What They Say:
Inmates – In the quest for stability and safety, the group faces many obstacles.
Content:
With the midseason return last episode focused heavily on Rick and Carl as well as Michonne in her own storyline that eventually connected to it, it was the ideal kind of return after the events of the prison. They needed to focus on something small again after it had gone so big with the Governor attacking the prison and all the chaos that resulted from all of it. But we don’t want to stick with just those two as there’s certainly a lot of characters to work with that went the winds when it all went to hell and that different configurations can make for some solid storytelling. Particularly with what we saw as the prison started to fall hard and we had Daryl and Beth together and you could see that the two would be ideal survivors together with how they interact with each other. Beth hasn’t been a key character for most of her run but she’s definitely picked up a bit in the prison sequence and is looking to figure into things more here in the latter half of the fourth season.
What’s not a surprise is that after everything that has gone down and gone wrong for so long that Daryl would be kind of dead inside at this point. Particularly after the loss of Merle. He’s still functioning, moving and surviving, but there’s a deadness inside him at this point that’s different from what we saw before. What’s only keeping him going in a way at this point is trying to find the others and a lot of that is driven by Beth as she’s intent on finding the others and keeping hope alive. That she’s providing the bit of life and spark isn’t a surprise as I suspect that she’ll be growing in the same way that Carol did, though she’ll find her own path that won’t be the same. She and Daryl definitely play off each other well since they’re so different yet so similar at this point and his kind of fatalistic view of things just isn’t who she is after all that she’s survived.
Similar to the previous episode, we do get more than just that story playing out as they try to find other survivors. What we get is Tyrese off with the kids as he’s got the two girls that Carol was watching as well as Judith, which doesn’t exactly make for easy travel either during the day or not since the baby can cry easily enough. Tyrese is intent on surviving of course but Lizzie has a kind of downbeat attitude to some degree because she has a hard time believing anyone else survived. Mica’s not much of a help herself since she’s regularly in a panic and even the smallest thing can set her off. While we have a fairly decent working relationship between Beth and Daryl, Tyrese has very different, young personalities to cope with and mollify, especially since Lizzie has taken on the harsher aspect of Carol without much of the compassion that was really driving it underneath.
There’s an interesting exchange of action that happens as Tyrese tries to do the right thing but it involves leaving the kids alone for a bit. What it leads to is a surprise though as Carol ends up walking through woods to them and providing a bit of saving. What becomes amusing is that since Rick never got to tell Tyrese what happened in the prison, he doesn’t know what Carol was responsible for. And Carol is a bit careful in how she explains things to him so as to not implicate herself or the situation, which is nice. But what the group here gets is definitely the most interesting as one guy they come across reveals that there’s a safe place up the train tracks, and they get more clues about it as the make their way along it. It’s a bit ominous overall in how it sounds, but it points to another place where people have come together to try and survive together, which is to be expected in this world.
We also start to get more of some of the others as one of the other groups that got out is made up of Maggie, Sasha and Bob, and there’s tension there as well. Maggie’s intent on tracking down the bus so she can find Glen since she couldn’t find Beth before and she has to have something to latch onto, even if the other two find it to be a bad idea but know they have to go along with it because of her strength of will. That they come across the bus quickly is a bit of a surprise, but that it’s full of walkers isn’t as things went badly there. And that has Maggie forcing the situation into one where they have to deal with them all to find out of Glen is in there or if it’s just other survivors of Woodbury who simply didn’t survive the escape itself. That Maggie is in a similar situation to Daryl isn’t a surprise, but she’s taking it out on the world rather than keeping it in like he is. Naturally, things aren’t too well for Glen even if he isn’t with the bus, having been separated somehow, as he ended up staying at the prison when things went to hell. And now it’s just a zombie-fest in a big way as the place is overrun and it’s going to take his particular survival skills to really make it work to get out of there.
Thankfully, even though Glen has had some stupid moments along the way this season, made worse by his catching the sickness, he and Maggie had some good preparedness things set up within their cells and that means he at least has some protection with him and a better chance of surviving for a least a while if he can fortify things well enough. And with Maggie being his goal, finding her again, it’s more than enough to keep him motivated and going once he gets past the initial shock of it all. What’s really fun to see is that unlike everyone else that fled, Glen has time to actually put together things to leave in a good way and he really does it up right here with the riot gear outfit and finding a little surprising help along the way with someone else that survived but has fallen into a bit of despair over what happened. Tara’s an interesting one to bring on as a survivor and the way events play out towards the end are violent, hopeful and definitely a lot of fun to watch since it has such great portents of things to come.
In Summary:
This episode definitely is a lot busier than what we got in the previous episode and while I could have easily gone with just two stories here to draw things together and really focus on characters, I’m glad it covered as much ground as it did. There’s a lot of characters in motion here and two very big hints of what’s to come with the rail trail and where they can lead and then the military truck that arrives at the end, bringing a few more comic book characters to the show that are very different than what we’ve had so far. Carol’s return was a bit of a surprise, especially since you had to remember what hasn’t made it to Tyrese yet, but it was the Glen subplot here that totally sold me on the episode more than anything else. He’s survived so much since we met him in Atlanta and taking all of that skill and using it here is done very, very well. With the riot gear and the way he has a plan, it’s totally in character and great to see.
Grade: A-
