Rachel Thuro

Episode: Coda
Original Airdate: 11-30-2014

Mid-season finales are no friend to the Greene family. I was never a huge fan of Beth, but only because I didn’t see much in her character, despite the show’s best efforts of pushing her more to the front after the prison collapsed. Be that as it may, that doesn’t mean I was praying for her death. Only now that she’s gone do I truly see how tragic it all is and I appreciate her innocence, hope and strength in the cruel world she was thrust into as a teenager. Above all though I mourn her loss for Maggie, who was on the verge of being reunited with the only blood family she had left, and for Daryl, who changed during his time on the road with her. The rest of the episode was on point, with some great action at the church for Michonne and Carl fighting off a mini-horde. The group headed for D.C. returned, reuniting (almost) everyone. And all the scenes at the hospital were incredibly intense until the last minute. As for Beth’s demise, I felt it coming. If anyone was going to die, she was a prime candidate, and once she tucked the scissors into her cast, her fate was sealed. And yet, I was still shocked because everything happened so quickly, that before I knew it Beth was dead and Daryl retaliated by killing Dawn, though I have to wonder what Beth hoped to accomplish by stabbing Dawn in the first place. I really wondered if Rick would just go ahead and kill everyone else in the hospital (he’s had a real bloodlust since Terminus), but he was able to walk away. And the closing moments were just heartbreaking. Though this episode wasn’t a game-changer for the group, like last season’s mid-season finale, I’ll be interested to see where things go when the show returns in February, because now the group has no home or goal with two recent deaths hanging over their heads. Mostly, I want this Morgan mystery resolved.

Episode: Crossed
Original Airdate: 11-23-14

We’re back to showing the whole gang in one episode, just not reunited yet. So there was a lot of jumping around and keeping up. And yet, not much happened. These are the episodes that I find lacking: the “stepping stones” to something big. Rick, Sasha, Tyreese, Daryl and Noah make a plan to get into the hospital to save Beth and Carol. Rick wants a bloodbath if necessary, but Tyreese and Daryl push for an exchange of hostages, so they set a trap to capture one of the hospital cops. After a small shoot-out the plan is in motion, until Sasha lets down her guard for a second because her captive’s name was Bob (really?). Meanwhile Abraham is contemplating the meaning of life on the side of the road in the hot sun while Glenn, Rosita and Tara go fishing and Maggie tends to a knocked out Eugene. Michonne and Carl hang back at the church with Gabriel, who stupidly escapes under the church floorboards. Beth tries to save Carol when the cops want to take her off life support. A lot of setup, with little payoff. I understand episodes like these are necessary to move forward, but they can be underwhelming, because they generally skip character building, and leave wanting action that’s not delivered. At least the Walkers melded to the asphalt were gruesomely awesome. My biggest complaint, though, is that there has not been nearly enough screen time for Michonne this season. I felt like we were finally starting to get to know her last year, besides her being a badass, and this season, so far, she’s almost been pushed to the back. And now she was left behind from the Atlanta trip. I’m hoping she’ll face some intense action with Carl at the church. With the mid-season finale up next, I’m expecting big things.

Episode: Consumed
Original Airdate: 11-16-14

Pieces are finally starting to fall into place. Two weeks ago during “Slabtown,” I was a bit agitated when the episode ended without much resolution to Beth’s situation at the hospital. When Carol came rolling in on the gurney, I hoped the next time we visited Grady Memorial, it would just be Carol playing possum to gain access to help Beth escape, with the assistance of Daryl, naturally. Now after seeing “Consumed” and a preview for tomorrow’s episode, it’s clear that the inhabitants of the hospital are going to play a bigger villainous role with the entire group through the mid-season finale. As for the episode itself, I was very excited for quiet character building time with two of the show’s biggest badasses. Since Season 2, Carol and Daryl have been thrown together as an obvious couple, but we really haven’t actually seen them together that much over the last three seasons. And now we have had an entire episode to get to know them better as individuals and a couple, which was gratifying, even if the coupling was a bit scant. I really dug the motif of fire and smoke throughout the episode, as they are two things tied to both Daryl and Carol’s surroundings as they have grown throughout the series. As for the newer character of Noah, I was initially disappointed that he was quite antagonistic toward the two in their first meeting, and his only reasoning was in needing weapons. But I know it had to be moment of character building for Daryl to not let Noah die in the end when the tables were turned. Then to end with the shocking moment of Carol being hit by a car sent my anxiety through the roof, especially watching Daryl endure her being taken away by the people of the hospital, and he being unable to help. On the Walker side of things, I really appreciated the living dead in the sleeping bags and tents who had clearly set up a camp on the bridge between two buildings in downtown Atlanta, all seemingly turned at the same time. I have to wonder what their story was. The downside of the episode for me was the van falling off the overpass, and its two inhabitants surviving. The show is far from realistic of course, but that moment was pushing it for me. However, with the rest of the episode being so well grounded, I can forgive them that misstep. With three relatively quieter, character building episodes in a row, here’s hoping that we get a little more action in the final two before the winter break.

Episode: Self Help
Original Airdate: 11-9-14

I really hadn’t been that invested in Abraham, Rosita and Eugene since their introduction at the end of Season 4’s “Inmates,” when rescuing Glenn and Tara. They seemed to be good people with the unwavering determination to get Eugene to DC because he claimed he could end the plague of the undead. Despite his lack of an explanation, I went with it, assuming it would never come to fruition, and back stories were never a concern. But when Abraham insisted on setting out for DC again and taking Maggie and Glenn with him, I was a bit angry that the show was once again breaking up the core group, after having just reunited everyone post-Terminus. However, “Self Help” atoned for the group’s split by finally giving Abraham real development, through flashbacks of losing his family because of his own actions, as well as, exposing Eugene as a liar. I never really expected him to be able to save the world, but when he finally breaks down and admits that it had all been a hoax, just so he could have people protecting him against the Walkers at any cost, my heart broke for everyone involved. The anger and fear was terrifying, but not nearly as much as the feeling of “now what” that they all felt when their mission was no longer. Though I thought the trip to DC was doomed from the beginning, that didn’t keep “Self Help” from resonating any less, and (hopefully) cementing Abraham as a definite addition to the main group, though what he does from here is anyone’s guess. Also, Walkers’ rotting bodies torn apart by a fire hose is a total win.

Episode: Slabtown
Original Airdate: 11-2-14

The Walking Dead has not spent an entire episode following only one of the main group since Rick’s awakening in the pilot. It pushed things in Season 4’s “Still,” abandoning all other characters for 42 minutes of Daryl and Beth alone in the woods, post prison invasion. Due to their opposing personalities the episode barely scraped by, but the unlikely duo as the main focus was still too much for a single episode and it remains one of the lowest rated on IMDb. Yet still the show runners thought an entire Beth-centric episode would make the people happy. It didn’t. Honestly, I haven’t thought much of Beth since her mysterious abduction near the end of Season 4, but seven episodes later the mystery was resolved in “Slabtown” and as I suspected, it was a bit underwhelming . I don’t fault the episode for being a character-driven one, because I’m not one to turn on the show when it abandons the carnage and action for quiet reflection. However, my interest waivers when Beth is the sole focus. She’s just not a character that can successfully carry her own episode. That’s not a knock to Emily Kinney who portrays her, but the writers, despite last season’s attempts, have written Beth as very vanilla and I’m really surprised she hasn’t been killed off yet. What did work for me in “Slabtown” was learning how another group of survivors is handling their world during the zombie apocalypse. These moments I find fascinating, and this particular group’s way of medically saving people only to hold them hostage in an abandoned Atlanta hospital until they work off their “debt” is terrifying, more so than Terminus’s cannibals, since the debts seem subjective to the vicious leader’s current mood. Sadly, the episode still leaves Beth’s fate open-ended, but Carol’s appearance toward the end gives hope that when we do drag the story back around to the younger Greene sister, things will pick up in a deadly way.