The Walking Dead, Season 5, Episode 4: Slabtown
That was an... interesting diversion. The problem with the zombie apocalypse setting is that either everyone's a survivor, an asshole, or a person with really quirky personality. Walking Dead really has the first two categories in a huge abundance, but that gets old really fast (like, season three fast) so sometimes you throw in crazy, quirky folk to spice things up. The weird gangbangers whole lives are governed by 'dibs'. The psychotic cannibals. Lizzie, the girl who thinks zombies are nice people. Abraham's crew who thinks they're in a Resident Evil 'escort the plot device to the capital city' game. The thing is, they either work or don't, and when you take a gamble and structure an entire 45-minute episode around quirky either shines or falls based on how interesting they are.
And the hospital? Not very interesting. Beth's our focus character, and she's definitely grown from suicide girl in season two and 'didn't she die last season' in season three into a pretty solid character in season four, and someone who I actually care about if she lived or died, unlike, say, poor undeveloped Bob last episode -- who, while sad, was more of a 'eh, sucks' moment.
The thing is, everything that happens to Beth in the hospital seems to just be a rehash of both Andrea and Michonne arriving in Woodsbury, or Team Rick arriving in cannibal town, except the hospital is a lot less interesting and quirky. It's a fresh setting, that's for sure, and the twist with Carol getting taken in as the next patient of the hospital people is decent... but it's honestly a pretty obvious episode, nothing remarkably super-interesting happens and thus it was a bit of a bore.
Mind you, when you told me that Beth was going to be kidnapped, seeing her wake up in a hospital and forced to work as an orderly because the hospital community runs on a 'we helped you, so you're now obliged to help us' mentality is never going to show up in my head. Suppose we should count our lucky stars that Beth isn't kidnapped by the rapist Claimers or the flesh-eating Terminians. This particular community is enforced by a group of abusive policemen (or people in police uniforms, anyway) who basically force anyone who they help out to serve them. There's a sort of logic, of course, except you never really want to force anyone who doesn't want to stay to, y'know, stay. As Beth and Noah's escape attempt and the one-armed girl killing herself and turning into a zombie inside their hospital sanctuary proves, it's just inviting danger.
The doctor, dr. Edwards, seems like a kind enough guy, if intimidated by the jackass officers, but Beth calls him out on his bullshit -- he intentionally gets Beth to give a patient (who's also a doctor) a medicine that will kill him in order to make his status as the community's sole doctor indispensable. Dick!
Beth befriends Noah, the only sane dude in the whole thing and they manage to enact an escape plan. Against all odds, Noah survives two zombie attacks and a fall down an elevator shaft into a pile of corpses... jeez, the dude has such a huge 'death fodder' on top of his head that I'm surprised he didn't die.
At least the show doesn't really spend way too much time pretending that things are okay. The doctor and Noah are the only ones who're presented as the 'prisoners', so to speak, with the male cop having rapey vibes with a lollipop (and later straight-up tries to pressure Beth into fucking him until he gets dispatched via zombie bite to the neck) and the female cop being a gigantic abusive face-slashing bitch. Dawn's the head honcho of this whole thing, but she just comes off like, well, Gareth. Or Shane. An obsessive, overly-controlling dictator who keeps justifying her actions with 'it's for the greater good!' Forcing people who doesn't want to stay to stay and effectively be slaves bound by an arbitrary law system, and forcing people who want to die to have their arms amputated, and forcing the doctor to help even cases that are supposed to be lost, and lashing out at Beth when she doesn't get her way.
The thing is, though, the fact that the previous three episodes have already set up a rescue mission via Daryl and Carol seeing the car that the hospital people use, we know a rescue is coming. And all throughout the episode I'm just waiting for the ball to drop. For Daryl and Carol to storm in (hey, Carol destroyed Terminus literally single-handedly) or even for Beth to flip out and murder people. So there's really no tension, especially when you realize they're just stretching the hospital for an entire episode.
I suppose if Dawn was an actual character instead of a caricature, she would be far more interesting. Dr Edwards, in retrospect, is a far more interesting character and antagonist in that regard -- his friendship to Beth seemed genuine and he's not doing what he did to Beth and Noah out of some power trip, he's just scared, and doing what he needs to survive -- albeit in a more morally ambiguous way. Still, all in all a pretty disappointing episode in my opinion.
No comments:
Post a Comment