Another one of those epiphany mornings when all of a sudden I saw the ending of a story that I’ve been having a bit of a struggle with. Can’t remember if I was in the shower or doing my calisthenics, but it was one of those two places where my mind free associates and I get some of my best flashes of insight into works in progress.
There was one glaring glitch in this week’s The Walking Dead. The Winnebago breaks down after they leave the quarry. Shane and another guy go off in the direction of a building that they hope is a garage while the others figure out what to do about Jim. They discuss Jim’s decision—and Shane’s in on the discussion. They handle Jim, then they all drive off, including Dale’s Winnebago. I guess they found what they needed to fix it, but they skipped that part. It was important enough for them to show it break down, but not enough for the repair part?
Also, I would have felt the immediacy of their decision to leave more if they’d said up front that they didn’t have much fuel. I found myself thinking: it’s only a hundred miles. If they get to the CDC and find nothing, they can always turn around and come back. It wasn’t until they were pleading with the hypothetical people inside the building that they spelled out their plight, which came too late, in my opinion.
There was a wonderful little understated moment when one family decided to go off on their own to Birmingham. One daughter went over and hugged another girl of about the same age and, a moment later, she handed the girl a doll. The other girl (Dead Ed’s daughter) gave a very genuine reaction to this act. Almost a double-take but a look of shocked amazement that impressed me for such a young actress.
I wasn’t sure why they kept cutting to Darryl (and my other brother Darryl) during that departure scene, though. I kept expecting him to do or say something, but he didn’t and his facial expression was unrevealing. Mild disgust, perhaps, but not worthy of all those cuts.
My favorite cut came early on in the episode, when they were reassuring Andrea that the would “be as careful with your sister (Amy) as we can.” CUT TO: Daryl driving a pick-ax through the head of a disabled zombie. Did you think that Ed’s wife took a bit too much delight in delivering the coup-de-grace to her late, lamented, wife-beating hubby? They don’t seem to be as concerned about getting zombie blood on themselves as they did a while back.
The romantic triangle took an interesting twist tonight when Shane briefly contemplated gunning down his former best friend. Rick’s wife took Shane to task for continuing to bring up her marital status. Dale might have interrupted Shane at the perfect moment, and there’s little doubt that Dale saw exactly what was happening. Dale also had his moment when he was the only one who could break through to Andrea, which he did by sympathizing with her rather than trying to force her into cooperating.
Jim’s story was tragic. They left him to a fate worse than death, knowing that he’s going to die and come back as a zombie, a fate that he had premonitions of early in the episode. I found it interesting that when Amy came around, she did so by first breathing. Has other zombie literature addressed the question of whether or not zombies respire? If they do, what happens if you take a lung out instead of the head? Anyhow, I guess we have a better idea know of roughly how long it takes for a deceased person to “revive.”
Did anyone flash on Desmond from Lost in the hatch when we were introduced to CDC guy, plugging away at the computer. He even looked a little like Desmond’s old hatch buddy. “I think tomorrow I’m going to blow my brains out. I haven’t decided yet.” And then along comes the cavalry to save his sorry, drunken ass, but he didn’t seem delighted to see them. I wonder what that was about. A Close Encounters of the Third Kind moment when the gate went up and the stragglers were bathed in light.
