“Live Bait”

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

Well. once again, the mavericks of The Walking Dead have thrown us another curve ball, turning back time and dedicating this entire episode to the Governor’s story and whereabouts from the moment he massacred his makeshift Woodbury army and squealed wheels outta there in a pickup truck with his two henchmen in tow…Martinez and the other guy.

I really liked this episode..especially since I am in no hurry to witness The Daryl Conversation, when Rick has to fess up to Daryl that he sent Carol packing.  When it comes to that conversation, I’ve got all day, every day, to find something else to divert my attention away from that dreaded and inevitable scene….in fact, when it comes to The Daryl Conversation, just call me Nefertiti, Queen of Denial. For now, I choose to pretend it doesn’t exist…la la la, la la.. Daryl Conversation?  What Daryl Conversation? Carol who?

So, what has the Gov been up to since mowing down and hauling ass?  Brooding, for starters, and lots of it.  A key opening scene shows the Gov, staring into a campfire, with three tents set up behind him.. from the darkness, a walker emerges and lurches towards him, teeth bared.  Fire Walker (Talking Dead’s name for her…ha!)  stumbles over the campfire and falls at the Gov’s feet, snarling and hissing as she claws towards him, her skirt starting to catch fire.

Through all this, Gov does not move, makes no attempt to get away or kill the walker…he is in some “shoulda-woulda-coulda” stupor and just doesn’t seem to give a crap about anything anymore.  Martinez emerges from his tent, gun in hand, and easily dispatches the Fire Walker with a single shot to the head. He looks at the Governor, who is still sitting there, motionless and brooding…Martinez rolls his eyes, shakes his head, and goes back into his tent.

The next morning, the Gov emerges from his tent to find himself alone, abandoned by his henchmen…his reaction is pure David Morrissey genius as he looks around and takes it all in…the empty campsite, the tire tracks of the pickup truck, long gone, the burnt-out remains of the campfire and dead walker…hands on hips, he bends forward slightly, like someone who had the wind knocked out of him, then tips his head back, looking towards the heavens, like, “Fuuuuck…what now?”

What now, of course, involves a big rig on the side of the road, and of course the Gov is one resourceful motherfucker…time for Plan B to go into full effect:  Destroy Woodbury.

The following montage is really amazing, set to Ben Nichols’ “The Last Pale Light in the West,” showing the Governor blasting through the gates of Woodbury in the big rig before torching the entire town, resulting in some of the most epic images of the Gov yet…

The Gov changed his profile picture.

The Gov as Snake Plissken…(Chris Hardwick’s joke, not mine.)

The montage continues with panoramic landscape shots, sunset, then daylight, suggesting the passage of time…We see the Governor, disheveled and bearded, walking aimlessly down the side of a road. He stops to read graffiti messages scrawled on the front side of a barn, attempts at communicating to loved ones, telling the sad stories of the fallen…one name stands out in the messages (“Brian Heriot…meet us at home …we love you Brian Heriot”). We watch the Governor’s face as he reads this, and hangs his head, as the import of these writings hits him.

This scene is brilliantly done, complete with a voice-over that is layered through the filmed images and music…we hear the Gov telling someone, “I’ve been on the road for a couple of months…” “By yourself?” a woman’s voice asks. “Yeah,” he replies. “Where did you live, before that?” the woman asks. “I was in a town,” the Gov says.  “Were the monsters there?” asks the woman. “No,” he answers. “It was safe….full of good people.” “What happened?” the woman’s voice asks. “He just…lost it,” answers the Gov. “Who?” asks the woman. “The man in charge,” he whispers. “Barely got out alive.”

As the music ends, we see the Governor stumble into the small nameless town, sidestepping a walker before collapsing in the street…as he looks up, he sees a little girl looking down at him from the window of an apartment building.  When he goes to investigate, he finds a family holed up in an apartment…Don, the older father, who is on an oxygen tank; his daughters, Lilly and Tara (who is standing at the apartment doorway, pointing a handgun at the Governor as he approaches) and Lilly’s daughter, Megan, who resembles the Governor’s late daughter, Penny.

Despite the initial awkwardness and distrust of their first encounter, the family and the Governor begin to warm up to each other. It starts slowly, with the Governor supplying a fake name (Brian Heriot) when asked and dumping a bowl of Spaghettios out the window after Lily comes across the hall with the food offering (after thanking her in a whisper and gently closing the door).  Later, on Talking Dead, when pressed by Chris Hardwick as to why the Governor would dump the Spaghettios out the window, David Morrissey explained that the Governor would not want to be indebted to anyone for anything, even a bowl of Spaghettios.

But, of course, all that changes.  The Governor tries to return the bowl by leaving it at the doorstep, but Tara is having none of it (“Slow down there, buddy, this isn’t the Holiday Inn!”). Before the Gov knows what’s happening, he is invited for coffee and directed to the couch,  and then he is asked to help move the old father to his bed…it is touching and funny to watch this fearsome character be bossed around by a super sassy Tara.

The Gov scoops up the old man easily in his arms and delivers him to his bed, and before he can slip away, the old man asks the Gov if he hears the noises of the walkers moving around upstairs. The old father tells the Gov that Tara has gone upstairs and blasted them countless times, to no avail. He finally told Tara to stop trying, not to waste her bullets. It is clear that they do not know to shoot the walkers through the head.

Then old Don asks the Governor him if he’s ever had kids. “No,” the Gov lies quietly. The old man tells him that the moment he became a father, he knew what it meant to be a man, a real man. This, of course, is the last thing the Governor wants to talk about, and he tries to slip away again, but not before old Don has a request…could the Gov go upstairs and get his neighbor’s backgammon set that’s stashed under the bed? It would mean a lot to his granddaughter, Megan, and may even put a smile on her face, a rare occurrence these days.

So, despite himself, the Governor finds himself in the old neighbor’s upstairs apartment, pulling the backgammon set out from under the bed and finding a box of bullets as well. As he puts them in his pocket, he hears a noise, and upon investigation, he finds, lying in the bathtub, the fugliest walker we’ve seen since the fat bloated well walker from Season 2:

Behold “Bath Salts Walker,” as named on Talking Dead’s In Memoriam segment…super gross, Nicotero-style!

After the Governor dispatches Bath Salts Walker, he comes back downstairs,  bringing Megan the backgammon set, as well as  a smile to her face.

Then, the Gov returns to the apartment across the hall and pulls out the picture of him with his wife and daughter.  He looks at the picture a moment, then folds the corner down, obscuring his own face, leaving only the smiling faces of his wife and daughter.

Lilly comes over with a gift of thanks, tries to return the Gov’s gun to him, but he refuses it, advises her that they need to shoot the walkers in the brain to kill them. He tries to walk away, again,  but Lily has another favor to ask…if he could try to get another tank or two of oxygen from a nearby old folks’ home for her father, who is in the final stages of lung cancer? When the Governor hesitates, she tells him that her father is the only one who can bring a smile to Megan’s face.

And, so, once again, the Gov goes, and almost gets himself killed in a harrowing scene at the old folks’ home, which is now full of walkers. The Gov barely escapes with his life, but manages to bring back two full tanks of oxygen.  As Lilly comes to tend to his wounds, she sees the picture of him and his family. Later, Megan approaches him, asks what happened to his eye. He says he will tell her, but she must keep it a secret. She holds out her hand to do a “pinky swear” with him. He complies, and tells her that his eye was hurt when he was trying to save someone he cared about. When Megan asks him if he was able to save that person, he tells her no. She tells him that she is sorry for that, and he gently replies that he is sorry as well.

David Morrissey plays the Governor so well in this episode, as the Gov keeps getting disarmed by this family, by their growing trust, caring and need for him. His manner with them, from the beginning, is quiet, and courteous, and gentle, even with Tara, as she sasses and bosses him around.  He tries to keep the family at arm’s length, but he cannot continue to do so, as they keep worming their way in, especially Megan.  Lilly tells the Gov that when Megan saw him from the window that first day, she thought at first he was her father, returning home at last from a convenience store run that he never came back from.

Megan, who barely talked or smiled before, is beginning to open up to the Governor, to talk and smile with him.  And in return, the Governor is opening up to Megan and her family, and we see a side of him that we have not seen before: the father, and husband, as opposed to the liar, torturer, and murderer that we have seen in the past. While we have seen the villian side of the Governor acting the part of the courteous host, the attentive boyfriend, and the heroic leader, this is the first time we have seen him motivated by love and act selflessly, as a husband and father does for a wife and a child.

It is all very confusing for us, the viewers and the fans…aren’t we supposed to really hate this guy? Can this gentle, caring, tender guy really be the Governor? The answer is, yes, he can.  He has the capacity to be both evil and good. He was a loving father and husband at one time, but was broken by tragedy and grief, losing his humanity along the way.  But, then he found this family, and the redemption he thought was lost to him was offered up again.

But to take the chance to love again is to also chance losing again…and if the Governor lets this family in and opens his heart, which he has clearly done, and loses them, can he come back from that?  Many of my friends think not, and I agree…if the Governor loses Lily, Tara, and especially Megan, I don’t think he can come back from that.

Meanwhile, some time has passed, maybe a week or more…the Governor’s hair is neatly trimmed, and the scraggly beard is gone. A close-up shot of a chess board, as the Gov is teaching Megan how to play chess, while Tara and Lilly are tending to their dying father. Megan holds up a pawn and asks about it.  The Governor tells her it’s a pawn, a soldier. Megan asks if the soldiers die. The Governor says sometimes they do. Megan asks if you lose if the soldiers die.  “Not necessarily,” answers the Gov. “You can lose a lot of soldiers and still win the game.” Megan then holds up the white king questioningly.

“That’s the king,” says the Gov. “That’s the guy you want to capture.”

Megan takes the white king and draws an eye patch on it in black marker, hands it to the Gov. “He looks like you,” she says. The Governor looks bemused as he holds the piece. “Yes, he does,” he agrees.  They begin to play. Later,  Lilly comes into the room, gives Megan and the Gov a sad and significant nod of the head. Don has died. As the Governor realizes that it has been some time since Don’s death, the alarm shows in his face.  He tries to get the girls to leave Don’s room, but they ask for a moment…and of course, Don’s eyes open as he reanimates as a walker, and he grabs for Tara.

The ensuing scene is the beginning of a rapid downward spiral for the Governor’s happy family respite.  It is also the beginning of some truly gnarly hand-to-hand combat style walker-slaughter, courtesy of the Governor.  He quickly grabs one of the oxygen tanks and bashes Don Walker’s head in with it, pounding it bloody into the pillow as the horrified women scream and try to stop him.  Megan is traumatized, and later, when Tara acknowledges that the Governor saved her life, and that Don would be grateful for what he did, he looks towards Lilly and Megan.  Lilly shakes her head no…Megan is not ready to forgive or accept him.  The Gov returns to the apartment across the hall, retrieves his things, and sets a flame to the picture of him and his family, pushing it out the window.

When he tries to leave, Lilly insists he take them with him.  They leave in Don’s delivery truck, sleeping in the back at night.  Lilly presses up against the Governor while the others sleep.  My best WD buddy texted me, He’s totally gonna fuck that lady! I texted back, The Gov’s got mad game, even as a madman! 

Of course, the truck breaks down, and as they trudge down the country road, Tara reminisces about a mushroom-addled camping trip gone sour when an old girlfriend broke it to her that she was more into guys…this causes her to stumble and cry out as she falls, and the Governor hears the telltale sound of a herd of walkers, alerted by Tara’s cry, who are coming towards the sound.  He tells them to drop their bags, that they need to run, and after a long moment’s hesitation, Megan runs for the Governor and jumps into his arms. He tells her, “I will never let you go.”

In their running from the walkers, the Gov and Megan fall into a deep pit that is three or four walkers deep.  The Governor pulls off some serious bare-handed walker kills, punching through the first walker’s throat and pretty much tearing its head off…he takes a femur and forces another walker’s mouth open so wide its head tears open (lovingly named Pop-a-Top Walker on TD). Super gnarly and impressive. After killing the walkers, the Gov looks up to find Martinez, gun in hand, looking down at him.

Questions:

How do you feel about the Governor after this episode? Do you feel more sympathetic towards him as a character?

How do you think he and the girls will be received by Martinez and his new crew?

If the Governor loses Megan and the other women, do you think he has a chance to keep his humanity, or do you think he will be pushed beyond that point?

Playlist:

The Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil”

Johnny Cash, “Ring of Fire”

Alice in Chains, “Man in the Box”

Ben Nichols, “Last Pale Light in the West”

“Internment”

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

I have had many great conversations this week with fellow WDO (Walking Dead Obsessed)  buddies about Episode 4’s cliffhanger:  Rick dumping Carol and sending her off on her own…judging from these conversations, and judging from the online chatter and social media frenzy revolving around the “Did Rick do the right thing? Is Carol’s killing of Karen and David worthy of banishment from the prison community? “ issue at hand, it seems that Rick’s decision is as devisive to the fans of the show as it potentially is for the prison group. 

One of the most interesting conversations I had was with a friend who has a keen interest in researching history and genealogy…she brought up points that I had not previously thought of in regards to Carol and her decision.  She pointed out that in pre-antibiotic times (before World War II), in times of plague and outbreak, that it was a more common practice for a caregiver to quickly and humanely kill a severely ill person, to both ease the person’s suffering and to attempt to staunch the spread of the disease.

The disease at hand, which I named the Explodey Flu, actually seems to be based on the ebola virus, also known as ebola hemorrhagic fever. First discovered in 1976, the ebola virus spread from animal carriers (fruit bats, primates, and pigs) to humans, resulting in a fast-acting and highly fatal disease with an up to 90% fatality rate.  In its final stages, the virus can cause an infected person to hemorrhage flood from their eyes, nose and mouth. To this day, there is no known vaccine or cure for ebola hemorrhagic fever.

Here is a link to the World Health Organization’s fact sheet on ebola:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

Super scary.

At this point in the Walking Dead, it is now a year and a half into the walker apocalypse, and available stores of antibiotics are dwindling fast.  While antibiotics cannot kill a virus, they can kill the secondary infections that go along with the virus, so they are an essential component to managing the outbreak and mortality rate of disease, both viral and bacterial.

However, at this stage of the game, it will be a long time before the surviving humans will be able to manufacture antibiotics, if they ever will again…it seems that the living are having a hard enough time surviving on the most basic level. In zombie apocalypse, the world is essentially returning to pre-antibiotic times, when options are narrowed considerably and the whole spectrum of morality changes. In such times, actions like Carol’s, intended to speed the dying process of someone she thought to be terminal and a threat to the others in the community, may feel more and more like a mercy killing and less like murder. When luxuries like antibiotics dwindle and eventually run out, mankind’s decisions will, out of sheer necessity, be based more and more on primal survival than lofty ideals.

A main theme that lies at the core of Walking Dead, both in the comic and television series, is the decision that each and every character must make at some point in his/her survival: Is it necessary at some point to give up our humanity to survive in postapocalyptic times, and at what point is it necessary to do so? 

At some point in each character’s story, he/she must look inward and ask him/herself this question (consciously or unconsciously) in his/her quest to survive. As we saw with Hershel, each character must become able to kill, and rekill…they must learn to kill walkers, they must be able to rekill a recently deceased human to prevent them from becoming a walker, and, at times, they may need to kill another living human in their fight for survival. We have seen key characters grapple with this decision time and time again throughout the series (Shane with Otis, Rick with Shane, Carol with Karen and David, the Governor with basically everyone around  him…).

This issue is at the heart of Rick’s three questions:

How many walkers have you killed?

How many people have you killed?

Why?

Thankfully, with Episode 5, “Internment,” antibiotics, lofty ideals, and acts of bravery and heroism are still on the table. This episode was like a balm for my hurting soul.  I, and many of my WDO buddies with me, spent many hours this past week worrying about Rick and his decision to singlehandedly banish Carol from the group. We needed an episode with unparalleled heroics (btw, Hershel gets my vote for MVP this episode, with Rick, Maggie, Sasha and Carl coming in close behind), epic zombie battles, and even a warm & fuzzy father/son shoot-em-up moment with Rick and Carl, as they battle the walkers that have breached the prison fences:

Phone was acting weird, so this is the best picture I got…I do like how their reloading stance is identical…nothing like a good walker shoot-em-up to bond a father with his son…it was a great scene, loved when Carl, in his father’s hat, tosses a magazine to his dad when he runs out of ammo.

And then, like the evil cherry on top, the RETURN OF THE GOVERNOR.

Look, I know I was pretty hard on Carol last week in my post…I am worried about her. I wanted her to be Daryl’s hot older girlfriend, as a high-five to cougars everywhere.  I was not feeling well, it was kind of a tough week, and I was cranky and doubled over with abdominal pain while watching the episode and writing about it…Carol and her crazy was annoying the shit out of me…and she was really grossing Rick out.

And I can’t have that.

If you know me, you know that I think Rick Grimes is the total tits. I am, always and unconditionally, riding in Rick’s car. In The Walking Dead, our journey started with Rick’s journey, when he was gravely wounded in a shootout and awoke from a coma into a world overrun with flesh-eating zombies. I can’t just walk away from that, people…I feel bonded with that man, from that first day when he was shuffling through the hellish hospital all wide-eyed in his hospital gown, to now… Each time he makes a key decision, I respect the heart, the wisdom, and the morality with which he makes that decision.  So, even if I don’t 100% agree with it, I respect it. Take that, Rick-Haters.

That being said, I do think that maybe it would have been better for Rick to not take the full burden of the Carol decision upon himself. I do think it would have been better to bring her back, let the group decide what must be done, and let the group decide Carol’s fate.  I was so relieved that Maggie supported Rick’s decision, and I was even more relieved that Hershel seemed to accept it…even though Hershel did look shaken, and was kind of stumbling down the hall, muttering to himself while checking on the patients, after Rick told him.

I am not looking forward to Daryl’s finding out, and I was grateful that the WD writers spared us that scene in this episode…thanks, guys. We fans appreciate the consideration for our collective psyches. I really did love that Rick put off the Daryl Conversation to enjoy a moment eating peas with his son in the garden… not realizing, of course, who was seething and lurking in the woods beyond the prison fence, watching them…Cue the Bear McCreary creepy music, pulsing and humming like black fury and the desire for vengeance, and behold, looking super pissed and very frightening…the Gov!  He’s back, and I’m sick enough to admit that I’m glad to see him. Seeing the Gov again, at that moment, was like a refreshing crazy breeze that took away some of the tension I was feeling about the dreaded Daryl Conversation.

Ok, maybe it’s time to start talking how awesome this guy is:

Hershel! I love this man, especially in this episode…he is the embodiment of bravery, compassion, humility, humor…totally MVP.  If he isn’t intubating some poor sick kid’s lungs, he’s counseling the others in his soothing voice, giving them little jobs to do (Glenn to do rounds with him, Sasha to intubate, Lizzie to go start reading Tom Sawyer)…he’s being a great dad to Maggie while covering for Glenn…he even manages a sweet joke with Glenn and Sasha about having an impromptu council meeting regarding having “Spaghetti Tuesdays” on Wednesdays. When Sasha rolls her eyes at him, at his sweet, corny joke, Hershel deadpans, “First we’ll have to find some spaghetti.”

The scene with Hershel and Caleb is powerful. Caleb speaks with the frankness of both a doctor and a man who is dying. “Not everyone gets to live, “ Caleb tells Hershel. “End stage…is a point that no one comes back from, or they can’t. That’s where I am.” Caleb has made some more IV’s, tells Hershel that, “You need to focus on the ones that can make it. If you’re not ready to lose one, you’ll lose them all…and they don’t just die.”

It’s like what my friend was talking about, when supplies are limited and the choices become more stark and brutal, based more on necessity and less on emotion and morality.

Hershel tells Caleb he is not giving up on anybody. Caleb shows him the shotgun and shells he has stashed away, and warns Hershel to make sure everyone’s doors are shut. When Hershel presses Caleb to let Hershel look at him, Caleb relents.  “Ok, Hershel,” he says, “have a look.”

(Can’t really see the blood beginning to stream from Caleb’s eyes in that one…oh well, but definitely wanted to give some props of Doc Caleb before he dies of Explodey Flu and becomes a walker.)

Hershel is adamant about protecting the sick from seeing a deceased patient be rekilled.  When a man collapses and dies in the hallway, the sick patients gather at their doorways, frightened. Hershel gently and firmly tells them to get back in their cells. Sasha, so ill herself, manages to pull a gurney over to Hershel and help him load the man’s body onto it. (Um, have I mentioned how much Sasha rules in this episode?) Hershel makes sure she can make it to her cell, then wheels the body to a private area…he must cover the man’s face before he does his first rekill, thrusting his knife through the sheet into the man’s skull and brain.

The scene between Hershel and Rick, talking through the glass, is such a classic great WD scene.  It’s beautifully shot, with the class reflecting Hershel’s face when the camera pans on Rick’s. Hershel tells Rick that the man he has rekilled is the third death, that they have resorted to having to burn the bodies behind the blocks. “That’s what we have come to,” Hershel says.  He then tells Rick about something the rekilled man said just the day before, “A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.” That is why Hershel has been so adamant about protecting those who are sick from seeing the dead be rekilled. “I know they know, ” says Hershel. “But I didn’t want them to see it right now.”

“They see you, Hershel.” Rick tells him.  “They see you keep going, even after all the choices keep getting taken away.” Hershel tells Rick that he still has faith that there is some sort of divine purpose to the apocalypse, of all that has happened.  “You think it’s all a test?” asks Rick.

“Life is all a test, Rick,” Hershel replies.

The ensuing scene is some prime walker mayhem, and Hershel shines in it, as well as Rick, Carl, and Maggie.  When Hershel rushes to tend to Sasha, who has collapsed in her cell, he leaves a cell door open, and Teen Walker comes to life.  After Hershel revives a dehydrated Sasha, and they exchange mutual admiration for each other, blood spew hits the fan.  Glenn collapses, coughing and choking, while Henry, the intubated young man, has died and reanimated into a walker.  Lizzie calls for Hershel, but he is in the process of being attacked by Teen Walker.  Hot Dad (I think it’s Mr. Decker from Hung ) comes out of his son’s cell, gun drawn and ready to shoot Teen Walker, but his walker son lurches out of the cell behind him and chomps him in the arm.  Hot Dad’s aim gets all crazy and he shoots the nice blond lady who came to Hershel’s defense by hitting and kicking at Teen Walker. Damn!

While Hot Dad is being neck-chomped by his walker son, Lizzie is being some sort of “walker whisperer”, coaxing the freshly-turned Henry out of the cell. “C’mon Henry, keep following me,” and it’s all going pretty well, until Henry attacks her, and Hershel pulls off an amazing WWF-style move, flipping Henry Walker over the railing. Lizzie seems really shocked at Henry Walker’s savage turn.  Hershel almost gets killed about three or four times by different walkers, one of them being Caleb Walker, who had died in his locked cell and who clutches at Hershel’s arm through the bars. Hershel pulls off his second rekill with a knife through Caleb Walker’s eye, then grabs the shotgun and shells and shoots the other walkers dead.  Hershel had said things wouldn’t come to this, but Caleb was right…they did. And they will again.

Maggie is amazing in this scene, as she tirelessly fights to get into the cell block where her father is under walker attack, even trying to axe her way through the cell block door. She ignores her father’s warning to hold her fire and save the bag that is hanging from Henry Walkers’ mouth, and she shoots clean and true, saving her father from the walker’s attack, and then helping him intubate Glenn, saving his life.  Her father admonishes her gently, telling her he didn’t want her to risk her life coming in there, but she is her father’s daughter, and she has put his and others’ lives before her own.

I love that the crew at the prison handled the walker attack, and the breach of the fences, without the help of some of their strongest members, namely Daryl, Michonne, Tyrese, and even Bob. While the vet school crew kicked ass getting the meds and getting them back to the prison, the at-home crew got it done containing the walker attack from inside, and outside the prison.

I also love the shift between Rick and Carl…in the beginning of the episode,  Carl tells Rick that he can’t keep trying to protect him from “what always happens” and Rick telling him he feels that “it’s my job to try”.  Later in the episode, when Rick seeks out Carl and tells him he needs his help bolstering the fence, then ends up giving his son a quick lesson in loading and firing an assault rifle on a horde of walkers, it is yet another example of ideals being trumped by sheer necessity.  It’s a sign of the times, friends, because the Gov has come a’ stalkin’, and Daryl is surely looking for Rick to have The Conversation about what happened to his special lady friend…and if my friends are right, Tyrese is not going to be happy about the Carol situation, either.

Until next week, friends. Be well, enjoy the playlist, and go Team Rick!

Playlist:

Zero 7, “Somersault” (for Hershel)

Social Distortion, “Bye Bye Baby” (later, Carol)

2 Chainz (feat. Drake), “No Lie” (for Rick, and Jenn & Jen, and all of us on Team Rick)

Eminem, “Without Me” (for the Gov…welcome back, buddy…we’ve been expecting you!) ❤

“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”

The first step in my journey with The Walking Dead began back in the fall of 2004, when I went to my favorite comic book store to buy my friend a birthday present. My friend was a salty tattoo artist who took great pleasure in hating most things…he and I did, however, share a love of graphic novels and comic book art.  So, there I was in the store, combing through the rows and rows of comics, looking for a couple of issues of something cool enough not to incur his withering ridicule or bored disinterest.   I knew what he liked:  dark, compelling story lines with great artwork.

I went up to the counter and asked the young clerk if there was anything he could recommend.  He immediately put down the comic book he was reading, and with a gleam in his eye, came around the counter, pulled an issue off one of the front promotional racks, and handed it to me.  I looked down at the cover, and my first thought was, “Wow.”

The art on the cover was amazing…a perfect snapshot image of total mayhem, drawn, inked and colored in an inimitable style. Emblazoned across the top, the comic’s title, The Walking Dead, glowed bright red like fresh blood.

The cover image showed a lone sheriff’s deputy in full uniform:  wide brimmed hat, jacket,  muddied boots, standing his ground against an oncoming assailant.  The deputy’s broad back faces the reader at a 3/4 angle, his legs are braced shoulders’ width apart in a defensive sideways stance. His head is turned to face his attacker, and we see his narrowed eyes and squared jaw as he sizes up his foe.  His look is grim and unafraid as he loads, or reloads, his shotgun with (perhaps his last) two bullets.

All around the deputy, it looks like the world has gone to shit.   Beside him, the smashed front end of a car has rammed into an overturned fire hydrant.   A shattered storefront window behind the deputy exposes the store’s dark, empty interior, with toppled mannequins inside peering lifelessly through the gaping holes in the jagged glass. Lying amidst the broken glass and bricks on the ground is an arm,  and while it looks as if the arm came from one of the mannequins inside the store, there is an eerie suggestion that the arm could have just as easily been ripped, or gnawed, off some poor doomed person.

And, reflected in the shards of broken storefront window glass, the reader sees what is coming for the deputy:  the  sunken faces, wild hungry eyes, bared teeth, and the crooked, hunched posturing of a horde of zombies.  World’s end.  Zombie apocalypse.  It was like a choir of twisted angels singing inside my head, “Awwwe-some!”

I just stared down at that cover for what felt like forever.  I had never seen anything like it. The drawing style was simple and stylized, but full of nuance and detail, like the rendering of the zombies in the shattered window glass. The inking was dark and shadowy, and the coloring was simple, sepia-toned with hints of yellows and oranges and reds.  Down at the bottom right-hand corner, I read the names of the writer and artist:  Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore.  That explained the amazing cover art.  Tony Moore’s drawing and inking style, especially in his graphic novel, From Hell, was one of my favorite styles.

Check out the cover of the first issue of The Walking Dead for yourself:

See what I mean? Love at first sight.

While I flipped through the comic,  the young clerk began to tell me about the series, happy to share his enthusiasm with an appreciative audience. He told me that they had just recently gotten it in the store, and that the series was generating a real buzz around the comic book community.

He outlined the basic story line:  a sheriff’s deputy, Rick Grimes, is injured in a shootout and wakes from a coma in a hospital to find the world around him overrun with zombies. He searches for,  eventually finds, his wife and son in a small group of survivors…but his wife, thinking her husband was dead, has hooked up with Rick’s best friend and patrol partner, Shane. The series follows this bizarre love triangle, and the hellish plight of the human survivors, as they try to stay alive in a hellish post-zombie apocalyptic world.

I’ll never forget one thing the clerk said:

“And the name, ‘The Walking Dead’….it’s like you don’t know if it applies to the zombies or the human survivors.”

Sold! I bought the first two issues for my friend’s birthday present and ended up keeping them for the next week before giving them to him.  As I did with all my favorite comics, I spent hours reading them and trying to emulate the drawing style of certain frames I especially liked in my sketchbook.  One of my favorites from the first issue showed a half-eaten female corpse, all ribcage and bones, beside a bicycle frame…like some poor woman either had been on a bike ride when she got attacked, or she had tried to escape the hell around her on bike.  In the story, Rick approaches the woman’s body beside the bike and is about to take the bike for his own use, thinking the woman is dead.  There is a great frame, a close-up of his face registering his wide-eyed horror, his hand clamped over his mouth and a tear running down his face when the corpse actually moves and he realizes she is, to some degree, alive…or undead.

I drew the zombie woman with her bike in my sketchbook, and it turned out so well that I gave the drawing to a guy I had a crush on at the time and labeled it, “A Happy Ending.” You may be  thinking, as you read this, that I have a pretty bizarre flirting style, and I will tell you, my friend, you are absolutely correct!

(Of course, this character has become one of the iconic walker characters of the show, Hanna, the bike walker.  More on Hanna in later posts…we have a lot to discuss with that one!)

Anyway, back to 2004.  Of course, my friend loved his present and became hooked on The Walking Dead comic series.  I borrowed issues from him from time to time, but life took me in a different direction, and my friend and I fell out of touch.   Time passed.  I fell in love, had a kid, got married (yes, in that order), had another kid, and life became full of more immediate concerns besides comic books.  While I knew that my focus needed to be where it was, on my babies, on being a wife and (gulp!) a grown-up,  I did yearn for the day when I would have some time again to explore those things that I loved, like comics, and drawing, and writing…and sleeping.

Fast forward to the late fall of 2010.  I was catching up with an old friend on the phone, and she told me her new husband was obsessed with the new Walking Dead series on AMC. I had heard of the series, and while I was intrigued,  I wasn’t so sure I could handle it at that point in my life. I tell you, something happens when you have kids.  It’s like your heart explodes open into a million pieces and you start to feel everything…you don’t have a filter anymore.  I had a three-year old, I was still nursing my youngest son, and sleep was elusive enough without hellish images and zombie dreams keeping me awake even more than I already was.

So, I held off…for a while. But I kept thinking about that show.  And I couldn’t stay away. I started looking it up online, and from what I read,  The Walking Dead  television series seemed to be a really quality adaptation of the comic series.  I was glad to see that the comic’s creator, Robert Kirkman,  was both an executive producer and writer for the show.   I began to read the synopses of the first season’s story line, and I saw that it diverged from the story line of the original comic.  While I don’t usually go for spoilers, I just couldn’t take any more surprises than life was giving me on a daily basis.

My online poking turned into my DVR’ing the second season of The Walking Dead  while beginning  to watch the first season on Netflix streaming. And, once again, it was love at first sight.  The writing, the acting, the design and cinematography, the makeup and special effects, were all groundbreaking.  And of course, the super-hunky actors like Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal, Lennie James, and Norman Reedus were a definite draw…all the characters were compelling, whether you liked them or hated them, and it was perhaps a little too easy at times to imagine what it would be like to actually be among them, navigating the hells of zombie apocalypse.

And so, despite my initial hesitation, I became one of the Walking Dead Obsessed (WDO  for short). On Sunday nights, after the kids went to bed, my ritual from 9pm on became wincing through horrific scenes of zombie carnage, OMG plotline twists, and furiously texting my best WDO buddy about how hot Rick and Daryl were.  I would go to work and seek out the student interns to talk WD.  I would think about it throughout the day, turning the show’s plotlines around in my head while my kids regaled me from their car seats with everything I ever needed to know about Transformers.

My husband does not share my love of the WD.  He is a good, intelligent man who likes to watch documentaries, comedies, and This Old House.  He invariably will come in the living room while I am watching WD just in time to catch a particularly gory scene, like Glenn curb-stomping a walker.  Never fails.  He never gives me shit about it,  but he can’t help but react like any normal, sane person would….“Ewwwww, god!”  One time, he turned to me and asked,”What is the appeal?” He wasn’t trying to be a dick, he was truly mystified.  I just smiled weakly and shrugged…I had nothing!

I mean, honestly, what is the appeal? I didn’t have the words to explain it, but I know I love it…and I know that maybe it’s not the best use of my time to stay up late and watch the gory, disturbing show with the bleak story line, the  walkers chomping the hapless victims, the loss of beloved characters, the decapitations and the blood spatter.  Week after week, I go to bed, shaken at the latest episode’s turn of events, fall into a troubled sleep full of zombie dreams, then jolt awake at 6:30 am to get the kiddies off to school and myself to work… What can I say? I  love our show, people, and because I love it, week after week, I take another one for the team.

And  apparently, I am not the only one.  The Walking Dead television series has received strong Neilsen ratings and has set new records for a television cable series, reaching 12.4 million viewers for the Season 3 finale episode, making it the most-watched drama  series telecast in basic cable television history. Ok…if that sounds like it reads like a Wikpedia entry, that’s because I got it from there.  Sue me.

I’ve been kicking the concept of this blog around in my head for months now…a blog based mainly on The Walking Dead  television series, filtered through my perspective, my world, and yes, at times, my crazy.  The basic concept:   write a post centered around each episode of The Walking Dead series, shooting from the hip but also including, at times, factual and technical tidbits about the episode.  Initially, I wanted to write about each of the episodes, in order, leading up to the Season 4 premiere episode…but with two young kids, a marriage, a household to manage, and a job, things didn’t quite turn out like that.

So, the entirely new plan is this:  post an introduction and a pre-Season 4 post  (you know, feelings, hunches, predictions, worries, reminisces about the shit that’s gone down so far and what’s gonna happen next kind of post), then just dive in with the premiere of Season 4 on October 13th.  And along with each week’s new episode, I will begin the journey with posting an entry about the “Episodes Gone Bye,” starting with the first episode of Season 1, “Days Gone Bye,” and continuing from there in sequential order.

In addition, at the  end each post, I will include  a playlist of at least three songs that I feel correspond to the episode and characters the episode focused on.  My friends have been a little confused about this one. “You mean songs from the show?” they asked. No, just songs, songs from the huge list I have been amassing on my phone as I stream music.  I have heard more than one actor from The Walking Dead series say that they use music to both prepare for, and come down from, some of the more intense scenes they film.

So, basically it’s a blog half about my Walking Dead obsession and half about the damn skeletons in my own closet, or, my own damn barn fulla walkers. With a soundtrack.

I don’t know if I am ready to take the ride…at this moment, I am thinking of so many reasons to back out, but when are we ever ready for zombie apocalypse?  The premiere of Season 4 airs tomorrow night, 9pm.  So here we are. Let’s just see what happens, shall we?

Intro playlist:

Arcade Fire,  Ready to Start

Drake,  The Motto

TV on the Radio,   Staring at the Sun