Original air date: March 9, 2013
The Review (with SPOILERS): Other than the first episode back, The Walking Dead has been entirely acceptable. Within episodes, it has blips into the good and dips into the bad, but it has mostly been just fine. I like sports analogies and TWD right now reminds me of a team that opened the season with a bunch of losses and has taken a very conservative approach just to steady the ship. They’re not trying to hit home runs or make a spectacular pass, they’re just getting on base right now.
This episode was interesting in how it bounced back and forth between Darryl & Beth and Sasha/Bob/Maggie. We’ve seen the show jump from segment to segment among the diaspora from the prison, but this was different. This was alternating short scenes. It was quick and snappy and gave this episode the feeling of more forward momentum than the story alone dictated.
The title for the episode was “Alone,” but I think it just as well could have been “Why can’t I have anything nice?” I think I now understand why we had to watch Darryl retread his journey from nihilistic “white trash” (his words) to a nice guy who sees that there are still decent people in the world. They had to show us that story again just so they could set-up what happened at the end of this episode when Darryl meets the rednecks who bothered Rick a few episodes ago (showing that my theory of them being hallucinations was dead wrong). However, they are shoveling the story on us pretty thick here. Darryl and Beth find this nice mortician’s home, it has food, it’s clean, Darryl is carrying Beth around like a new bride, he likes her singing and he almost admitted that sweet, pure Beth had made him believe in humanity again. They were totally going to kiss… Then the white doggie of hope gets eaten by raging zombies, ruining any hope of sanctuary for Darryl and Beth.
Darryl is engaged in claustrophobic combat with the walkers, while Beth escapes and is eventually kidnapped by the mortician who you thought might be a nice guy based on his dusting skills. God, does the works SUCK! Then Darryl chases after Beth, before sitting down at a literal CROSSROADS with the reappearance of the redneck guys that Rick encountered in a previous episode… So the whole point of last episode was to make damn sure that the densest member of the audience understood where Darryl was as a character so they could appear to make him a bad guy again; or at least show Darryl struggle NOT to be the guy he used to be. I’d rather see Darryl move onto something new since we’ve already seen Darryl tempted by Merle, but it seems like the creators enjoy this story a lot.
But, even though I’m kinda making fun of this story, I still like it. The saving grace is that I like Darryl. Try a story like this with Rick and I’m not going to like it because I don’t really like Andrew Lincoln. But I do like Darryl and I do like Norman Reedus. I’m also becoming a lot more fond of Beth and Emily Kinney than I thought possible. She has a fun, country girl aspect to her that I didn’t really appreciate before. A rare casting WIN for The Walking Dead. I like Carol too and I’m sure she’ll have a role to play. This could be a decent story just because of the talent.
So, I guess one of the big stories for the rest of the season is whether Darryl will really go back to being a nasty bowman (because crossbows are SO difficult to shoot…) running with the wrong crowd. I really liked the leader of the rednecks. He’s instantly more charismatic that other villains like the Governor or Shane; if only because he isn’t affecting an accent and hamming it up. Darryl won’t have his new support structure of Rick & Co. to keep him on the straight and narrow. No Beth, no Carol… He’ll just have a better spoken version of his brother Merle. You can almost kinda wonder if Darryl is just a person who always agrees with the strongest personality in the room…
And what about Beth? A young Christian girl who was kidnapped by a Cadillac with a cross on it… Maybe the world isn’t as nice as you thought, honey! Why anyone would think that a mortician who picks up zombies, puts makeup on them and stages “wakes” is a good and sensitive man is beyond me. Sounds like a total weirdo. Morticians are weird anyway…
The other part of this episode also runs mostly on the power of a couple of the actors. I really like Larry Gillard’s Bob Stucky (at least until they bring back the alcoholism story). When we saw him alone at the beginning of the episode, it was effective. I didn’t think it had too much to do with the story or the script, I just like Gillard and how he’s made Bob have this cool, happy confidence… Such contrast to all the ragged, sleep-deprived, unshaven yuckiness of the apocalypse. I really like how he is determined to go after Maggie because she’s his friend and that is what friends do for each other. It doesn’t matter that Maggie wanted to go alone. Sometimes it is your job to save friends from stupid decisions. Maggie is also very good in these segments. I think she comes off as one of the best when she is doing this kinda frantic, manic active stuff.
There was some weak stuff in these segments too. Sasha kinda wilts when she has to act with Bob or Maggie because she has about 10% of the charisma of those other two. It also got a little heavy-handed with the symbolism when Sasha had to be “alone” in that warehouse before she finds Maggie. I mean, that warehouse didn’t even have debris. And the annoying music stopped while she was there. Get it, after wanting to leave Maggie and just find a place for her and Bob to be safe, Sasha was now truly alone and she didn’t like it.
I think the reason I don’t love these bits like Sasha being alone or Darryl being at a crossroads is because it reminds me of when a person who is dumber than you – but doesn’t know it – tries to tell you a joke that you’ve heard before. It just doesn’t come off very well. A smart person can put a new spin on an old joke and make it worthwhile, but the dumb person is just wasting 15 seconds of your life. That’s kinda how I feel about these crossroad/alone type moments in TWD.
As always, the horror moments were really strong. The dramatic components always need a qualifier: “It was good, but it was like a joke told by a dumb person…” but the horror moments are just GOOD. The fog zombies were great. And that moment when the zombies came busting into the funeral home was great too. Even though it had a “No! Don’t open that door!” moment, the terror of having all those zombies bustling down the hallway was pretty scary. I wish that the creators would allow a single horror episode and just white-knuckle it the whole way.
Conclusion: Again, another acceptable episode. It thrives mostly on the charisma of a few of the actors, but that’s okay as long as the writers/directors realize the same written material won’t work on the weak actors. A lot heavy-handed in places, but good horror overall.
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion