THE KEEP UP

The Walking Dead

Season 4 – Episode 3

By Steve Wood

THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FROM ISSUE #48 AND #100 OF THE COMIC

All hell is breaking loose in the prison; this infection is proving to be something far worse than the group initially imagined. I’m starting to be convinced that the writers made this decision to eliminate most of the people who came from Woodbury, the complaints were high after last season’s finale, and this might be the shows way of making it up to the fans, and I’m ok with that. What did we learn early in this episode? Well for one, Tyreese doesn’t take kindly to someone killing and burning the body of his little fling. He seems to want to put the blame on anyone who is remotely suspicious. Another thing is Rick is on the verge of snapping, he possibly would have killed Tyreese if Daryl wasn’t around to physically stop him.

This flu type sickness is taking its toll on everyone who survived the outbreak in cell block D – all of whom are now in quarantine in a different cell block. I’m not sure exactly how many people came to the prison from Woodbury, but over half of them must be either dead from the previous attack, or now dying from this sickness. There are only a couple of characters that are shown, that we know came from Woodbury and are still in good health.

A main cast member is going to die in the next couple of episodes, I’m convinced of that. We have Glenn who is sick, and Hershel carelessly going into the quarantined area to administer his flu remedy that he created from elderberries outside of the prison walls. I know the show doesn’t follow the comics, but Hershel and Glenn are already dead, in issues 48 and 100 respectively. We already know this show isn’t scared to kill off main characters, so if I had to guess, Hershel will end up dying from the sickness.

Daryl and Michonne spend most of this episode prepping their trip to a veterinary college roughly 50 miles away. Hershel mentioned that there would be antibiotics and most people probably wouldn’t think of checking there for medicine. After some pep talk from Daryl, Tyreese eventually agrees to tag along, and Bob is also joining the group. After a short drive, the group encounters possibly the largest hoard we’ve seen on the show, and with nowhere to run, they’re forced to abandon the car. There is a scene here where Tyreese takes out his aggression on a large group of zombies, and in doing so is temporarily left behind. This somewhat resembles the gym scene in the comic where Tyreese kills a massive amount of zombies.

One of the most important things this season happens here as Daryl stumbles across a radio transmission while driving and can hear someone talking. During The Talking Dead, executive producer Gale Anne Hurd did mention the chance of some sort of “sanctuary”; this must be reference to the Alexandria Safe Zone or possibly the comic character Negan and his group, which are called “The Saviors”. That is all purely speculation on my part.

Then the shocker, or possibly obvious – Carol was the one who killed Karen and the other guy, and then burned the bodies. Carol has strayed quite far from her nurturing attitude from the previous seasons; she is now more cold and reckless. We still don’t know who is feeding the zombies at the fence line, I’m inclined to believe that someone from the Woodbury group is doing this, possibly Bob, since we don’t know anything about him; he is the obvious choice for laying on the blame. We do know that The Gov will have a couple of standalone episodes, so we might find out that he is planning on attacking the prison again, or taking it down from the inside, possibly with Bob’s help. What would really be interesting is if The Gov is somehow responsible for the sickness hitting the prison. I’m probably getting ahead of myself now, so I’ll wrap this up.

BEST SCENE: Hershel going into quarantine and talking with the doctor. Also the two scenes with Rick and Tyreese.

ZOMBIE PRESENCE: A

CGI vs PRACTICAL EFFECTS: CGI