It didn’t take long for the quaint, semi-comfortable life that the survivors had built within the prison to start falling apart. In the second episode, our heroes find themselves dealing with a mysterious superflu, a walker attack from within the prison, and a highly concentrated zombie clump that threatens to break through their perimeter. Also, someone has been feeding rats to the fence zombies, which is just gross.
There are a few spoilers ahead, so be ye warned.
“We’ve All Been Exposed.”
Though Tyreese is trying to impress his new potential girlfriend Karen with a rendition of Cole Porter’s “Under My Skin,” he’s really giving the audience a hint at what will be trying to kill the survivors during season four. Certain medically-minded survivors have theorized that a mutated strain of the flu virus is now killing certain people within a matter of hours, thus resulting in the undesirable consequence of creating more walkers to deal with. Since this virus works so quickly, the team is faced with a possible quarantine situation.
This is an interesting wrinkle in the storyline. As if it’s not hard enough to make a go at living during a world of the undead, Mother Nature has to go and throw a fatal virus into the mix. There’s a definite sense of fear and paranoia among those who know about this new development. Since they don’t know exactly how it’s spread, anyone who so much as coughs has now become a potential walker—which doesn’t bode well for Karen, who seems to have come down with a bit of a sniffle herself.
“He’s Been Bit. A Doctor Won’t Help.”
During the aftermath of the superflu-generated attack on Cell Block D, Carol helps two young Woodbury refugees come to terms with their father’s inevitable death. This begins to solidify Carol’s role as a matriarch that is perfectly suited for their apocalyptic scenario. She doesn’t sugarcoat it when Lizzie and Mika arrive to see their father on his deathbed, but she doesn’t go all Shane on them either.
Her evolution as a character has been great to watch. During the first season, she’s shackled to an abusive idiot who never let her realize her potential as a caregiver who isn’t scared to jab a knife through a walker’s eye. As she’s gotten some room to grow, she now appears to be the right person for the job of taking the younger members of their group under her wing while teaching them how to safely handle weapons in order to defend themselves.
Also, she’s the only person who can call Daryl “pookie” without getting punched in the mouth.
“When You Care About People, Hurt is Part of the Package.”
Rick has been taking a break from leadership duties after, you know, he almost lost his mind and everything. He doesn’t have a seat on the council, and last episode it appeared that he had taken a renewed interest in farming and animal husbandry. This episode forces Rick into a position of leadership because, dammit, his people need him.
The crisis comes from a buildup of walkers that is threatening to bring the outer fence down. While survivors are killing off as many as they can, Rick can see that it’s not doing any good. He hatches a plan to lure the walkers away using what’s left of their possibly diseased pigs.
It’s a hard scene to watch.
As he sacrifices each one of these squealing piglets, the look on Rick’s blood-spattered face is one of pure anguish. Whether he wants it or not, he’s destined to be the one who has to sacrifice a bit of his soul so the group can go on kicking for another day. When he simultaneously holsters his own revolver while returning Carl’s heretofore off-limits pistol, it’s evident that Rick and Carl are officially back in the game.
Verdict
Solid episode. It had enough zombie carnage to satisfy the gore-hounds—it’ll be hard to forget the image of a walker’s face gooshing through a chain-link fence—and enough character drama to satisfy the…what’s the opposite of a gore-hound? Bore-hound, maybe? The episode also features a cliffhanger that wouldn’t be fair to mention, suffice to say that one of the survivors has some serious ‘splaining to do.