‘The Walking Dead’ Episode 4.16 “A” (8 out of 10) Starring Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Danai Gurira, Chandler Riggs, Steven Yeun, Lauren Cohan; Sundays on AMC.
We’ve come a long way, zombie survivors. After several fractured storylines, a plethora of moral dilemmas, and loads of slain walkers, season four of “The Walking Dead” has officially come to a close. Electing to shuffle into its six-month hibernation by lighting a fuse rather than blowing everything sky high, viewers have much upon which to speculate before the show returns this Fall. Ahead there be spoilers—ye be warned.
Rick, Meet Joe.
After setting up camp next to a broken-down SUV, Rick, Carl, and Michonne receive a terribly rude awakening. Joe and his thugs have finally caught up to them, and let’s not forget how Rick killed one of Joe’s buddies and used his reanimated corpse to stage a diversion so he could escape.
Now, this puts our friends in a very sticky situation. Daryl tries to explain that Rick’s a good man, but Joe disagrees—in fact, he sees this as a breach of the simple code that his group has decided to live by. The punishment is vile; Joe wants to beat Daryl to death while his boys violate Michonne and Carl. The whole terrible scenario would conclude with Rick getting shot in the head. When it looks like Joe’s thugs are going to execute their disgusting plan, Rick takes action, and by “takes action” I mean “rips Joe’s throat out with his teeth.” This sudden act of violence distracts the rest of the group for long enough to let Michonne and Daryl kill them—except for the creeper who was leering over Carl. Rick exacts some patriarchal vengeance by straight-up disemboweling him right there. Covered in blood, with the momentary savagery still burning in his eyes, Rick’s appearance is no different than that of a walker—and it really freaks Carl out.
This scene is juxtaposed with a flashback in which we see Hershel (may he rest in peace) attempt to help Rick find some inner peace with himself on Carl’s behalf. Hershel seems to think that Rick’s role as a father is more important than his role as a group leader, which is why he encourages Rick to take a more passive role as a farmer.
Other flashbacks follow—one of my favorites shows Patrick (the first dude to contract the superflu) playing with some Legos while, in sharp contrast, Carl is reassembling his 9 MM—and they’re designed to show the two parts of Rick that are struggling within him. We know that Rick is capable of great things, but we’ve also seen his dark side, and it’s in those moments that we worry about how close Rick is to becoming another Governor. Sherriff Grimes walks a fine line every day he’s out in the madness, which is even more difficult to deal with because it’s also clear that fatherhood is very important to him. Though the average viewer would see Rick’s violent retribution as an act of a father trying to protect his son, there is something that is so savage about Rick’s attack that makes Carl a bit wary of his father.
Welcome Wagon
When Rick gets the remnants of Joe’s throat out of his beard, the group takes the last leg of their journey to Terminus. Rick and Daryl take the calculating approach and sneak in from the back, which allows them to get the drop on the small group of people that they find busily engaged in what looks like some intense arts and crafts. After they are welcomed by Gareth and Alex, two seemingly normal post-apocalyptic hipsters, it doesn’t take more than ten minutes for Rick and company to start shooting up the place. It turns out that Alex has Glenn’s (Hershel’s) pocket watch. Once Rick sees this, his friendly demeanor drops and the demons come out.
It’s a no-win situation that ends with Rick and his friends being locked in a train car with Glenn, Maggie, Abraham, and all their folks. The glaring absence was that of Tyreese and Carol, which means that our survivors still have the possibility of rescue, though Rick doesn’t seem to think they’ll need it: “They’re going to feel pretty stupid when they find out they’re screwing with the wrong people,” Rick says.
Verdict
During the show’s tenure, there have been season finales that pull out all the stops, and finales that leave the audience with a satchel of unanswered questions. Tonight, we saw a good example of the latter. Our heroes end the episode locked in a train car, and we’ve just scratched the surface of what Terminus actually is—so there will be plenty of meat on next season’s zombie carcass. The season will very likely focus on the group’s plans for Terminus, but I also foresee a deeper delve into Rick’s psyche. It’s the dude’s tragic role to carry the weight of the group while trying to figure how to raise a son in a world without rules, and that’s got to leave some serious mental scarring.
Though this was a decent showing, I’m not without my concerns. Based on tonight’s episode, it would be easy for Terminus to become another Woodbury situation. Although the Woodbury situation was terrifying in its own right, another one could get repetitive—it’s hard to believe that all well-organized groups in the zombie apocalypse are secretly evil. Speaking of that, remember last week when I predicted that Terminus was going to be a colony of cannibals? Well, tonight I saw some more proof that is giving that theory some credibility. While Rick and friends are running away from machine gun fire, they run past a fenced-off perimeter which I am 97% sure contained bloody human skeletons, the meat of which is probably what Mary (Denise Crosby—she was in last week’s episode) is cooking on her makeshift grill. And don’t even get me started about keeping folks on train cars. It’s a well-known fact that train cars are the best place to store humans for potential eating.
I was hoping for more of a “holy shit!” episode, but I’m content with seeing Rick Grimes bite out a guy’s throat right before spilling another guy’s guts all over the ground. It’s been fun, Season 4! Crawl on back this Fall when the fifth season kicks off. We’ll discuss at length.