by Scott Poole:
The Walking Dead: “Beside the Dying Fire”
Original Air Date: Sunday March 18, 2012 (AMC)
Season 2, Episode 13 (Finale)
“Get one thing straight. You’re staying? This isn’t a democracy anymore.”
Twitter and Facebook became a dead man’s party last night and for good reason. Once again, the writers for The Walking Dead have come up with a compelling season finale that makes you want to skip the summer.
A brilliant opening scene tonight. We watch a zombie horde munching on something repulsive and then shamble off after the sound of a helicopter (remember the helicopter from season 1?). They drift out of Atlanta into the countryside, clumping together with their rotting compatriots. We’ve seen very few moments from the perspective of the walkers and this was scripted perfectly. I also appreciated the show getting away from using the first five minutes to let us peep in on a plot point so we could wonder how we got there.
Fans have wanted more zombies and, wow, did we get them. The farm is quickly overrun. Honestly, I wanted to see a Romero-style farmhouse siege with all the groups’ tensions boiling to the surface as the walkers press against windows and doors. Of course, as Daryl says, “a herd that size liable to tear the house down.” Good point Daryl and, besides, the writers gave us something even better.
As the group struggles to escape (it seems that nobody really thought of an escape plan for such a contingency) Rick gets the zombie kill of the week with the old “lure them into the barn and set the hay on fire” gambit. Meanwhile, Maggie, Glenn, Andrea and T-Dog use the automobiles to turn themselves into mobile zombie killing squads. Daryl? Well, he’s on his motorcycle. Not smart, Daryl.
Meanwhile Carol, Lori and various characters like Grace, Jimmy and Patricia that we know nothing about are fleeing for their lives. I thought for sure Herschel would be a casualty and he almost is, saved at the last moment when a walker comes up behind him. Rick drops it just in time. Jimmy, who we neither really know nor care about, becomes a gore feast in the camper.
“Come on, I ain’t got all day.” Daryl says as he rides up to save Carol who, not surprisingly given her character’s arc, seems to be running in circles. Glad she’s staying around and that the connection between her and Daryl remains strong Still, he needs to lose the motorcycle. And I look forward to the apparent return of his brother Merle next season, though I guess we don’t know if that will be in visionary/dream-sequences or in the flesh. I hope the latter as I think Daryl character needs an interesting narrative around it. More on that in a moment.
Lots of outstanding shots tonight. I’m a particular fan of the images of walkers wandering in front of the burning barn until it collapses in on itself. Cinematic and weirdly beautiful, the kind of scene the show did a better job on in season 1 and hasn’t pulled off so much this season.
Carl’s stepping up and seeming more and more like the kid some of us love from the comics every episode. He and Rick and Herschel escape to a rendezvous point on the highway. Here Carl confronts Rick with yet another quandary. Does he risk Carl in a search for the others or get Carl to safety? It’s not clear what the latter would mean and it’s resolved anyway when the other survivors appear,
The scene on the highway also sets up Herschel for the best line of the night. Rick, a bit contemptuously, tells Herschel that he should have faith. Herschel responds, “Christ promised a resurrection of the dead, I just thought he had something different in mind.” Later Herschel tells us “nature threw us a curveball,” theological ponderings that take us back to some of the themes that appeared in the search for Sophia last fall.
Andrea, meanwhile, busily kicks undead ass…slamming zombie heads into trees and generally being awesome as she, separated from the group, runs for her life. Meanwhile, the group wanders a bit aimlessly with walkers on the move and Rick talking about a future by saying things like “hunkering down” and “building a life.” Maggie makes the obvious point that they fooled themselves before into thinking they could live in safety in a world that belongs to the dead.
What was the big reveal tonight on the nature of the zombies? “We’re all infected…we all carry it,” Rick tells the group, explaining why Shane turned even though he had not been bitten. Honestly no surprises here. It does make clear what Jenner from last season said to Rick just before the CDC self-destructed.
But Romero fans already know that all the dead come back. I’d also point out that we’ve seen a zombie hanging from a tree, obviously somebody who committed suicide and then turned (unless we assume they got bitten on the foot while they hung there or had been bitten already and decided to try and kill themselves or some other unnecessarily complex explanation).
A more shocking moment was Rick’s willingness to confess that he killed Shane and, in a fairly impolitic decision, to also tell Lori about his desire to have Shane out of the way. Lori, who arguably helped set up the denouement between these boys, pushes her husband away and stalks off. Should she really be so shocked?
And remember how, just a couple of episodes ago, Lori wrapped herself around Rick in their tent and whispered in his ear that Shane was dangerous? This is not the Lori of the comics and I have a bit more feeling for what the writers are doing with her. At the same time, women’s roles on the series have been so problematic that creating the trope of “manipulative bitch” for her to enact seems an unfortunate decision. This risks making her character one-dimensional. It also plays that game of creating a character it’s easy to kill off.
Lori’s reaction, and the group’s, fuels Rick’s “hey get out of my grill” anger. “This isn’t a democracy anymore” Rick says and its one of the many moments tonight we see some of the meaningful themes and ideas from the comics make their way into the show. In the books, Rick has been the narrative center of gravity and writer/creator Robert Kirkman has done a great job of constructing him as an average guy with a strong moral compass in a world gone apocalyptic.
I think the second half of season two really developed this idea, almost ad nauseum. It’s been interesting to see some fans read Rick’s refusal to trade in the kind of simplicities that Shane loved (“lets just kill them”) as a kind of weakness. In fact, Shane did conform to some traditional notions of the American hero, at least some of the worst aspects of that notion. He always wanted action, even when its purpose remained unclear. And violence always constituted his response to any situation, at times explosive violence that had catastrophic consequences for the group even when his decision seemed the most pragmatic (cf. shooting the barn zombies).
In any case, bye Shane. And hello to a Rick that at least no one will call weak?
The final scenes tonight make a comic geeks heart beat faster. If you’ve been waiting for Michonne, samurai swords and all, you already know we got a glimpse of her tonight. The response to this on twitter confirmed my feeling that fans of the show really need to pick up the comics. I saw plenty of “I wonder who the dude is in the hood” responses to the episode’s actual reveal. They missed some excitement.
As I’ve said before the intertextual relationship between the show and the book never ceases to amaze me. Most of the same themes are present and yet they are often angled differently. Moreover, knowing the Walking Dead-verse sets you up for all sorts of Easter eggs while you are watching the show.
The final scene…a shot of the prison and for fans of the comic this means that we are about to see the AMC interpretation of perhaps the books’ most compelling arc, one that introduces us to the sadistic “Governor.” By the way, despite the seemingly unstoppable internet message board rumors and twitter talk, Merle Dixon (Michael Rooker) will not be the Governor. Counterintuitive to begin with, we know that David Morrissey will be channeling all that crazy next season. I do think Merle could make an excellent henchman for the Governor, maybe even creating a crisis of loyalty for Daryl?
I’d give this season a B average with a few C episodes here and there. So why did I love the finale so much? The Walking Dead offers a big sandbox that I think the writers made small with far too many farmhouse conversations and relationship canoodles that stood in for character development-especially when it came to female characters. This last episode opened that world up into the truly cinematic experience this walk through a world of monsters ought to be.
What to do until the premier of season 3? Why not pick up the comic? You’ve got almost a hundred issues to get through and an alternative narrative that will still be recognizable to you. Not to mention the novel Rise of the Governor that had to be written with the show in mind. And be sure to give Monsters in America a read and check in with me and my blog at www.monstersinamerica.com.
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Scott Poole is the author of Monsters in America: Our Historic Fascination with the Hideous and the Haunting. Read his blog at www.monstersinamerica.com and follow him on Twitter at @monstersamerica.
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[Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC]
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