What happened?
After a winter of on the run survival, Rick and his group find a prison that would be a perfect safe refuge for Lori to deliver her child - if they can clear out all of the walkers roaming the grounds and interiors. . . Rick manages to co-ordinate the group into one cell block, but a further exploration deeper in leaves half the group trapped by walkers, with Hershal bitten and amputated in an attempt to save his life. They have also inadvertently stumbled into a small number of other prisoner survivors, who seem surprised to see they made it.
Meanwhile Andrea has contracted a nasty illness but refuses to allow it to be the end of her and so journeys on with her new companion - the mysterious, samurai sword-wielding, zombie-slaver.
Meanwhile Andrea has contracted a nasty illness but refuses to allow it to be the end of her and so journeys on with her new companion - the mysterious, samurai sword-wielding, zombie-slaver.
Thoughts
The new series of The Walking Dead began with a pre-credits sequence that told us everything we needed to know about what Rick and the group had been doing over a long, tough winter. They moved as a well-worked unit, infiltrating a house and quickly picking through room by room. Even Carl has developed the skills to be left unattended and not flinch about taking down a walker. Note how no one spoke - not a word. This tells us that a) they've done this enough to know what to do without speaking and, b) most importantly, they know speaking out can only alert their enemy to their presence. Make no mistake, Rick and the gang have become a survival force to be reckoned with. Free of Shane's vying for dominance, and Dale's moral debates, this is a group with focus borne out of necessity. Great opening scene. We don't need to have seen the tough winter to know they've been through a lot - but tellingly Rick won't allow them to eat dog food. They're desperate and they do what it takes - but there's still a line of humanity he won't allow them to go beyond.
So, firstly, I suppose the facility we glimpsed at the end of Season 2 must have been something they didn't actually manage to find? (I am assuming it wasn't the prison they have stumbled upon!) I'm not cancelling out the idea that they found it, not yet, because there were a few bits and pieces in this episode that suggested there is a story about what happened in between Season 2 and Season 3 that we may yet be shown. I am speaking mainly about Lori and Rick. Clearly there was a major rift between them, with Lori remarking that Rick hated her and was just too decent to say it, and she also mentioned something about being the one that put the knife in his hand. . .
Now, maybe I am being an idiot here and totally missing the obvious. But I don't think Lori was talking about anything we have already seen in Season 2. So my opinion is that she is talking about something that happened during the winter and maybe, further in to this season, we'll be shown a flashback moment that explains exactly what went on between Rick and Lori to have generated this hostility between them. Whatever it is, Rick is clearly torn between doing the right thing and coping with the burden of it, as indicated by his breaking away from the group to sit alone for a little while and collect himself.
Aside from Lori and her obvious concerns about impending childbirth the rest of the group have become quite nicely balanced. I enjoyed the interplay between Carol and Daryl, with her showing a more relaxed and even playful side of her character. No surprise we've never seen that before; Season 1 she was a downtrodden wife to an abusive husband and Season 2 she was the mother of a missing girl that turned up dead (to be shot in the head right in front of her). To have come through all that and crack wise about wanting to fool around with Daryl (and even get a smile out of him) shows she's a woman of tremendous inner resourcefulness. Her remarks of praise about how far Rick had got them should also, I hope, quash that horrible possibility of her trying to push Daryl into challenging for the leader role as was hinted at in last season's finale.
Glenn and Maggie also have a much more relaxed relationship, with him no longer a jittery clutz around her and stepping up as a man of action. Fair play as well that Maggie is considered as an equal to the guys, joining them on their ill-fated descent into the prison. She still looks great in a vest, too! Meanwhile Carl and Hershal's daughter look to be striking up a bit of a growing fondness - I suppose at the end of the world in such a small group then both of them have to take what fate has provided. At least Hershal has less of a Victorian dad attitude towards his daughter as well. Indeed, all round (Rick and Lori aside) the group has never looked better. It was only inevitable that something was going to go wrong, though I was surprised that Hershal was the man that got taken down.
Yes, about that moment. Hershal gets a seriously nasty bite to the lower leg and within a minute Rick is hacking his leg off in a bid to save it. (Compare and contrast with Season Two, where this kind of action took a debate to decide what to do.) Now I don't have any actual medical education but I am fairly sure that any virus that is carried through the bloodstream (as the bite of a zombie and subsequent infection must surely be) then I don't believe that hacking the bitten limb off ought to be enough to prevent it. Blood gets pumped from your heart and round your body and back again way quicker than that! So what I am saying is that I don't think Rick's amputation should, realistically, be enough to prevent Hershal from turning walker. In the show? Well, I'd like to see him stick around, and I am certain Lori and everyone else would definitely benefit from his medical expertise, which all the more makes it seem like there's every chance he won't make it because The Walking Dead likes nothing more than making bad situations worse.
The situation was left pretty bad at the end of the episode, of course. Rick and the small band are holed up with a badly-wounded Hershal, stacks of walkers penning them in, and they've only gone and run into more survivors (seemingly prisoners, judging by their clothes). Getting stuck in a prison with prisoners is never a good situation for anyone, really, but when the shit has hit the fan and the world has gone to hell then it's an extremely bad spot!
I am not quite sure what to make of the prison. I don't know if these prisoners were entombed within the walls of the building and stuck there because they couldn't get through all the walkers outside the door, but that's my first impression. The alternative is that they are part of a larger group that exist within the prison walls and Rick and his group have inadvertently come up against them surviving in there. That option seems less likely, purely by how surprised the prisoners were and how the prison had been, up until Rick and everyone else clearing the path, completely surrounded by walkers. No, I'll go with them being the few survivors after the prison and inmates got taken down and they've been stuck there ever since. I guess they'll have been helping themselves to all those lovely food rations Rick's group were hoping to find untouched!
Elsewhere Andrea has had a winter of survival with the cool and mysterious samurai sword black woman (if we learned her name during this episode I didn't catch it). There wasn't much revealed about what they have been doing or what their plan is, and even less information about who this woman is and what she's all about. Seemingly they've survived the winter together as desperately as Rick's group, though possibly they have a destination in mind that only Andrea's illness had put on hold.
What is the function of the armless, jawless zombies the woman likes to drag around with her? Do they serve as some kind of deterrent to the walkers, masking them somehow? Or is it purely as a signal of power to other people they may encounter? Or is it to serve as a kind of symbol the woman lives by - that she won't be enslaved by these walkers but instead intends to be their master? Maybe it's all three. I am certainly looking forward to finding out more about this woman, whatever the case may be!
This first episode of Season 3 was a strong return of the show. I got the impression that it was also responding to criticism from certain quarters regarding the previous Season, about how there wasn't quite enough zombie action and too much melodrama down on the farm (leading to the dismissive monicker of 'the talking dead' the show garnered by overly-critical fanboys). I personally thought the show had got the balance between character drama and zombie horror perfectly acceptable, but I still enjoyed this opening episode that was jam-packed with zombie slaying. The opening shot, a pull back from an extreme close up of a walker's iris to reveal it standing in a room only to be then taken out by Rick storming through the door set the tone for an episode that saw zombies shot and stabbed through the brain more times than could be counted. It got to the extent that they cut away from such things as the episode drew on purely to avoid repetition! Once you've seen one zombie get poked through the eye and stabbed through the skull you've seen 'em all!
So, firstly, I suppose the facility we glimpsed at the end of Season 2 must have been something they didn't actually manage to find? (I am assuming it wasn't the prison they have stumbled upon!) I'm not cancelling out the idea that they found it, not yet, because there were a few bits and pieces in this episode that suggested there is a story about what happened in between Season 2 and Season 3 that we may yet be shown. I am speaking mainly about Lori and Rick. Clearly there was a major rift between them, with Lori remarking that Rick hated her and was just too decent to say it, and she also mentioned something about being the one that put the knife in his hand. . .
Now, maybe I am being an idiot here and totally missing the obvious. But I don't think Lori was talking about anything we have already seen in Season 2. So my opinion is that she is talking about something that happened during the winter and maybe, further in to this season, we'll be shown a flashback moment that explains exactly what went on between Rick and Lori to have generated this hostility between them. Whatever it is, Rick is clearly torn between doing the right thing and coping with the burden of it, as indicated by his breaking away from the group to sit alone for a little while and collect himself.
Aside from Lori and her obvious concerns about impending childbirth the rest of the group have become quite nicely balanced. I enjoyed the interplay between Carol and Daryl, with her showing a more relaxed and even playful side of her character. No surprise we've never seen that before; Season 1 she was a downtrodden wife to an abusive husband and Season 2 she was the mother of a missing girl that turned up dead (to be shot in the head right in front of her). To have come through all that and crack wise about wanting to fool around with Daryl (and even get a smile out of him) shows she's a woman of tremendous inner resourcefulness. Her remarks of praise about how far Rick had got them should also, I hope, quash that horrible possibility of her trying to push Daryl into challenging for the leader role as was hinted at in last season's finale.
Glenn and Maggie also have a much more relaxed relationship, with him no longer a jittery clutz around her and stepping up as a man of action. Fair play as well that Maggie is considered as an equal to the guys, joining them on their ill-fated descent into the prison. She still looks great in a vest, too! Meanwhile Carl and Hershal's daughter look to be striking up a bit of a growing fondness - I suppose at the end of the world in such a small group then both of them have to take what fate has provided. At least Hershal has less of a Victorian dad attitude towards his daughter as well. Indeed, all round (Rick and Lori aside) the group has never looked better. It was only inevitable that something was going to go wrong, though I was surprised that Hershal was the man that got taken down.
Yes, about that moment. Hershal gets a seriously nasty bite to the lower leg and within a minute Rick is hacking his leg off in a bid to save it. (Compare and contrast with Season Two, where this kind of action took a debate to decide what to do.) Now I don't have any actual medical education but I am fairly sure that any virus that is carried through the bloodstream (as the bite of a zombie and subsequent infection must surely be) then I don't believe that hacking the bitten limb off ought to be enough to prevent it. Blood gets pumped from your heart and round your body and back again way quicker than that! So what I am saying is that I don't think Rick's amputation should, realistically, be enough to prevent Hershal from turning walker. In the show? Well, I'd like to see him stick around, and I am certain Lori and everyone else would definitely benefit from his medical expertise, which all the more makes it seem like there's every chance he won't make it because The Walking Dead likes nothing more than making bad situations worse.
The situation was left pretty bad at the end of the episode, of course. Rick and the small band are holed up with a badly-wounded Hershal, stacks of walkers penning them in, and they've only gone and run into more survivors (seemingly prisoners, judging by their clothes). Getting stuck in a prison with prisoners is never a good situation for anyone, really, but when the shit has hit the fan and the world has gone to hell then it's an extremely bad spot!
I am not quite sure what to make of the prison. I don't know if these prisoners were entombed within the walls of the building and stuck there because they couldn't get through all the walkers outside the door, but that's my first impression. The alternative is that they are part of a larger group that exist within the prison walls and Rick and his group have inadvertently come up against them surviving in there. That option seems less likely, purely by how surprised the prisoners were and how the prison had been, up until Rick and everyone else clearing the path, completely surrounded by walkers. No, I'll go with them being the few survivors after the prison and inmates got taken down and they've been stuck there ever since. I guess they'll have been helping themselves to all those lovely food rations Rick's group were hoping to find untouched!
Elsewhere Andrea has had a winter of survival with the cool and mysterious samurai sword black woman (if we learned her name during this episode I didn't catch it). There wasn't much revealed about what they have been doing or what their plan is, and even less information about who this woman is and what she's all about. Seemingly they've survived the winter together as desperately as Rick's group, though possibly they have a destination in mind that only Andrea's illness had put on hold.
What is the function of the armless, jawless zombies the woman likes to drag around with her? Do they serve as some kind of deterrent to the walkers, masking them somehow? Or is it purely as a signal of power to other people they may encounter? Or is it to serve as a kind of symbol the woman lives by - that she won't be enslaved by these walkers but instead intends to be their master? Maybe it's all three. I am certainly looking forward to finding out more about this woman, whatever the case may be!
This first episode of Season 3 was a strong return of the show. I got the impression that it was also responding to criticism from certain quarters regarding the previous Season, about how there wasn't quite enough zombie action and too much melodrama down on the farm (leading to the dismissive monicker of 'the talking dead' the show garnered by overly-critical fanboys). I personally thought the show had got the balance between character drama and zombie horror perfectly acceptable, but I still enjoyed this opening episode that was jam-packed with zombie slaying. The opening shot, a pull back from an extreme close up of a walker's iris to reveal it standing in a room only to be then taken out by Rick storming through the door set the tone for an episode that saw zombies shot and stabbed through the brain more times than could be counted. It got to the extent that they cut away from such things as the episode drew on purely to avoid repetition! Once you've seen one zombie get poked through the eye and stabbed through the skull you've seen 'em all!
What was the best part?
Whilst the climactic exploration of the dark corridors to a fateful end was tense stuff, I thought the scenes where Rick and co headed into the prison yard to try and access the cell block was even better. I particularly liked the moment zombie prison guards entered the fray, bedecked in body armour that made them even harder to kill! Cue Maggie's delight as she jabbed a skewer up a guard walkers chin into its brain, killing it. With a broad excitable grin she turned to her comrades and exclaimed, "Did you see that!?" Yes, Maggie, I did. And yes, Maggie, I was very impressed.
What do I think will happen next?
The matter of Hershal's survival is in the balance. Whilst I don't believe he should manage to survive I am not writing him off. I fully expect Rick and co to get out of the sticky spot they are in, but they may have to enlist the help of the prisoners they have encountered. I don't imagine that Rick will be willing to take them under his wing, mind, which raises the ugly problem of how he handles it if they decide that they don't want to venture out into the wide world beyond the prison walls. We've been down this problem before, and it always results in more dead bodies.
Prediction? OK. Hershal dies. Lori could therefore use some assistance with delivering her baby (particularly if there are complications in childbirth). The prisoners, or at least one of them, will either have some expertise or know someone or some place that does, thus creating leverage to work alongside them. So Rick will have to co-operate with the prisoners in an uneasy alliance and, well, drama will ensue!
1 comment:
Great write up ac. I really enjoyed the episode and agree that the survivors are now a well oiled zombie killing machine. Rick is unquestionably the leader and I think that the show misses Shane and the conflict that he provided. If I were to make one prediction about the prisoners it would be that amongst them is at least one alpha male type character to butt heads with Rick.
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