The Walking Dead: 4.03 Living in “Isolation”

Sasha in The Walking Dead
You don’t need to epidemics during a zombie apocalypse. The zombie plague is enough!
We open with Maggie and Glenn sharing a longing look while burying flu victims, then move on to Dr. S and Herschel attending a now dead flu victim without wearing masks, which bothers me quite a lot. Hey, trained medical personnel, how about we use what we know about the spread of disease to reduce the risk of disease to the trained medical personnel? Meanwhile, Tyreese shows Rick the burnt bodies of Karen and Other Dead Guy and flies into a crazy rage when Rick tries to tell him that he understands Tyreese’s grief. I think he’s talking about when he went crazy after Lori died, but maybe he’s talking about how he had to kill the piglets last week. (I’m sorry to say this, but the porcine slaughter was actually more harrowing than this, maybe because Andrew Lincoln sold the heck out of Rick’s devastation.) Rick and Tyreese get into a bare-knuckle boxing match that Daryl and Carol helplessly observe.

Meanwhile, Tyreese’s sister Sasha is also infected as is Dr. S (which stands for “should have worn a mask”) and everyone else in Cellblock D. The Council meets, and Herschel opines that they need antibiotics; um, I’m no doctor (come to think of it, neither is Herschel) but my understanding is that antibiotics don’t do anything for viruses and the flu is a viral disease (as is the zombie plague, come to think of it.) Oh well! Michonne and Daryl will head out to a veterinary hospital that’s apparently chock full of antibiotics and Herschel suggests that the “vulnerable” (the very old and very young) be quarantined away from the sick people who may turn into zombies at any moment.

Rick and Carol try to get their malfunctioning water pump to work, and then Rick goes over to talk to Tyreese, whose left eye is swollen shut from the beating Rick gave him. Rick opines that whoever killed Karen and David might have been trying to stop the flu virus from spreading; Tyreese points out that “they didn’t.” Tyreese accuses Rick of not feeling the urgency of solving the murders and that murder is ok in this place. Um, Tyreese, there is a flu epidemic going on and Rick is a TINY BIT BUSY, ok? I hear Tyreese is awesome in the comic books and I really like the actor (and loved Cutty on “The Wire”) but I have to confess that Show!Tyreese is really starting to bug me.

Rick places Carl in charge of the quarantined children and Carl is a little too interested in whether he should fire his gun into the head of any zombified kids in the cellblock with him. Eek!!

Meanwhile, Glenn has also come down with the flu. Nooooooo!!!

Calm yourselves!
Daryl and Michonne exchange some banter as Daryl checks the engine of the car they’re going to take on their supply run. I’m sensing a vibe between the two of them, especially when Michonne says “it’s just going to be me and you, just like in the old days.” Unfortunately, Medic Bob is also coming along on the ride. Daryl says they could use another body, but Rick is ruled out because he’s crazy. And also he wants to stay and watch out for Carl and Judith. “Who else have we got?” Michonne asks, as we cut to Tyreese glaring out of his good eye at the quarantined people.

Daryl finds him and asks what Tyreese is doing, and Tyreese says he’s staying to stand guard over those in quarantine. Daryl tells him it won’t do any good if Tyreese stays but they don’t come back with the meds.

Herschel is reading a bunch of papers when he’s interrupted by Carl. Apparently Herschel wants to go out into the woods for no apparent reason. Considering that Dr. S has the flu, and Medic Bob is going on the dangerous supply run, of course it makes sense (for this show) that Herschel, the only one left, has decided to go for a nature walk amidst the zombies. Carl insists that if Herschel’s going, he will go with him.

Carol, heavily masked (as Dr. S should have been!), watches various people enter the quarantine block and ignores the woman who claims she just has allergies. Lizzie, the little girl who failed to stab her father in the brainpan last week, finds Carol and tells her that she’s sick. Carol sends her into the quarantine block too.

Beth is locked in with the baby and Maggie tells her that Glenn has the flu, to which Beth replies that they don’t get to be upset, because they have jobs to do.

Beth and the Baby
Quarantine must be kind of boring…
Carl guards Herschel in the woods while Herschel collects some kind of leaves; Herschel talks about how peaceful it is in the woods, and how they might be safer than the prison. Carl demurs. On cue, they come across a Walker who’s overgrown with lichen and another one traling some kind of trap; Carl raises his gun to kill them, and Herschel tells him not to do so because they don’t need to.

Tyreese visits Sasha in quarantine; thanks to Sasha getting excited about the possibility of meds coming the next day, Tyreese decides to join the group on their run in Zach’s fast car. Bob asks Daryl if they really want him coming along, and Daryl shows him the list of drugs he got from Hershel, which Bob reads without any effort, showing that he’s necessary for the supply run. I’m enjoying Daryl’s quiet confidence, but I really wish he’d hack off his bangs with his knife or something because I feel like they’re interfering with his peripheral vision.

Tyreese goes to get his gear and asks Carol to look in on Sasha whenever she gets a chance. Awww! Carol tells Tyreese she’s so sorry about what happened to Karen. After Tyreese leaves, Carol looks devastated and pushes the barrel of water that she’s laboriously filled.

Maggie confronts Hershel, demanding why he’s not in quarantine. Rick turns up, and Herschel says he brought elderberries, a natural flu remedy, from the woods.  Rick tells him that he’s risking his life by going in amongst the sick, and Herschel turns and says they’re basically risking their lives every day, by doing the most mundane things. (Again, at this point, basically their only medically trained person should not deliberately risk his life; what happens if Daryl and Michonne return with the meds and there’s no one to tell them what dosage to use, for example? Generally, I like Herschel, but this entire scene makes no sense to me!)

Meanwhile, Rick, lacking pigs to feed or vegetables to dig, is investigating the crime scene from the murders of Karen and David, while Carol cleans out the clogged pipes on the dangerous side of the fence, having distracted the zombies with some kind of Rube Goldberg machine. Maybe at this particular moment, Rick should have been helping Carol instead of his CSI stuff. Priorities, Rick! Carol is predictably caught in the midst of zombie mayhem, until Rick comes out and helps rescue her (though she is clearly capable of kicking ass too.) Oh, Carol, I have truly come to love you now and that probably means you’ll be dead in the near future.

Not the road trip they would have liked!
As the supply run gang drives along the highway, Daryl fiddles with the radio and miraculously, they hear what sounds very much like a human voice in all the static. Interesting!! Immediately afterwards, Daryl hits a couple of Walkers, and then the gang runs smack into an enormous herd of zombies. Daryl reverses, mowing down zombies, but the car gets stuck in a giant pile of zombies. Michonne, Daryl and Bob exit the car, killing zombies on their dash to the woods, but Tyreese just sits in the back seat for a few moments. Finally he comes out with his hammer, smashing zombies right and left, taking out all his anger and grief on the undead. He lets himself be surrounded by zombies (remember the whole “get the meds for my sister” thing, Tyreese?) and Daryl, Bob and Michonne reluctantly leave him.

Michone, Bob and Daryl in the Woods
The woods aren’t the greatest place–lots of open spaces!
Somehow Tyreese catches up to the three of them in the woods, and the group moves on towards the meds.

Back the prison, Herschel tries to get the sick Dr. S to drink his elderberry brew; Sick Doc apparently forgot whatever principles of hygiene he learned in med school, because he coughs blood all over Herschel without even trying to cover his mouth. Luckily, Herschel is wearing a face mask, though he then removes it to talk to Sick Doc. Really, Herschel? Then he hangs out with Glenn for a while also sans mask. I’m not sure where Herschel’s deathwish came from, to be honest.

Rick finds Carol, carrying water, and tells her she did a stupid thing by going outside the fence on her own. He asks if there is anything she won’t do for the people in the prison and she says “no.” Somehow this prompts Rick to ask whether she killed Karen and David, to which her response is a simple “yes.”

 

 


Regina Thorne is an avid reader of just about everything, an aspiring writer, a lover of old movies and current TV shows, and a hopeless romantic.

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