sh*t to deal with.

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by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of AMC, Fox International Channels, and Image Comics

4×09:  “Inmates”

While this week’s episode is entitled “Inmates”, because that sounds dour and downtrodden and reflective of the state of this world (and ours?), it may as well have been called “Meanwhile” because it’s nothing more than whatever else was happening while the things we actually cared about happened last week.

Whereas last week’s “After” allowed itself to breathe some actual, real life into its characters by not focusing on too many storylines at once, this week’s episode really just serves to catch us up with everyone else.  Continue reading →

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels

4×08:  “After”

For me, after a more-than-two-month absence and a status-quo-shattering midseason finale, the thought of more Walking Dead elicits almost equal parts desire and dread.  No matter how you feel about the show, no matter which of its strengths and flaws you acknowledge or deny, you have to admit that The Walking Dead is an exhausting show.  When Robert Kirkman initially set out to write a continuing story about what happens after the horror movie, as compelling a premise as that may have been, I don’t know if he knew that the results could sometimes be so awful.  What this shows us is that, at the end of the day, as much as people’s instincts may lead to jealousy, rage, hatred and murder under the right circumstances  (and that may make for some interesting stories), most people aren’t any of those things so much as they are… just fundamentally awful to be around (at least in the long term).

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