The Walking Dead: Say the Word, 11/11/2012

It’s yet another a charming, peaceful day in Woodbury. (You get the distinct feeling that when things finally go all to hell here, these blissful, sheltered people are going to have ZERO idea how to fend for themselves.) Milt brings Andrea a cold drink, complains that the generators are being used to run the freezers. They chat about the upcoming party tonight. Michonne, who is not—ever?—in a festive mood, prowls not far off, watching Andrea. Cut to: Guv brushing a dog’s hair. Wait. Holy hell that’s not a dog; it’s little girl. A little zombie girl. As he brushes, a patch of her rotting scalp is ripped off. She goes berserk and tries to bite him. He puts her in a straightjacket, drops a sack over her head, and holds and kisses her, cooing, “Daddy still loves you.” Oh dear god. This is a thousand times worse than finding out Hershel had zombies in the barn. At least they were in the barn. Not in his bedroom being groomed, kissed, and sweet talked. I shudder to think what Guv’s feeding Corpse Daughter. As he struggles with her, he looks out to see Michonne staring up at his window. He glares at her.

In the prison yard, Hershel says the baby looks healthy but needs formula. Daryl, Maggie, Glenn volunteer to go. Daryl pulls Beth to the side and asks her to keep an eye on Carl, cuz his mother just died and his father … poor Rick is zoned completely the eff out. Maggie says there’s too much debris in the road; the vehicles can’t make it. They have to take Daryl’s bike, which has room for only one passenger. Maggie tells Glenn she has to go. For Lori. They kiss; she and Daryl head out. Oscar shuts the gate behind them. Suddenly, Rick grabs an axe, heads inside, and goes tear-assing through the zombie-filled halls, killing and killing and killing and killing. #stressreliever

 

As Guv gives a speech to his adoring citizens, Michonne sneaks into his place to retrieve her sword. She finds a notebook filled with names and pages of scribble, then hears bumping coming from behind the wall. She’s trying to pry open a secret door when she hears voices approaching, and manages to hide in the nick of time. Guv, Merle, and Milt enter. Milt’s complaining that wasting the generators on the party is draining juice he needs for an experiment. Guv tells him to start it over in the morning post-party. They leave. Michonne’s gone, having sneaked out a back window, into a closed-off area containing eight or so caged zombies. She smiles an I-KNEW-he-was-crazy/I’m-SO-going-to-enjoy-this smile, then calmly opens the cage, draws her sword, and slaughters the zombies. She’s still smiling when she’s discovered. Allow me to neatly sum up the next scene. Michonne sits in an interrogation room. Guv enters with her sword, prattles on and on, asks her again to join his team—and Michonne snatches up her sword, unsheaths it, and is holding it to his throat faster than you can say “politicians suck.” Then she just leaves. Merle enters, asks if there’s a problem. Guv says nope. Round up the boys and go get some more zombies, and also, send Andrea to him.

Glenn is outside digging graves. Axle and Oscar approach, offer to help. (Time out. WHY THE HELL DON’T THEY CHANGE CLOTHES??? Those prison jumpsuits are driving me up the damn wall! Find a zombie your size, wash his clothes, then change! For the love of god, change clothes!!! Time back in.) Glenn lets them so he can go talk to Hershel, who asks him to go get Rick. They chat for a bit. Glenn’s down in the dumps about having lost three people. (Dammit, Carol, where the hell are you?) He shares some fond T Dog memories; Hershel reminds him that T saved Maggie by getting that gate closed. Glenn admits that he kinda wishes they’d just shot all the prisoners on sight. Hershel reminds him that Axle and Oscar seem ok. Glenn says yeah, but he’d trade any number of lives for the life of just one person from their group. Hershel grasps his hand for a sec; then Glenn goes to look for Rick. I like this father-in-law/son-in-law kind of bonding. I also like Hershel’s ponytail. It makes him look distinguished. Glenn finds a severely crazy-eyed Rick at the end of a trail of zombie corpses, just standing there, staring at a wall. Glen tries to get Rick to come back with him, but Rick slams him into a wall, shoves him aside, then wanders deeper into the prison. Glenn, wisely, leaves him be.

Andrea arrives. Guv asks her to help him with Michonne, She stole her sword, Guv says. Can’t steal something that belongs to you, Andrea says. And she broke into a private area and killed zombie captives, Guv said. Andrea (who’s probably thinking, “Not this again.”), asks why he’s keeping zombies. He’ll only say there’s a good reason but he can’t get into it right now. At which point I would have found Michonne and hit the highway, but Andrea finds Michonne and tries to convince her to stay. *sigh* Elsewhere, Merle, Mitch, and crew check one of their zombie traps, find it full. Merle kills some; Mitch tests out a jacket with arms that are zombie-bite-proof. By which I mean wrapped in duct tape. Back at Woodbury, Michonne and Andrea have it out at the gate. Michonne wants to leave, Andrea wants to stay. Michonne leaves. :( Guv, reminding females watching this show of every opportunistic creep who’s ever hit on them knowing they were vulnerable, finds Andrea sitting alone, offers her a drink and some company.

Maggie and Daryl come across a daycare, break in, find diapers, bottles … and formula. YAY! Night has fallen by the time they make it back to the prison. They rush in, Beth and Maggie mix up and bottle some formula, and wonder of wonders, it’s Daryl who feeds Baby, rocks her, and sweet talks her. He asks Carl if she has a name yet. Carl rattles off a list of every dead female who’s ever been a part of the group. WTF? NO, CARL. Daryl calls Baby “Little Asskicker.” Ha! I like it. L.A. Rick, please come back, if only so you can save L.A. from Carl naming her. Alas, Rick’s currently too busy wandering around. He finds the boiler room, the puddle of blood, the knife, the bullet … and then a trail of blood and zombie with a distended belly, so full it can barely move. He blows its brains out and stabs it repeatedly.

Guv and Andrea walk arm-in-arm (*gag*) to an arena area, where all the citizens have gathered to with the evening’s entertainment: Merle and his friends beating the shit out of each other, surrounded by zombies on chains, which are let closer and closer. The crowd is going wild. I’m immediately hugely annoyed by the fact that this is what Woodburyians consider fun. Really, guys? We can’t form book clubs, Frisbee leagues, archery teams? ANYTHING else? Andrea’s annoyed too, but for a different reason. “You’re teaching them that walkers aren’t dangerous,” she hisses at Guv. “We’re teaching them not to be afraid,” he differs. And anyway, the whole thing’s staged, and the zombies are closely controlled. So it’s ok. Andrea looks very much not ok.

 

Sunrise. Outside, Daryl puts flowers on Carol’s grave. (What did they bury? Her head scarf?) In the boiler room, still crazy-eyed Rick just sits motionless on the floor. Then he hears the phone ringing. (Grief-induced hallucination?) He lurches to his feet and shambles over to it. “Hello?”

Terra Nova, 10/31/11

Yeah, um … with the double threat of Sixers and all manner of dinosaurs roaming the forest, I would very much NOT be the soldier sent out alone at night. And Soldier Foster proves why when he arrives at Communication Relay Station 19A — then is promptly eaten. :( The next morning, as his remains are carried out, Chief Science Officer Malcolm (he gets mad if you don’t call him that) explains to Taylor and Jim that it was a narcoraptor. “Narcoraptor”???? Ha ha ha! Narcotics. Narcolepsy. It kills you, then gets high, then falls asleep. Ha ha ha! Oh — wait. Jim pronounces it more clearly: “nikoraptor.” Damn British accent.

Josh is hard at work in the bar, because teenagers can work in bars on Terra Nova, when his boss, Tom the Mole, tells Josh he’s going to have to do something if he wants Cara brought to TN. Uh oh.

CSO Malcolm brings a cracked dino egg back to the hospital, where Elizabeth’s busy autopsying Foster at Jim's request. When she finds the blood of both a nikoraptor and its prey on Foster’s body, Jim tells Taylor and Lt. Wash that he (Jim) thinks somebody set Foster up. Death by niko, if you will. Taylor’s skeptical, but tells Wash and Jim to investigate. They head to the bar to question Foster’s two friends, one of whom is Maddy’s boyfriend Hot Mark. “Hey Mr. Shannon,” he says dully, and I’m thoroughly disappointed he wasn’t all, “Most enthusiastic greetings and salutations, good sir.” I guess sadness over the death of his friend has robbed him of his penchant for old-timey talk. Hot Mark and Other Friend tell Wash and Jim that Foster had a secret girlfriend, whose pic he was always looking at on his computerized dog tag thingy. (Random: I totally dig how Wash wears her gun in a thigh holster. IN A THIGH HOLSTER. Cool factor: off the charts.) She and Jim head to the hospital to get Foster’s personal effects … just in time to see CSO Malcom’s dino egg quiver. Omg! Yes! Raise it and try to domesticate it! That would be so awesome! Why hasn’t he tried this already? CSO duty FAIL.

The locator in Foster’s tag is on the move. Because it’s inside the niko that ate him. Dinosaur huntin’ time. Oh man, it looks like fun! Driving rovers and motorcycles at top speed, they chase it down and tranq it. Nope, they don’t kill it, to the overwhelming approval of PETA. Wash, who’s a combat medic (who once had to put 67 stitches in Taylor’s side), does a bit of surgery and cuts it open to get what they need. She recognizes the pic on Foster’s tag, some chick who works in the mess hall. They question her and her nervous husband, who doesn’t need much prodding before he admits to killing Foster. The first murder in TN! Taylor has to decide if he’s going to banish Hubby or imprison him. Jim and Elizabeth argue about it later: she thinks banishments is cruel; he’s of the opinion that he’d much rather have been banished to a sunny jungle, dinos or no dinos, than imprisoned for several years; she says what if Hubby was forced to confess? (It’s entirely too convenient that she hit upon that, but) Jim, remembering how jumpy the dude was, has to pause.

At the hospital, CSO Malcolm has discovered the baby inside the dino egg has birth defects. Elizabeth insists they try to save it. I do too. During a stroll through the marketplace, Josh tells Sky that Tom the Mole wants him to meet with Mira. She tries to convince him not to do it, but Josh had three friends who killed themselves because 2149 sucked so bad, and he’ll do anything to get Cara out of there. Skye says she’ll go with him.


Hubby is banished! (And I fully support Taylor in that decision.) Jim strolls into the jungle to check on him. “Between the wildlife and the Sixers, there’s a lot of ways to die in this jungle,” he says. Oh, hello, very first sentence of this recap. So, Hubby didn’t kill Foster; he confessed only cuz he thought Wifey did it. But she didn’t do it either. There’s still a murderer on the loose! Taylor’s understandably furious that Jim went after Hubby, tells Jim he best find out if there even is a real killer, and fast, or else Hubby is going to be re-banished faster than you can say “And stay out!”

At the hospital, CSO Malcolm watches Elizabeth perform in-egg surgery on the dino baby, complimenting her skill. *eye roll* Malcolm, please get a girlfriend.


Jim following up on a new lead, Wifey telling him that Foster had a gambling problem and that Tom the Mole runs the illegal gambling, leads him to the bar, where he’s shocked to see Josh. WTF. How could he not know that his son has a job? Anyway, Jim sends Josh home; Tom the Mole is arrested. Curiously, during Tom the Mole’s interrogation, Other Friend shoots Hot Mark a nervous glance, which Hot Mark either doesn’t notice or pretends not to see. Oh, ok. The arrest of Tom the Mole was a ruse to flush out Other Friend, who is the killer. Out in the forest, Taylor beats his ass square for killing Foster, then banishes him. (Prediction: he’s going to join the Sixers.) And since Tom the Mole played along helping to catch Other Friend, Jim lets Josh go back to working in the bar.

Josh and Skye meet with Mira and the Sixers. She says that she’ll help bring Cara to TN if Josh agrees to help her at some point in the future. Deal? He says yes. No, Josh. Nooooooooooooooooooo.

The egg hatches, and a healthy little baby dino pops out. Yay!