Ep 4.11 "Claimed"

We open with Tara and Glenn riding in the truck of their new companions.  Tara writes the directions they take on her hand with a Sharpie (smart move).  They come upon a blockade of cars and have to move them.  Of course a small group of walkers isn’t far behind so they have to take care of them.  Tara comments that Abraham smiled while killing the walkers.  He says he’s “the luckiest guy in the world”.

Michonne and Carl enjoy themselves over some stale cereal.  Michonne wishes there was some soymilk, which sends Carl into a story about how he had a friend in third grade that was lactose intolerant and how he would rather drink any other form of milk including Judith’s formula.  When he realizes what he said mid-sentence all of the humor leaves the table.  Rick thanks Michonne for making Carl laugh.  He says he can’t be his father and his best friend, but understands if she needs to take a break.  She says she’s done taking breaks.  Michonne asks if the house is home now or just a stop along the way. Rick says they’ll stay there until they figure it out so she recommends that she and Carl go and gather some more supplies.  Rick wants to help, but Michonne doesn’t think that’s the best idea since he was unconscious the day before.  She tells him to rest for one more day to regain his strength.  Rick gives Carl his gun and asks him if everything’s okay.  Carl says he’s just hungry.  After they leave he goes upstairs and lays down in one of the beds with a book. 

Michonne tries to cheer Carl up with some canned cheese she found but he’s not interested.  She asks what’s wrong and he replies that he is fine.  She tells him he doesn’t seem fine and he says he’s just tired.  She sprays some cheese in her mouth and makes a face at Carl, but he doesn’t laugh.  She apologizes and says she’s not good at making boys his age laugh.  She is better with toddlers.  He asks what she means by toddlers and she confides that she had a three year old son who found her “extremely funny”.  Carl asks why she never said anything and what his name was and if she was married.  She says she’ll answer one question at a time, one room at a time after he clears it. 

Back at the house Rick is asleep upstairs and there are men fighting downstairs.  Rick wakes up and dammit a commercial break.  It sounds like a couple of men are torturing another man.  Rick rolls off the bed and hides underneath right before someone comes up the stairs.  One of the men comes in the room.  He walks around for a minute and Rick is shaking so badly.  He looks at his watch because Carl and Michonne were supposed to be back by noon. 

Michonne tells Carl her son’s name was Andre and that he was her only child.  Carl asks if his father knew and she tells him she never told anyone else before him.  Carl says he’ll keep her secret.  He brings her a painting that is wrapped, she opens it while he is in another room and it’s a painting of a walker.  She goes to open the door the painting was in front of.  It’s a bathroom that leads to a child’s room.  There are three bodies laid out on the beds as well as a fourth one in a rocking chair with their heads blown open.  She comes out and finds Carl.  He wants to know what’s in there, but she tells him it’s just a dog.  He starts to talk about Judith and says that maybe she and Andre are together somewhere. 

Poor Rick is stuck under the bed while the guy is taking a nap.  Another guy comes in and they fight over the bed.  One guy falls to the floor and sees Rick, but the other guy chokes him until he passes out so he can’t give Rick away.  The new guy lies on the bed.

Glenn wakes up in the back of the truck.  He asks Tara if they passed a bus.  She tells him they did and he wants to know what she saw.  She says everyone was dead.  She tells him they passed it three hours ago.  Glenn starts beating on the window so the truck will stop.  They finally do and he gets out and starts walking, but Abraham goes after him.  He insists that Glenn get back in the truck and says that the entire human race is at stake.  They have to complete their mission.  His name is Abraham Ford and his companions are Eugene Porter and Rosita Espinosa.  They are on a mission to get Eugene to Washington DC.  He’s a scientist and allegedly knows what started the whole outbreak.  Glenn asks what happened, but Eugene says it’s classified.  Abraham tells Glenn they had been in communication with Washington, but hadn’t heard anything in a few weeks.  He saw how Glenn and Tara handled the walkers and he could use their help.  Glenn says he’s sorry and walks away.  Tara apologizes for taking Glenn away from the prison area, but Glenn was passed out and they had to get off the road.  She tells him she can get him back to the bus.  Abraham says it’s a waste of time because Maggie is probably dead.  Glenn punches him and that sets Abraham off.  Eugene sees a walker and calls for them, but the others are all involved in the fight.  Eugene grabs a gun, but they start coming from all directions.  Finally he fires and they quit fighting and help.  Unfortunately, Eugene shot a hole in the fuel tank.

After the new king of the bed passes out Rick tries to sneak out.  One of the guys from downstairs comes up to look around.  Rick hides in another room.  He tries to open one of the windows to get out, but they are all painted shut.  He grabs a gun and hides in the bathroom.  One of the men is on the toilet so Rick has to fight him before he can yell out.  Rick strangles him.  I don’t know how because he still looks like he’s on deaths doorstep.  He gets out of the bathroom window and has to figure out how to get down off the roof.  Once he gets down he goes to sneak around the house, but one of the idiots comes out onto the front porch. 

Glenn and Tara tell Abraham and his gang they are sorry about their ride and they hope they get to Washington, but they can’t go.  Rosita decides to follow them.  Eugene says they should go with them as well until they get another ride to Washington.  Not sure I’d trust a guy with a mullet.  Abraham tries to persuade Tara that their trip to Washington is more important than Glenn finding Maggie, but she doesn’t buy into his crap.

Rick is still stuck by the front porch.  He can see Carl and Michonne coming towards the house.  He gets ready to fight and run, but something happens inside the house so the guy goes back inside.  Rick runs towards Michonne and Carl and tells them to run.  They end up on the train tracks and see a banner that says “Sanctuary for all those who survive” and decide they should go.

End credits…

 #thewalkingdead

4.10 "Inmates"

This week we catch up with a few of our prison survivors.  First, we learn what happened to Beth and Daryl.  They are running away from zombies until they get clear and fall to exhaustion.  There is a voice over of Beth writing in her journal about how they have settled at the prison and how she feels there is hope that they can stay there and live out the rest of their lives in relative peace.  So much for that…

Later they are sitting around a campfire.  Beth tries to convince Darryl that they should go look for others but he just sits there quietly, so she walks away.  He puts out the fire and follows her.  They find some tracks which gives Beth hope, but Daryl is cynical.  (It looks like there is a dead bunny in a log.)  They find some walkers eating what’s left of some of the prison gang and breaks down crying.

Next we see Mica, Lizzie and Tyrese with Judith.  Night comes and Judith cries.  Lizzie gets her a bottle, but they think they hear walkers so they have to move.  (I swear I see Lizzy on the same branch that Daryl and Beth stopped at and she was playing with the dead bunny or she killed it.)  Judith keeps crying and they can’t figure out why.  (Um, I’m pretty sure she’s teething.)  Mica freaks out because they hear something they believe to be walkers.  A bird flies out of the bushes and she runs away.  When they catch her, Tyrese tells her she did the right thing by running, but when you’re in a group you need to stay close.  She apologizes for not being more like Lizzie, but Tyrese tells her its okay to do things differently.  They hear screams and Tyrese has to go check them out.  Mica doesn’t want him to go, but he tells her she can handle it because she is tough.

Tyrese finds two men fighting off walkers.  Meanwhile Mica and Lizzie are waiting and Judith is crying.  Lizzie puts her hand over Judith’s mouth.  (Um, she is suffocating her.  She and Carl should definitely be a couple, two sociopaths.)  Walkers come towards them.  Lizzie’s too busy suffocating Judith to hear Mica call her so Mica has to shoot her gun.  Tyrese’s struggle to help the two men doesn’t pay off because both of the men are eaten by walkers.  Then Tyrese hears a woman’s voice and it’s Carol, carrying baby Judith with Lizzie and Mica.  He still doesn’t know she killed Karen, so he’s happy to see her.  One of the men,  barely alive, tells them to follow the railroad tracks because up ahead there is a place where they will be safe.  Tyrese says he thought Carol was dead, but she says she wasn’t at the camp.  She tells him she stayed behind to gather more supplies, but she saw what happened.  They come upon a sign that promises sanctuary to all and has a map.

Apparently Maggie, Bob and Sasha made it out as well.  Bob holds out hope that others are alive while the two women are pessimistic.  Maggie wants to go find Glenn since she knows he was on the bus.  She says she’ll come back for them.  Sasha doesn’t want to split up so they go with her, but she would rather be searching for food and shelter.  They come upon the bus on the road, but its full of walkers.  Maggie wants to go inside to see if Glenn is in there.  They decide to let them out one at a time to look at them and then kill them.  The walkers over take the door and start falling out.  They kill them all, but Glenn is nowhere to be found.  Maggie gets on the bus to check it out.  It is not a pretty sight.  There is still one walker alive and on board but its not Glenn.

Glenn wakes up at the prison.  He calls for Maggie, but no one is there except the herd of walkers trying to get to him.  He locks himself inside the dark prison and moves slowly down the corridor.  He checks out the cellblock, which looks to be empty and then lies down, not knowing what to do next.  He sees the picture he took of Maggie and finds a new resolve.  He gathers supplies, puts on his riot suit and tries to make a run for it.  He sees another survivor and turns back for her.  It’s Tara.  She doesn’t think she should live because she was a part of what happened to the prison.  He says he needs her help, so they set a car on fire for a distraction.  They make a run for it.  She says she only helped the Governor because she trusted what he said, but then he killed “that old man”.  Glenn asks if his name was Herschel and she tells him she’s sorry.  She says the Governor told her they were bad people, but she can see now they are not and that she’s a piece of shit.  He says he needs to find Maggie, his wife, who is also Herschel’s daughter.  Glenn fights off some walkers and then passes out.  She kills the rest of them when a military truck pulls up and two men and one woman get out.

That’s it for this week, though I have to say I’m pretty sure the “who killed the rats” question has been answered.  LIZZIE!

#thewalkingdead

4.9: After

When we left the prison had been overrun with Walkers after the Governer’s failed attempt to take over.  We lost poor Herschel, the ruthless Governer, and possibly even Little Ass Kicker aka Judith.  (I don’t think she’s dead.)  We don’t know where anyone is or how they will find each other, be we know eventually, they will.

Michonne sees the prison burning and wonders about her friends.  After making two more slave boys out of walkers, she locks the rest within the prison fence.  She comes upon Herschel’s zombie head and has to stab it.  She takes a moment, as she knows everything has now changed.  She ends up on the same dirt road that Rick and Carl took and she sees Rick’s boot prints, but she doesn’t follow them.

Rick and Carl are wandering down a gravel road.  Rick is half dead trying to keep up with him.  Rick knows they need to find somewhere to bunker down, but the stress has gotten to Carl (who I think is a sociopath) and he doesn’t want to talk, he wants to kill.  They find a biker bar and decide to check it out.  They find one huge walker.  Carl just wants to shoot him, but Rick thinks he can draw him out.  (I mean, c’mon Carl, there’s a shitload of walker’s around, let’s not call attention to ourselves…)  The walker comes toward Rick who goes to hit him with a hatchet, but Carl’s itchy trigger finger gets to him and he shoots the walker in the head.  Rick chastises him for wasting a bullet, especially when they don’t have many.  They check for supplies and move on to some houses.  Carl finds a teenage boys room complete with TV and videogames.  In another life…  He takes the cable and ties the door shut.  Rick wants to barricade it, but Carl says Shane taught him how to tie the knot and asks if Rick even remembers him.  Rick says he thinks about him every day and asks if there is something Carl wants to say to him.  He keeps his mouth shut and helps Rick barricade the door.  Rick goes to the bathroom to clean up.  He’s wheezing badly and his side is bruised pretty badly.  Not to mention that one of his eyes is swollen shut.

OMG, we get a Michonne flashback!  Or is it a dream…  Alas, it is the latter, but with a whiff of truth about it.  She is talking with two men (one of whom is her “lover”) as she is cutting food.  She goes to wipe the knife and it’s her katana sword.  Then a toddler comes running in, whom she grabs and calls “peanut”.  She takes the food to the two men who are now in ragged clothes and fighting about whether they should stay where they are or go join a camp.  Next the men have no arms and look like the two guys she showed up by Herschel’s farm with.  The child is gone.  She wakes up in a car.

Carl wakes up and Rick is still sleeping.  Rick doesn’t look any better than he did last night.  Carl makes cereal and hangs out in the “teenage” room.  When he comes back downstairs to check on Rick he can’t wake him.  Carl starts freaking out and yelling at him.  Eventually walkers hear and come to the front door.  Carl sneaks out the back and only sees two of them.  He leads them away from the house and out into the street.  He’s surprised by a walker he didn’t see.  He’s surrounded and falls to the ground and ends up having to use his bullets.  He crawls out from under them and throws up.  Luckily there seem to be no more Walkers around.  When he’s back at the house,  Carl tells an unconscious Rick that he doesn’t need him anymore.  He couldn’t protect anyone else.  So he basically blames him for everything.  He tells him he’s nothing and he’d be fine if Rick died. 

Carl leaves Rick to go find supplies.  He tries to break down a door, but when he runs into it he falls on his ass.  (That’s what you get!)  He finally breaks in and finds canned goods then checks out the rest of the house.  He opens one door and finds a Walker who breaks through.  Carl tries to shoot him, but wastes two bullets.  He finally gets a shot in, but it wasn’t a kill shot.  Now, he’s out of bullets.  He gets into another bedroom, but can’t get the door closed.  He goes for the window, but can’t get it open far enough to get out.  The walker almost bites his leg, but Carl gets away and shuts him in the room.  He finds a piece of chalk and writes “Walker inside, got my shoe didn’t get me”.  He eats a can of pudding on the roof of the house.

Michonne falls in with a heard of Walkers.  They start to figure out she’s not human so she has to start chopping heads right and left including her own two walkers.  She turns around and goes back to the road with Rick’s footprints to follow them.  Michonne finds the dead walker in the biker bar.  She starts talking to her lover Mike.  She says, “I know the answer, I know why”.  (My guess is Mike killed himself and their son too.)

Back with Rick and Carl, Rick starts to wake up.  He reaches out and sounds like a Walker.  Carl is ready to shoot him, but starts crying and decides he can’t.  He says what he said earlier was wrong.  Rick calls out his name and tells him to stay safe and passes out.  Carl admits he’s scared.  Rick wakes up later and tells Carl he shouldn’t have risked going outside, but he’s glad he found more food.  Rick says he hung on to being a farmer for Carl and Judith and he’s sorry.  Carl tells him he doesn’t need to be. 

Michonne gets to the neighborhood and sees Rick and Carl through a window.  She knocks on the door.  Rick looks out the peephole and laughs and tells Carl it’s for him.

End credits…