We’re moving into the home stretch and things are starting to get intense. Not that beheadings, tanks, severe beatings, and competing bands of roving zombies and thugs weren’t already intense, but after four episodes with our ragtag band of heroes scattered to the winds, nearly everyone is converging on Terminus and it shouldn’t be too long before the band is back together.
This past week’s episode, “Alone,” continues the current trend of focusing on one or two small groups of characters in order to spotlight them and allow the writers and the actors to showcase exactly what it is that makes this show special. After spending last week with just Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Beth (Emily Kinney), this time around we expand that to see what’s happening with Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), and Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.), too.
And what’s happening with them isn’t all that interesting.
Basically, they’re just bickering, with Maggie pushing to keep searching for Glenn (Steven Yeun) while Sasha argues for essentially giving up and finding a new place to hole up. Bob is pretty firmly on Maggie’s side in this, despite the developing feelings between him and Sasha. Being the only survivor of two previous groups will do that to a person, I guess. He wants to see reunion. He wants to get the band back together as much as the viewers do.
There are a few tense moments as they wander around in the fog and nearly get eaten alive, but ultimately it’s all kind of wheel spinning as they realize that they need to stick together and get to Terminus.
Whether or not that’s a good idea overall, we’ll have to wait and see.
I appreciate the desire and the opportunity to flesh out characters like Sasha and Bob, since they haven’t really been given a lot to do otherwise. Tyreese’s sister and the Alcoholic aren’t really how they should be referred to. So while those wheels are spinning, it’s not entirely without purpose. But a stronger script would have helped. There’s only so much even a great director like Ernest R. Dickerson can do if there’s no real story movement.
The real meat of the episode was back with Daryl and Beth. After a crossbow training mishap involving a bear trap (?!?), Daryl carries Beth to the safety of a nearby funeral home (nice symbolism there — I like). To their surprise, the kitchen is stocked (with diet soda and pigs’ feet — ugh) and suspiciously dust-free. Since there’s no sign of anybody being there at the moment, our heroes decide that they should set up camp there for the night. Or maybe for a while.
There’s a disturbing familiarity between Daryl and Beth this week. After last week’s getting to know each other over mason jars of moonshine, Daryl seems to be getting a bit of a crush on the sweet young thing. Emphasis on young. Don’t get me wrong, Beth’s cute and kind of adorable, but Daryl’s old enough to be her dad so those puppydog looks are more creepy than endearing.
Luckily we don’t have to delve too much into that gross territory because after a night in the mortuary, there’s a sound at the door. A second sound, actually. The first sound was a mangy-looking dog who promptly runs off when he sees Daryl. The second time around though, it’s a freaking herd of walkers who begin flooding into the house.
After a narrow escape, Daryl and Beth get separated, with everybody’s favorite redneck ex-white supremacist showing up just in time to find Beth’s backpack scattered on the road and a car (with a white cross painted on its rear windshield) speeding away with Beth in tow.
WTF?
Those zombies didn’t just happen to show up on the doorstep of a pristine house with plenty of supplies in stock. I have a feeling, whoever was living at the funeral home didn’t take kindly to having their home invaded. And seeing as how he’s been keeping up with his funereal duties (our heroes find a couple of really dead walkers partially painted up as if getting ready for their viewing), we can kind of assume that he’s not right in the head.
Of course, snatching a young girl kind of signifies that too, I guess.
Unable to keep up on foot, Daryl finds himself at a crossroads. Literally. He sinks to his knees at a crossroad, having lost track of Beth’s kidnapper. That’s when he finds himself surrounded by the gang of villains we just saw over at Rick’s house a few episodes ago. I knew they wouldn’t waste Jeff Kober for one scene sitting on a porch eating fruit from a can.
After a tense standoff, it looks like Daryl will be hanging with the bad boys for a bit, until he can figure out a way to find and (hopefully) rescue Beth. In the meantime, we’ve got a handful of questions that need answered and only three more episodes to get them.
Is Joe (Kober) and his crew just a roving band of hooligans or are they from Terminus? Are they the ones who wiped out that camp and stole all the supplies back when the Governor was having his crisis of conscience? Who took Beth and where the hell are they going? Probably not back to the funeral home, right? And just what the hell is Terminus? That’s the name that was given to Atlanta before it became a real city; when it served as the terminal point for the railroad heading west. We’ve already seen Atlanta overrun back in the first couple of episodes of the series. Where are our heroes heading now and can anything good come of it?
With all that said, I’m not too concerned about getting those answers at the moment, because this week’s episode sees the return of Carol, Tyreese, and the psycho kids! That scenario is easily the most laden with suspense and anticipation of any of the survivors’ stories and I can’t wait to see how it plays out. Hopefully we’ll be getting a whole other batch of questions answered this time.