The Walking Dead is back! Last season on the incredibly nihilistic AMC show about the zombie apocalypse, Andrea died, the evil Governor killed a significant number of his own people and fled Woodbury, and Rick integrated the rest of the Woodburians into the prison community, which is now thriving. Rick, who suffered from some pretty severe mental issues after Lori died in childbirth, has handed off leadership to a governing council, literally putting down his guns and refusing to arm himself even on trips outside the compound. Now, he's just a simple farmer, growing food and raising lifestock. Hershel jokes that he needs to wear overalls, but Rick doesn't laugh because his Life is Pain.
He also spends a lot of time staring at a zombie with no eyes on the other side of the fence, and I can't tell if there's some sort of metaphor here about not being able to really see, or if the blood streaming from the sockets is supposed to look like tears, because Rick just loves seeing anything that mirrors his own profound inner sadness.
The premiere introduces us to whole host of new characters whose names don't get well-established, which never bodes well for them. There's Patrick, a nerdy, super-earnest kid who's friends with Carl. There's Tyreese's girlfriend, who doesn't have many characteristics yet beyond pretty and nice. Beaver from Veronica Mars shows up as Beth's new boyfriend, but even better, the man you might know best D'Angelo Barksdale joins the crew, bringing the number of Walking Dead castmembers who used to be on The Wire to a highly laudable two.
It's also worth noting that between Tyreese, Sasha (Tyreese's sister, who is both awesome and wholly a creation of the show), D'Angelo and Michonne, there's finally a substantial black contingent on The Walking Dead. It's something that had previously seemed oddly absent in a series that takes places near Atlanta, a city where the population that is more than 50 percent black. To the show's credit, it also manages to avoid immediately killing any of them off, although the prison does lose two people before the episode is over.
The first casualty takes places during a supply run to a local big box store, which goes horribly awry thanks to a helicopter that has crashed into the roof, which is now milling with walkers. While the crew is shopping/looting, the roof starts to collapse, which makes zombies start falling through the ceiling. Aaaahhh! After a few close calls, they manage to escape, but not before Beaver ends up on the business end of some biting. We barely knew you, Beav, who I guess was actually named Zack? It is of no consequence now.
The show's willingness to diverge from the plot of the comics has an interesting impact on the experience of watching those sorts of nail-biting, do-or-die confrontations. The TV version become something separate not only with the invention of characters like Daryl and Sasha, but also though significant changes to the plot, like Andrea's unfortunate relationship with the Governor and Lori's death (originally, she was killed during the Governor's attack on the prison). Even though I'm an avid reader of the Walking Dead comic, I found myself feeling incredibly nervous for Glenn when a zombie lunged at him during the battle, because knowing what happens to him in the comics isn't knowing what happens to him on the show. Much like the survivors themselves, you can never feel truly safe or insulate yourself from loss, no matter how much you know about the source material.
Maggie and Glenn, meanwhile, are struggling with the fact that Maggie might be pregnant thanks to all their now-matrimonial sexing, and although she ultimately realizes that she isn't, it still gives them both a bit of a scare. (It's also worth noting that their fears may extend beyond simply not wanting children; for a woman without access to health care or any form of safe abortion, pregnancy can be a potentially fatal state, as Lori demonstrated.) Maggie says that while she didn't want the baby, she doesn't want them to hold back from making real lives for themselves at the prison. "I don't want to be afraid of being alive." Glenn suggests that fear is part of what has kept them alive, but Maggie makes a key distinction: Simply breathing isn't the same thing as being alive.
The Walking Dead is very much a story about survival, not only in terms of physically escaping from zombies but the ways that these people learn to carry the damage that comes from witnessing (and committing) a seemingly endless string of terrible acts. Young Carl, who had to shoot his own mother in the head to prevent her from turning and recently killed a teenager from Woodbury in what amounted to a preemptive strike, is finally attempting to be a kid again. Or at least, that's what Rick hopes, as he encourages his son to read comic books, hang out with his friends, and even attend storytime.
After talking some shit about storytime being "for kids," Carl ultimately does show up at the prison library, just in time to hear the tail end of Carol's reading from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Specifically, she's reading from the scene where Tom and Becky are lost in a cave and last bit of candle is about to go out; she actually halt smid-sentence right before the line, "the horror of utter darkness reigned." Which if you think about it, is the entire MO of this show. Also, it turns out that storytime is a little more grownup than than Carl thought, as it involves self-defense lessons with knives! He seems horrified by this for a reason I can't discern. This is a kid who will shoot someone in the head with very little provocation, but learning basic safety information about knives is beyond the pale?
Back at the prison, when Darryl tells Beth that her new paramour died on the trip, she responds with a pragmatism that is almost disturbing: She walks over to the sign that says "This Workplace Has Been __ Days Without An Accident" and sets it from 30 back to zero. “I don't cry anymore, Darryl,” she tells him, and even ends up comforting him with a hug. Young people like Beth and Carl seems far more adaptable to trauma of the post-apocalypse, perhaps because they have fewer years of "normal life" to compare it to.
Rick, on the other hand, is still all kinds of messed up. While he doesn't seem to be hallucinating Lori anymore or talking to her on phones that somehow gets reception in the afterlife, he's still very damaged. When an extremely bedraggled woman approaches Rick outside the prison, he agrees to help her bring food back to her husband, though he's obviously concerned that it's some kind of trap. And it is! While her desperation turns out to be very real, her husband also turns out to be very dead, and after an attempted stabbing she admits she only lured Rick in hopes of feeding him to her undead spouse. Rick actually identifies with this horrifying romance -- because husbands/wives/LORI -- which is itself a measure of his own dysfunction, so when the woman stabs herself in the stomach, he actually grants her final wish of allowing her to live on with her husband as a walker. Nothing says love like turning someone into a murderous monster and letting them roam free!
Michonne, who I'm hoping will finally get a bit more character development this season beyond silent glowering, drops in at the prison, although we learn she spends most of her time hunting the Governor. Towards the end of the episode, we see her examining a map and gazing meaningfully at the town of Macon. Macon! It doesn't appear in the comics, but it is the setting for the Walking Dead video game, an exciting notion for anyone who's played it. How amazing would it be if a certain Lee Everett joined the cast?
Finally, after the poor ill pig from earlier in the episode dies, we see Patrick bail on storytime because he's feeling sick. So sick, in fact, that he collapses dead in the shower -- and reanimates as a walker. (Tragically, we do not get to see the pig come back as a zombie pig.) But we do learn that some sort of infection or illness is festering in the prison, so get ready to add "outbreak" to the comically long list of of problems faced by the people who are arguably unlucky enough to still be alive.
