Lexie Corner
Staff Writer
“The Walking Dead” returned with its mid-season premiere on Sunday, February 9, to every zombie lover’s’ delight. It’s been two months since there has been a ritualistic gathering around thousands of peoples’ television screens at 9 p.m. on Sunday nights to watch in both terror and joy to see who would survive for another hour.
The last time we did so, all hell was breaking loose across the prison. In a scene that every Walking Dead fan is still haunted by, the governor decapitates Hershel with Michonne’s katana outside the prison gates to everybody’s pure horror. Without a second to spare, Rick shoots at the governor and blood, guts and bullets burst in the air relentlessly. After 40 minutes of non-stop war, everybody is either dead or scattered among the burning bones of the prison. Countless walkers linger inside, eating any hot corpse they can find and creating once was a sanctuary into a graveyard.
At the beginning of the latest episode, ‘After’, we see Michonne walking among the ruins of the prison. The governor’s dead body is seen laying in the field, along with Hershel’s zombified head. Hesitantly, Michonne stabs it in the brain and moves on with two brand new walker buddies roped behind her without their arms or jaws.
The opening scene sets the mood for the rest of the episode, which is moving on and growing up. Besides Michonne, the only other characters that are featured are Rick and Carl, who are trying to recover from the fight and find refuge before nightfall. With the world falling apart around them, father and son still try to spend some quality time by shooting zombies and fortifying an abandoned house. Obvious to everyone but himself, Rick is still severely injured from his fight with the governor, and half the time I thought there was a walker behind Carl because of his constant wheezing.
For still an unknown reason, however, Rick takes a twenty-four hour power nap in the middle of the episode, leaving Carl to fend for himself. Once again, however, Carl tries to prove that he is a man and is disgusted by his father, seeing him as worthless and even saying that he wish he were dead. In an angsty teenage rebellion type fashion, Carl wanders off to collect more food and, once again, nearly gets himself killed by a walker while searching a house.
With all of this going on, we finally see some backstory to the mysterious Michonne in a weird and clunky dream sequence; She was a gorgeous lover and a beautiful mother, but her family was taken from her during the apocalypse. As she blends in with a horde of walkers, she notices one that looks a lot like her. Disturbed, she pulls out her katana and slices every zombie’s head off, including the two she took with her. After that, she leaves to track down Rick and Carl.
In the climax of the episode, Carl is sitting by his sleeping father when Rick suddenly starts moving and wheezing. Fearing that he is a newly-turned walker, Carl scrambles on the floor and whips out his gun. With the barrel pointed at his father, he tries to muster up the strength to pull the trigger, but simply can’t. He admits that he was wrong for thinking he didn’t need his father, and accepts his fate, but to his surprise, his father is still human.
The next morning, there is a knock at the door. Michonne has arrived.
Despite ‘After’ not being as explosive as the previous episode, “The Walking Dead” slowed things down and I am thankful that they did. I can only take so much intense moments in a single episode, and after the slaughter show that was ‘Too Far Gone’, the fans needed to reminded that this show is about human survival in an inhumane world, not a blood and guts B-rate horror flick.
Part of the reason I love this show so much is how real and alive all the characters are; I can understand their choices and actions (except for Andrea in season three). Nothing feels forced or outrageous, and the show has a smooth flow from episode to episode. I understand and praise writer and creator Robert Kirkman and director Greg Nicotero’s decision to slow things down and not have a tank smushing fences, decapitation and little kids shooting adults for a while. The point I think they were attempting to make that in-between the adrenaline-charged battle sequences and nail-biting near death scenes, there is a continual drive of survival in a new and hideous reality. Every day in this kind of world, a person wakes up with daunting thoughts; will I find refuge today? Is there going to be a horde of walkers outside? Is there going to be any food to scavenge?
These are the types of questions that these survivors live with every, single day. Some live, and others don’t. In a world infested with zombies, living day-to-day is exhausting and repetitive. Find food. Fortify a safe shelter. Look for useful weapons and tools. Eat. Sleep. Keep moving. That is the life of a human in a walker’s world, and that is what I feel like Nicotero and Kirkman were trying to reveal.
Sure, everybody loves some extreme gun fights and zombie gore, but at the end of the day, this show is about survival and to what lengths these characters will do for it.