The Walking Dead, Season 4, Episode 1: 30 Days Without An Accident
We're back to this for a while -- most of these Walking Dead episode reviews are more or less done, so I'll be doling out season four while I work on Superman: the Animated Series.
After three seasons of fighting zombies, how do you make an explosive season premiere without retreading the same ground without going into Resident Evil levels of Ultra Titan Fungus-Mouth Hammer Swinging Muscle Zombie? Well, by having lots of zombies drop down from an upper level to attack you while you're shopping in a mall, while entrails and scalp pieces go flying around as they fall with absolutely no grace at all. Oh, and also by dropping a fucking helicopter down the same ceiling, too. That was a pretty fun action scene to watch, and possibly one of my favourites to ever come out of Walking Dead in a long, long while.
In a sense it's a bit of a slow season premiere, basically acting on a similar premise to the premieres of seasons two and three -- it shows what our group is doing, the current status quo in the time that elapsed between the two seasons, it shows a 'normal' run and then the spanner in the works that fucks everything up. It's an okay episode in that regard, mixing up a lot of new characters from the Woodsbury character influx, as well as showing what the people have been doing (Michonne's hunting the Governor, everyone else is tending to pigs, growing plants, going on organized supply runs, teaching children how to read, stabbing any zombies that come near and upgrading the defenses).
Most notably, we get a brief, subtle tell that Rick is not among the council that's in charge. He's also grown increasingly hard to like, because apparently he's insisting on not bringing guns while going out on foraging hunts? And he splits up from the main group with Daryl and Glenn because reasons, meeting up on a crazy disheveled lady who begs for his help, finding out that she's crazy and she's keeping her dead zombified husband, before killing herself. A nice little side-story, but to what end? It really felt fillery.
Daryl, Glenn, Tyrese and Sasha bring a bunch of redshirts, so there's at last a sensation of 'who's gonna die' because none of these guys are safe. Is it going to be Bob, the black dude who really should've just splurged and taken the alcohol with him? Is it going to be Zack, Beth's (I forgot Beth existed and legit thought she was a new character until someone mentions her by name) new boyfriend? Well, Zack it is, getting bitten and smooshed by a helicopter, and Beth doesn't even care because she's dead inside.
The thing is, nothing really in this episode is truly new -- Carl is a creepy kid that's matured way too fast compared to the kids his age. Carol likes Daryl. Daryl is a badass and everyone loves him. Hershel is wise and old. Glenn and Maggie are worried about babies. Rick is unreadabe. Tyrese is a nice dude. Michonne is a lone wolf. Beth exists. It's more of a reminder of the few character traits of a majority of these characters, and honestly, probably only two or three among the cast are interesting characters at this point... so we need the conflict. It's not the return of the Governor (a bit too soon to be pulling that card again) but rather, it appears to be a disease. There are some clever bits of foreshadowing, like Violet the pig dying (nooo Violet), and the random zombie with bloody eyes, but the big tall kid that hung around Carl died at the end of the episode with blood out of his eyes and mouth, and now we have, well, a zombie. Betcha those other little kids hoped they'd listened to Carl, didn't they?
Overall, though, despite the intrigue of using a different form of threat, and the amazing mall zombie sequence, it's not a particularly engaging episode of The Walking Dead. I dunno, maybe give Rick something more interesting to do?
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