“30 Days Without an Accident”

(All images used in this post are screen caps from AMC’s The Walking Dead, unless otherwise specified.)

It’s 8:30 pm, and I am  rewatching the finale episode of  The Walking Dead’s Season 3, “Welcome to the Tombs,” on AMC,  researching and writing during commercial breaks.

Crap, it’s the scene where the Gov gets the super crazy eyes (or, rather, crazy eye) and guns down all his makeshift Woodbury army.  And now, he’s sitting in the truck, motioning for his two henchmen to get on in. They do so, slowly and reluctantly, and then off the three go,  on the Worst Road Trip Ever….

Where are they going?  Who knows?  I imagine we will, eventually,but until then, one thing’s for sure…I know who’s going to get to pick all the music in THAT vehicle…and the pee stops…and  the not-so-scenic routes.

Hershel just had to break it to Rick that Carl’s gone a little psycho, which we all already knew (Rick included), and back in Woodbury, Andrea has been a little too chatty with About-to-Be-a-Zombie-Milt and not doing enough of the getting out of the freaking restraints of her torture chair and getting the fuck outta that room, and now that he’s all dead and not talky, she’s trying to focus on the task at hand…but, of course, she’s dropping the pliers…so annoying.

Back at the prison, Carl just told Rick what time it was: it’s time to kill the motherfuckers, apparently, before they kill you, and that’s the living people, not the walkers.

Carl disses, then dismisses, his openmouthed father with a, “Now, go, before he kills any more of us.”

Ouch! Even in the face of getting served by his son,  Rick is basically looking like the hottest single dad ever. Poor guy!  Hang in there buddy…tweens are tough, especially the post-apocalyptic ones. Speaking of post-apocalyptic teens,  Beth is looking pretty fearsome crowbarring the prison walkers through the chain-link fence…you go, girl!  I have a feeling that Beth is going to be a major player by the time this is all said and done.

Aggh, the scene where Andrea has been chomped by Zombie Milt and Michonne stays with her…we’ll talk about all this later on…this scene is such a bummer for me.

I love Andrea and Michonne, bad bitches on the run together, getting in a huge BFF-turned-frenemies fight, and then coming together and Michonne sticking by Andrea’s side at the moment where it really counts, the bitter end.

And the scene, with the men, Rick, Daryl and Tyrese, sitting outside the door, it takes a moment, then the shot rings through, and it’s so beautiful and sad how each of the male characters register their sorrow in that moment.

I’m an Andrea fan, I’ll say it now, and I will make my case for her in future posts. Stay tuned. You may throw many insults at me for this one, and I will probably deserve most of them, but I can’t lie.  I love a crazy bitch who can hold her own in a fight.

Ok, a commercial for the new Carrie movie…Julianne Moore as Carrie’s crazy-ass mom. It’s brilliant and maybe a little too believable? Some roles you don’t ever come back from, Julianne…think Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest…just saying.

“30 Days Without an Accident”

Ok, here we go. Armed with w beer and laptop… the prison’s looking homey, barrels filled with fresh water to drink or wash your face with.  Rick’s looking fine hoeing the garden; he’s got earbuds in the ears to rock the gospel classic,  “Precious Memories.”  The song’s lyrics are relevant (“As I travel down life’s pathway, knowing not what the year’s may hold,  As I ponder, hopes grow fonder, Precious sacred scenes unfold. Precious memories, how they linger. How they ever flood my soul.”).

The music and lyrics also serve to drown out the pesky hissing and snarling of the walkers on the other side of the fence.  While digging in the soil, Rick uncovers a gun that was buried in the mud…probably from the prison battle with the Governor. He pulls the gun out of the mud and regards it, pulling one earbud out of his ear, letting in the hellish noise from the hungry zombies who are snarling and snapping at him through the fence.  Rick cuts his eyes at one particularly ugly walker who has blood streaming out of his red, glassy eyes…the first walker close-up and.he is awesomely gnarly and truly terrifying…Ol’ Bloody Eye.  Bravo!  This show knows how to bring it.

I couldn’t find an online picture of Ol’ Bloody Eye, so I took a pic on my phone…behold the first close-up walker cameo of The Walking Dead’s Season 4:

So far, I like it… Rick is a hot farmer, the garden’s looking good, and they even have pigs, fondly named by Carl. As they look on at the mama hog, languishing in the mud, Carl wonders aloud what is wrong with “Violet”.  Rick gently chastises Carl for naming the hogs when they are just going to end up as food, but then, in a moment of Rick-sweetness that we all understand, Rick says to the ailing hog, “Get better, Violet.”

Awww, Rick… We know your days as a mere farmer are numbered, but I am going with it and enjoying the moment…while it lasts.

OMG, Carol and Daryl are so cute, flirting over breakfast, and it seems everyone at the prison (like the rest of us) has a crush on Daryl. He’s like the president and the resident rock star of the prison.

“Just remember, I liked you first,” says Carol.  Cute!

That means they are totally doing it, right?

The little bespectacled geek tween has a little man-crush on Daryl….he wants to shake “Mr. Dixon’s” hand for bringing in the deer the other day. “It was a real treat, sir,” he says.  I’m sure it was…now get in the back of the line, Harry Potter!

Ha ha, Daryl licks his fingers clean of his morning bowl of venison mush before shaking the kid’s hand… probably making the kid have a geekgasm in his chinos.

Poor Glenn and Maggie. Their pillow talk is so gloomy: “You shouldn’t go on the run today.” I totally missed this the first watch around, but I guess they are worried Maggie’s pregnant. That would kind of suck.

Sometimes,  I like to imagine what Glenn and Maggie would have been like as a couple before the apocalypse. They probably would have had some really cute apartment in Atlanta, hosting fun dinner parties, telling their guests stories about how they met in the country, when Maggie rode up to Glenn on a horse in the woods.

Ok,  I always thought Tyrese and Sasha were together, but now he’s acting all boyfriendy to the beautiful Hispanic-looking woman.. and now he’s kissing her. Are they all in an open relationship?  Maybe the post-zombie-apocalypse dating credo is: everything goes!

(In the comic series, everyone starts getting it on…Dale and Andrea, even…not to player-hate, but yuck!)   Tyrese is man enough to go around…he is like a big sexy huggy bear, a total lover, not a killer. He only kills when he has to, but he doesn’t have to like it.

OK, who the fuck is this woman in the woods? Rick is so kind, he gives everyone a chance, but I don’t fucking trust her…she looks like a freaking walker already.

Creepy Clara.

Hey, Rick, the council voted on something else…don’t give Creepy Clara your knife! Like, seriously, dude, does everything have to be some social experiment with you?  What is up with her mossy-looking face?

And I don’t trust that bald guy who Daryl rescued…bad feeling about that one. Creepy Clara and Baldy Bob. Fuck the both of them.

The prison kids.. how much do I love them naming the walkers on the other side of the fence and waving to them?  “Hi, Ned!”  Carl is totally blowing it with the cute tween girl. Don’t be a funkiller, Carl. Keep that shit up, and there will be no spin-the-bottle for you. Only comic books!

This Creepy Clara and her pretentious sculpture babble is really fucking annoying me…get over it, lady.  It’s zombie apocalypse. Nobody cares about that shit anymore.

Store run. Unbeknownst to the crew, there’s a crashed helicopter and walkers wandering the roof. Not good. The ceiling is dripping on Baldy Bob, who is giving the sneaky look-around before considering slipping a bottle of wine into his backpack and taking it back to the prison for a one-man party later in his cell. He hesitates, like he had a problem with the bottle at some point. Hershel would understand.

But, alcoholism aside, would bringing a bottle of wine back to the prison be against the rules? Honestly, I’d be getting one of those damn carts and stocking up.

And then, instead of slipping the bottle of wine into his bag, Bob tries to put it back on the shelf and ends up pulling the entire janky setup on top of himself. Wrong answer, Bob. This, of course, gets the attention of the roof walkers, who start getting agitated and stomping around the rotten roof, punching holes in it and falling through the ceiling.

And then, it’s literally raining walkers into the store.

Amazing scene. Beth’s little boyfriend, Zack, gets chomped…and Bob tries a new zombie-killing move, trying to tear the crack in the walker’s head open to get at the brain before Daryl comes and saves his sorry ass….inventive, and disgusting, Bob.

I actually almost pulled a shelf like that on top of me, once, in front of a cute new boyfriend…it was a shelf full of books, not wine, but still, it was pretty much one of the more humiliating moments of my life.  The cute boyfriend broke up with me soon after. Apparently, getting really stoned and almost pulling an Ikea-style bookshelf on top of yourself is a total dealbreaker.  I can see that, I really can. In fact, I think the prison should take a cue from my old boyfriend and dump Bob.

Back to Rick and Creepy Clara, making small talk as she leads him back to her camp. Great shot of a spider in a web, just an instant, looking like a frame from the comic. Love it.

At first, I wondered if Rick was testing Creepy Clara about the sculptures. I wondered if there was really one of the kids playing leap frog, if he was baiting her to see if she would lie. But, I think Rick was just being unfailingly polite, like he always is.  That’s why we love him.

Then, the conversation turns darker, when Rick asks Clara the things she had to learn to do to survive.  He’s testing her, and she asks him if he thinks that one can come back from the things they had done.

“I hope so,” Rick replies.

Then, the scene seemed to go so fast, and suddenly, Creepy Clara was talking to a bag that was moving.  My first thought was, ‘Oh fuck, does she have a fucking walker baby in that bag?’ (P.S. I say “fuck” a lot when I’m stressed.)

My friend and I texted back and forth about it…we agreed it was maybe a baby or her husband/boyfriend’s  head. Then it all came together. Eddie. Eddie the husband’s head was in the bag. And apparently, Eddie’s head was wanting a chew toy, and Creepy Clara thought she was going to feed him Rick.

Bitch, please…it’s going to take a lot more than your mossy ass to take down Rick Grimes!

Then, Creepy Clara does us all a favor and stabs herself, and Rick is so good he actually gets teared up. That man has a heart of gold, I tell you.

Creepy Clara asks to not be rekilled after she dies…she wants to be with Eddie the head. Just when I thought she couldn’t get any creepier!

Then, Creepy Clara asks Rick what his three questions were:

How many walkers have you killed?

How many people have you killed?

Why?

Creepy Clara, in her last moment, pulls off some powerful last words: “You don’t get to come back from the things you’ve done.”

Shit!

Later, in Talking Dead, Scott M. Gimple dangled a brutal teaser about Creepy Clara’s final words to Rick.  He said it’s like a curse that may come back to haunt Rick in future episodes.

Ok, is it just me, or is Scott M. Gimple totally kicking all our asses right now?  He is, and so is Greg Nicotero, the executive producer and pioneering makeup/effects artist who directed tonight’s episode and has now helmed six episodes of The Walking Dead.  

Well played, gentlemen, well played.

I found a great interview with Greg Nicotero in Hero Complex about what we can expect from Season 4 of TWD. Check it out:

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/tv/walking-dead-greg-nicotero-season-4-premiere/#/0

Back at the prison, the geek kid is sick and the female hog is dead.  Is there a zombie swine flu in the works?  Maggie is not knocked up…yet. “I don’t want to be afraid of being alive,” she tells Glenn.

Poor Glenn is perpetually worried these days. And Daryl has to tell Beth that her boyfriend got chomped…she’s all like, “Ok, no biggie” and goes and starts to take down the “30” from the “30 Days Without an Accident” sign, then says, “I don’t cry anymore.”

Then, she gives Daryl a wayyy long hug.  Chris Hardwick noticed it, and so did I.  Watch out for jailbait, Daryl…that shit’s nothing but trouble.

Oh, man, the geek kid’s about to keel over…and, down he goes, dead on the shower floor. Shot of the dripping shower head. Ugh, is the zombie virus in the water? Well, I guess it is now, after Patrick (the geek kid’s name) sweated and hacked into it!  Fuck, he’s turned! (P.S. The kid who plays Patrick is the voice of Phineas in Phineas and Ferb…wow, thanks, Chris Hardwick, crown geek prince of basic cable, for sharing that fact…  I am actually a little starstruck right now… Phineas!)

Man, Chris Hardwick has it so bad for Andrew Lincoln.  I do love his unabashed man-crush on “Andy,” as he calls him...me too, Chris Hardwick, me too!

So, as we head into next week, Patrick’s a walker and he’s in the prison and everyone’s asleep. That is some fucking bad news for our gang at the prison.

And from the sneak peek of next week’s episode on Talking Dead, someone from inside the prison is feeding rats to the walkers through the fence.  Now, I’m not trying to jump to any hasty conclusions about who this stealthy saboteur may be (Bob), but whoever it is, he or she is a REAL asshole (Bob) and needs to get caught, killed, and rekilled ASAP (BOB!)!

Ok, apparently, straight from both Andrew Lincoln and Norman Reedus, Episode 2 is going to be rough, and Episode 3 is going to be rougher. Scott M. Gimple just confirmed it.

I tell you, people, I may have to go Bukowski on that shit next week.  I may need strong drink to get through it…just saying.

Wow, just figured out how to insert my fave pic from the episode! Enjoy! xo

Until next time, and enjoy the playlist:

Playlist:

Jim Reeves, “Precious Memories”

Hot Water Music,  “Our Own Way”

The Runaways,  “Dead End Justice”

Cypress Hill, “When the Shit Goes Down”