Review

Judy, Andrew's second wife, is walking passed a car and we hear the emergency broadcast on the car's radio. She notices a young woman lying on the ground and rushes to help. Judy checks for a heartbeat and then attempts mouth to mouth resuscitation. Unfortunately for Judy the prone woman turns as Judy is trying to help her and Judy gets bitten most heinously on the tips, think we are taking tongueless as well!

Meanwhile Andrew has been busy in the backyard shooting the family dog for unknown reasons, perhaps it poo-ed on the carpet or something. Andrew is cleaning blood off his arms, don't ask no idea how that got there, when the electricity cuts out taking with it Andrew's chance to hear further warnings of violence over the radio. There's a crash from another room and Andrew rushes to the front door, which is standing ajar, with a trail of blood leading into the living room. Andrew follows the trail and warns who ever has gone home invader that he has a gun. His concerns over home raiders is short lived however as it's only Judy home from the shopping mall, now Andrew's real problems kick in with a vengeance!

Domestic Violence flashes back in time to before the kids arrived at Andrew's house. We now know why Andrew didn't want Billy going out the back, Andrew for no apparent reason thought it was best to shot the family dog. Guess the dog was making a whole bunch of noise which was attracting unwanted attention. That's speculation; the dog shooting is never actually explained. But anyways we get an answer to whom or what is wrapped up in the carpet in the lounge room, which was pretty much the focus of the episode's 3:10 minute run time.

I'm thinking the zombie apocalypse had only just kicked into gear as Judy is clearly returning from the supermarket with a bunch of groceries. She is blissfully unaware of the dead walking again, which proves to be her undoing. At once a sympathetic character, she drops everything to help the woman she finds on the ground, and also a monster as the episode reaches its predefined conclusion, for a small role it's actually slightly on the demanding side. Danielle Burgio is across the requirements and treats the two aspects of her role with equal determination.

Excellent episode that undermines exactly what you need to acheive with this format

For the first time in this series I believe they have got the running time exactly right, we're looking at a single slice of the whole story that has a defined start and conclusion. The whole purpose of Domestic Violence was to answer the vex question of the identity of the rolled up rug occupant and we now know. However Director John Esposito has one more arrow in his arsenal and pulls off quite a neat trick. Andrew, in some distress, thinks he has a home invader of undetermined malice and immediately swings around and fires from the hip when he senses someone behind him. Gut shot zombie, the kicker here is Andrew is unaware that Judy has joined the ranks of the undead and is thus even more traumatised as he thinks he might have killed her. Clearly at this stage Andrew is yet to start making connections between what he is hearing on the emergency broadcasts and what is arriving at the crib. Now an interesting paradigm is being set up here, in the normal course of horror outings Andrew would now be dead man walking, no pun intended, as he has taken an action which can be deemed to be wrong. Horror in essence gives no second chances and generally doesn't take into account intent when dishing out punishment. For mine Andrew has signed his own death warrant, I would not want him on my zombie survival crew.

Okay interesting issue raised by this episode that has me somewhat confused on the zombie mythology in The Walking Dead. When Andrew is surprised by the undead Judy he unloads a gut fill of boom stick on her, and down she goes. Now clearly Judy is already a zombie, and through the television show we have seen zombies take a lot of punishment and keep on shambling, so why is Judy down for the count? She clearly goes into reload mode as Andrew wraps her in fabric, shouldn't she be all snappy? Send answer in today for a mention sometime down the track when we have a round table on Walking Dead goodness. Which actually reminds me of another question; how long after someone dies do they turn? This seems variable in this franchise but I'm not noting anyone asking the question like they did with the whole chest burster thing in AVP.

Final mention of the framed photos in the lounge room before we wrap. Director Greg Nicotero focuses on these representations of a happier time, and in a black humour moment shows a photo of Judy the family dog. The notable thing is of course that Andrew has just shot both of them, that's bringing it back home, Nicotero is one bad dude.

Domestic Violence is pretty much a perfect example of how to construct a webisode while keeping things tight. The plot line is clearly defined, the episode fits into the narrative, and we have something to be going forward with. I was pretty happy with this one and we're in the right zone for the second half of Torn Apart. Hunt it out folks, Walking Dead fans are right across it, you deserve to know what all the buzz is about. Besides which there's no new television episodes till Feb 2014, something has to fill the void.