The Walking Dead: S02 Ep13 – Beside The Dying Fire

What happened?

The farm was besieged by a horde of zombies that forced the survivors to stage a desperate battle before retreating. A couple of Hershal’s family members didn’t survive, but the remaining group rallied at the freeway meeting point. Only Andrea did not join them – instead she was pursued through the woods before meeting a strange person with a samurai sword.

Rick eventually lost his temper with the group after Lori reacted badly to the news that he knew they all carried the zombie virus and that Carl had shot Shane’s reanimated form. Losing his diplomatic calm, he demanded everyone either stop second-guessing him or go their own way.

Thoughts

So the second season of The Walking Dead closed out with a wallop of zombie action and some left-field events that turned up to sprinkle some enticement for the next season. There wasn’t any surprise that the fringe members of the cast found their way into the mouths of zombies – Hershal’s wife and son (tellingly I can’t even remember their names) always seemed marked as fodder quite some time back, so no shocks that they were swiftly devoured. And given we’ve recently had both Dale and Shane killed off I was perfectly fine that the remaining core cast were kept in place.

The first third of the episode giving way to full-on zombie mayhem was interesting for me in the sense that it provided proof that a whole show based around this wouldn’t work. The attack was sustained and intense but just about ran its course before I started to want things to progress. The fact of the matter is you just can’t watch people running and shooting and avoiding being eaten by rampaging hordes for an overlong period before it becomes monotonous. If they had retreated into the farmhouse and there had been a siege – in the way so many zombie movies tend to become – then that could have held my attention longer. But the moment everyone was out, loose, driving cars and shooting with unerring accuracy the need for them to either escape or become victorious drove the momentum.

As per usual, Lori annoyed me this episode. As per usual she was fretting about Carl’s whereabouts because she’d allowed him to slip out of her sight and the only time it occurred to her to wonder about him was when the shit was hitting the fan. Still, that was nothing compared to her reaction to Rick when he told her the extent of what he knew at the end of the episode. The look on her face, the sheer hostility, actually beggared belief. I couldn’t properly understand why she turned on him the way she did, considering all he’s done for everyone and all they’ve been through. For some reason the thought occurred to me that him killing Shane had brought up a conflict in her she didn’t know was there.

I had the impression she held feelings for Shane that perhaps she hadn’t fully acknowledged and, hearing he had been killed by Rick, she suddenly resented him for killing the man she had strong feelings for. If it reads as weird that’s because I think it is weird, and not something the show has earned. Of course I might be misinterpreting that overly-angry reaction she had to Rick, but whatever the underlying reason I didn’t feel it was deserved.

Really the script was engineering it so that Rick could have his moment where he stopped being tolerable and understanding and decided that if he was going to have to shepherd people to safety then they need to stop undermining him. Naturally the deed of killing Shane (an event just hours old, don’t forget) weighs heavily on him. I liked that he pointed out that he had killed his best friend, that it had become impossible to do anything else. In that moment he was laying out his sets of commandments, yes, but he was also seeking forgiveness. Since his own wife had turned her back on him he, more than ever, needed to hear from someone that he had done the right thing.

I’m not sure this is going to be a permanent change of character for Rick, though. The show needs his leadership and decency and I don’t imagine he’ll lose that completely. He’s pissed off now, but it won’t last forever. But if he is a little less patient with his flock when it comes to making decisions and getting things done then I don’t think that would be a bad thing – so long as they stay in line. . .

Again, rather irritating, Carol was whispering in Daryl’s ear that he didn’t need to be Rick’s right hand man. It’s like she’s grooming him to become the next Shane, which is something I sincerely hope doesn’t happen. I very much appreciated how Daryl nonchalantly remarked that Rick had always been good to him. Quite right.

From Carol’s perspective I imagine she’s still feeling bitter and unsure about Rick since he was the last one to be with her daughter and, had he acted differently, could have kept her alive (in fairness I think he could have, too, considering the scrapes he has got other people out of!). Still, it’s irritating. I share Rick’s view that they are a rather ungrateful, conniving set of people and his exasperation has been a long time coming.

The episode opened with the startling appearance of a helicopter flying over the city. It was a stark, unflinching signal that there was life out there that had perhaps more organisation and control than the ragtag bands of survivors we had previously seen. The suggestion was that the herd of zombies that eventually found their way to the farm were drawn in the same direction having seen the helicopter. (I recall in the first episode of this second season, when there was a walker horde encounter on the freeway, there were a brief and subtle remark about how it had appeared strange to see so many all moving with a sense of purpose. By the end of the episode I believe we were allowed to glimpse where this helicopter had been heading.

The large fenced off facility in the woods has surely to be a big part of season 3. It’s impossible to know what they are, who is in there, and what their agenda is. Are they government of some kind? Military? Scientific? Did this facility get rapidly put together in the wake of the outbreak or was it already there as a precautionary measure? Do the people inside know about how the virus exists in everyone? Are they even in some way responsible? All these questions and more spring to mind but they are completely unanswerable. Which is as it should be, naturally. The Walking Dead needed to give people a reason to get excited about a third season and a facility waiting to be discovered seems like a good one to me. Rick’s tribe just can’t keep wandering from one desperate situation to the next, there has to be more progression.

I personally thought the episode’s most enticing prospect was with the character that Andrea encountered in the jungle. I did enjoy her desperate escape, too. It did feel apparent that she was unlikely to be reunited with the rest of the group so I did wonder if we weren’t just going to watch her run to an exhausted collapse where she would meet her end. She didn’t. No. Instead she was ‘saved’ by a strange figure in a hood, wielding a sword and carting around what looked like a couple of armless walkers, chained, and subservient!

What the hell?

Considering that The Walking Dead was launched from a comic book, this was the first moment that felt like a comic book origin. The character in the woods was so outlandish, so extreme and bizarre, it felt too strange to be real. It’ll be interesting to see how the show plays it. This new character immediately feels otherworldly and ultra cool so I expect the first task The Walking Dead will have to deal with is making this strange character retain their allure whilst also making them believable.

I expect the figure in the hood will probably be a female, which might make for an interesting dynamic between Andrea and this newcomer. Whether they get along and become a weird duo remains to be seen, but if it means Andrea’s character can turn the corner from the obnoxious and suicidal traits she’s generally conjured it’ll be an improvement.

This second season of The Walking Dead has been a triumph, for me. I’ve really enjoyed it, and it’s more than answered the question of whether it was able to manage with a longer episode run. (I also know that there were background issues regarding creative control passing away from original showrunner Frank Darabont, which is also something that the show has absorbed without any dip in quality – quite the opposite.) With Shane dead, the secret out about what Rick heard in the facility at the end of last season's finale, it feels like the show has brought itself to a resolution with much of what it had set up and is now set on charting new ground with as close to a clean slate as it can muster. Sorry to see it end, can’t wait to see it return.

What was the best part?

Not often I’ll say this, I imagine, but the scenes with Andrea escaping in the jungle to then be confronted by the hooded figure with the sword were just too cool to ignore. Long after the episode has finished and I’ve been left thinking about all that I saw, that figure in the woods and the walkers chained and following them was what my thoughts kept coming back to. It was altogether too strange and intriguing and, of all the elements this episode laid down for the next season, it was this that had me wanting to see what happens next more than anything else.

What do I think will happen next?

Assuming the figure in the cloak that Andrea encountered is operating alone, then their experiences will perhaps initially be a side plot that ticks along independently. The main plot must surely feature Rick and his group finding (or being found by) the people at the facility close to where they ended up. Whatever and whoever they find there, I expect that even if they are initially offered the hand of friendship then conflict and jeopardy will find them sooner rather than later. The one thing I’ve seen many times over in this genre is that any apparently well-organised, controlling force invariably means deep-down bad news and they aren’t interested in doing the right thing on a humanitarian level.