The Walking Dead, Season 3, Episode 4: Killer Within
Well, they took the 'season two was paced like a snail' complaints to heart, didn't they? It's a pretty explosive and eventful episode as everything explodes, which is the way a story should be paced. We've had two episodes establishing Team Rick taking over the prison, and while it's more focused towards the conflict they're having with the newfound prisoners, we didn't really need a repeat of 'how to survive a zombie apocalypse: prison edition', and all those are kept in the fringes. Last episode was dedicated wholly to exploring the Governor's settlement of Woodsbury and introducing us to the Governor himself, who's set up to be the human antagonist this time around.
We did get a little bit of Woodsbury scenes, where Michonne continues to be suspicious and asking all the right questions, but the Governor very smoothly deflects them. Bullet holes? Bandits. Wells dying? They put him down and cremated him. The Governor really shows his charm and his controlling skills very well in this episode, even when a majority of the Woodsbury scenes feature Andrea. Andrea and Merle are talking together as Andrea tells Merle where she last saw Daryl, but the Governor needs Merle as his head enforcer, and easily sweet-talks the one-armed sociopath to stay around for a while longer until he has more concrete information. Also, it's established that Merle sticking around with Governor and having an intense amount of loyalty is simply due to the Governor saving him when he's dying.
Andrea's also gotten the Governor's claws sunken into her from last episode, and this episode further shows the Governor getting to Andrea by revealing a (possibly fabricated?) sob story about his wife's death, as well as gives her his real name, Phillip. This causes some friction between Andrea and the still-flat-and-uninteresting Michonne, who's paranoid and wants to get away as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, while all is idyllic and peaceful in Woodsbury -- they don't even have random walkers for Merle to shoot, and the only shooting they're doing is the Governor putting some golf balls -- life in prison seems to settle for a similar tone at the beginning of the episode. We've got Hershel learning to walk with crutches, we've got Glenn and Maggie fucking each other silly in the watchtower, everyone being happy and all, with the only real conflict being a disagreement among the main cast as to what to do with the two prisoners (-googles- Oscar's the big, 'eh whatever' dude, Axel is the shorter, mouthy one) who now don't want to live in their wing. There's that calm before the storm as Rick tries his best to negotiate a deal to live peacefully with their neighbours... and then as they're just doing things peacefully zombies attack! Someone let them in, but who? Is it Merle and we're seeing things in a different order? Is it the Governor's people? Is it a brand-new villain? Did they get betrayed by Oscar and Axel?
Turns out, though, it's that one prisoner that Rick left to die in episode two, but I honestly had to rewatch the confrontation because everything happened so fast and I just didn't recognize the dude's face. Still, whathisface died for real this episode, where big, silent Oscar, who keeps trying to make peace but doesn't stoop so low as to beg like his buddy Axel, shows where he stands by blowing the jackass's head open, before giving Rick the gun, showing where he really stands. The crew gets split apart by the big zombie attack, but I didn't expect for anyone to die, let alone two of the main cast. And I guess, well, the evil-prisoner-whose-name-I-didn't-wanna-look-up died too.
Hershel survived, which was I think one of the most surprising thing to happen here. He even gets to knock a zombie down with his crutches! But in this episode, T-Dog and Lori buy the farm, and it's implied that Carol may have died too -- though I don't think Walking Dead's going to spring a random offscreen death for a main supporting character on us, so it's likely Daryl, Glenn and Rick just happened upon Carol's scarf while the woman herself is safe.
But Lori and T-Dog? Those are deaths that I wasn't expecting. Partially because of the formula that most Western TV shows are built upon -- big deaths and changes tend to happen in the premiere, the mid-season finale, or the finale, or the episodes directly preceding the latter two. This is just sudden, and to kill off a major character like Lori, after multiple hints that this season might be building up to a reconciliation plot? Yeah.
Let's talk about Lori's death and how it's effective. I honestly didn't really care that much for Lori, being a character I'm indifferent to at best and being godawfully annoying at worst, but what she represents to Carl and Rick is clear, and the show gives us so many effective dangling pieces of hope for those who are familiar with tropes. First, there's the buildup in episode two about how Carol is learning how to properly perform a caesarian section, and how she gets separated from T-Dog briefly before Lori giving birth. That little foreshadowing gets absolutely defied as Carol disappears from the episode before even getting to arrive near Lori. And then there's the hope that she might just be able to get the baby out naturally... but no. It's a bit silly for her to give up after one or two trials -- it could just be false contractions and something of the like, but when you're besieged by the undead and can only think about the safety of your children I guess you're allowed some leeway in not having a clear mind.
So yeah, making the section? Easy enough, relatively speaking. All you have to do is know where to cut and where to stop cutting. Actually stopping the bleeding, suturing the wound and all that jazz to keep the mother alive? That's a whole different story altogether, and I'm pleased with the show for not making this a 'touch-and-go surgery' moment. Even Hershel operating on Carl last season was done under anesthesia with pilfered medical equipment, with some degree of (animal) medical training. This one basically has Maggie cut Lori open and basically leaving her to bleed to death.
Is it stupid for all involved? Yeah, pretty much so. Is it touching? Definitely. It's easily the strongest acting chance for Lori's actress (and Maggie's actress, too, actually) throughout the series. Granted it is a bit of a silly coincidence that she goes into labour straight in the middle of a big zombie attack, but hey, that moment when she takes charge, and says goodbye to Carl, is a very well-done scene of intense emotional turmoil. The gore involved in the C-section wasn't too much, just enough to show how brutal Maggie cutting Lori open is, but not too much that it becomes nauseating or silly. And to top it off, Carl had to shoot Lori, and having Carl go from confused to broken-hearted and sad to resolute to shell-shocked is well-done for the little kid. Really didn't need the random flashbacks while Lori and Carl are saying goodbye, though.
Rick's reaction to Lori's death is actually honestly quite hilarious to watch, and for a moment I thought the audio for the video wasn't correct, but that's how Rick wails and mourns, I guess. Poor dude.
T-Dog is the other big loss we had this episode, as I remain unconvinced that Carol died. The poor dude has finally had some bit of character development early in this episode, telling Rick off for being so paranoid and not giving Oscar and Axel any chance, preferring to sentence them to what's basically death outside the compound instead of allowing them to cohabitate... while I would probably agree with Rick, Daryl and Maggie in not trusting outsiders, T-Dog's point that their little group used to be made up of outsiders who barely know each other is equally valid. Of course, the poor dude gets killed in this episode, after two bouts of heroism. He first gets bit pretty brutally while shutting one of the chain-link gates, and later as he's escaping with Carol, he basically uses his bitten-and-infected self to become a human shield to buy time for Carol to escape. Because the show's a bit cruel, we even have Rick, Glenn and Daryl stumble upon T-Dog's mangled remains -- he's torn apart so much that he didn't even get to become zombie T-Dog.
It's a far more effective scene than the climax at the end of the farm in season two, which felt like a losing siege (and besides, the huge emotional climax was Rick versus Shane in any case). Here it feels more like a conventional horror movie, with several effective scenes as the zombies lured into the prison by Evil Prisoner. We've got the cast split up into smaller groups, we've got darkened corridors, we've got jump-scares... the madness is very apparent as they are letting their guard down, and the escalation is palpable. And the fact that all this is caused by, well, an angry man who is inventive enough to lure the zombies into the prison? Yeah, all this could really have been avoided if Rick had ensured Evil Prisoner's death.
So yeah, it's episode freaking four of the season, and last episode didn't even feature Team Rick, but we already have huge losses and deaths of major characters, things that have been saved for mid-season or season finales in the previous two seasons of Walking Dead. It's certainly an improvement than before, I'm sure.
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