Original Airdate: February 9, 2014
It’s already February. The last time we talked, Hershel’s head was on the ground and Baby Judith was gone.
We start out where we left off. At the prison. Michonne’s horse is dead in the field, as is the Governor and a horde of Walkers. The prison is burning. Michonne stands watching the scene nearby. The Walkers don’t seem to notice her, but when they do she swiftly decapitates them. She leads them to the barricades where the Walkers swiftly impale themselves. She cuts some rope and makes pets of two of them, severing their jaws to keep them docile. Poor Hershel’s head is still moving. She puts it out of its misery, but she stops to reflect for a moment.
Carl and Rick walk down a deserted road. Rick demands that Carl slow down. He’s still badly injured from his fight with the Governor, and when he starts to tell his son that they’re going to be all right, Carl stops him and glares. They find an empty biker bar and Rick tells Carl to stand back but Carl insists that his father is too weak to clear the place himself. Rick begrudgingly accepts his help. They find a Walker in the kitchen and Rick decides to lure him out of the barricade that someone set up. Carl sees a note that says “Please do what I couldn’t.” When Rick’s axe doesn’t hit the mark, Carl shoots the Walker, drawing Rick’s ire. They need to watch their bullets. Rick figured the kitchen would be empty, but he was wrong. “I win,” Carl mutters.
Michonne leads her pets through the woods. She finds tracks in the muddy road and decides to follow them.
Carl walks out in front of his father, and he ignores his dad when Rick speaks. They select a house to stay in. When they go inside, Rick again cautions his son about venturing ahead. “Hey assholes! Hey shitface!” Carl yells, pounding on the walls. He points out that the noise would have drawn them out already. Rick tells him to watch his language. Carl goes upstairs and finds a teenage boy’s room. He smiles momentarily at the CDs and posters, then he grabs the television cable and goes back downstairs. Rick moves a couch to create a barricade but Carl assures him that his clove hitch knot is sturdy. Shane taught him how to do it. “Remember him?” he taunts. Rick remembers him every day. “Is there something else you want to say to me?” he asks. They settle in. Rick is wheezing badly and his movements are stiff. He starts to eat but Carl thinks they should conserve the food they found. Rick throws the food down and orders him to eat. He goes into the bathroom and takes his shirt off. He looks in the mirror and sees how awful he looks.
Next we see Michonne pre-apocalypse. She’s cooking while her “lover” and their friend discuss a distasteful show. She cleans her sword and puts it back into the chopping block. Their little boy runs out and she holds him lovingly. Mike is talking about their future and what they’re working for. Sure, Michonne has gotten good with a sword, but what will come of that? She laughs and asks which one of them will open the wine. When we see them again, their arms are gone. Her lover, Mike, and their friend were her pets. She looks around frantically for their little boy and screams when she sees that he’s gone. She wakes up in a car, gasping for breath. Her new pets are still on their leashes outside.
Carl wakes up and rubs his eyes. He looks like he has grown so much older. When he sees Rick sleeping soundly, he grabs his gun belt and goes to make breakfast. Cereal. He pours three bowls and sits upstairs in the bedroom. The poster above the bed says “For Victory.” After a few moments he returns to his father and tries to wake him up. It doesn’t work. He can’t wake him up, and when he starts shouting, he calls the attention of the local Walkers. They start pounding on the door. Carl dons his hat and goes outside. He leads the two Walkers away from the house, and at first he seems lighthearted about it, but when he ventures too far, he turns around to see that another Walker snuck up behind him. “Oh shit,” he mouths.
The Walkers overtake Carl and in a panic he shoots them. The first one collapses on top of him, followed by the woman, and then the third one approaches. He misses his shot, twice, and on the third attempt shoots the Walker in the head. Carl scrambles out from under the pile and throws up, then he puts his hat back on. “I win,” he mutters. He walks back onto the street. It’s eerily deserted. “Cool,” he says.
Michonne is wandering through the woods with her pets. She gets into formation with a herd and sees a woman that resembles her. For the first time, it seems, Michonne is coming to terms with her past.
Carl returns to the house and tells his sleeping father that he killed three Walkers. Rick is still unresponsive, so he unloads his pent-up emotions onto his father. He can survive and protect himself. He didn’t forget the lessons that Rick taught him while they were farmers. And Rick didn’t do anything to protect Hershel, or Glen and Maggie. Now they’re all gone. Carl empties a bag of food on the floor and muses that he’d be okay if Rick died. Talk about teenage angst.
Carl ventures out with a bag of food. He sees another house and goes to scout it out. A solar light is repurposed as a stake, but when he tries to break down the door, he falls onto the ground. “Damn it.” Inside the house Carl finds a ton of food in the kitchen, including a can of pudding that brings a smile to his face. He goes upstairs and scouts around. The house is a little odd, and eventually he comes across a Walker. Carl is off his game and falls to the floor, missing his shot. He runs out of bullets and gets chased into the bedroom, but the Walker catches him before he can escape out the window. It almost looks like he’s going to be bitten; instead, the Walker grabs his shoe and Carl escapes. He uses some chalk to write a message on the door for his father. The message says that there is a Walker inside and he got his shoe but didn’t get bitten. He spends the rest of the day eating pudding on the roof, surveying his little kingdom.
Michonne and her herd continue their trek through the woods. How long can she keep up this aimless wandering? She closes her eyes as she walks and when she opens them again she gets a long look at the woman who resembles her. She chops off the woman’s head, which gains the attention of the pack. She quickly cuts them all down and proceeds to weep.
She returns to the road and looks at the trail again. She decides to follow the trail this time.
Carl is sleeping back in the house with his father. Rick starts to stir and then he rolls off the couch. His breathing is shallow and it sounds like he has become a Walker, so Carl aims the gun and intends to kill his father, but he can’t. He starts crying. But Rick isn’t dead. He tells his son to go out and be safe. Carl grabs his dad and sobs.
Michonne discovers the diner where Rick and Carl were earlier. She sees the note. She sinks down and says that she misses Mike, but she says he was wrong. And if he’d listened, he could be there with their baby. She says she knows “the answer” and knows why. Why what?
Rick tells Carl he shouldn’t have risked going out. “I was careful,” he assured his father. He found more food, but he ate it. When Rick asks what it was, Carl admits it was “112 ounces of pudding.” Rick tells his son that they won’t be able to get things back to the way they were, but Carl is a man now. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You don’t need to be,” Carl says.
Michonne comes across the pudding can and traces it back to the house where Rick and Carl are staying. She sees them through the window and starts to cry.
A knock sounds at the door. Rick looks through the peep hole while Carl aims his gun (does he have more bullets?) Rick laughs and sinks down onto the floor. “It’s for you,” Rick says.
And with that we have the first episode of the second half of the season.
We knew going in that the gang was going to be all over the place. I think it’s great to see Carl’s development through this episode. He has grown up so much in the last season. And it’s intriguing to see bits and pieces of Michonne’s past.
Well, we seem to be off to an amazing start. What did you think of tonight’s episode? Be sure to leave your comments!
Comments are closed.