The Walking Dead - S04E09 After (2014)

Review

Following the fall of the prison Rick and Carl have hit the road, with Rick in rough shape after his final confrontation with the psychotic Governor. They eventually come across a small town and hunker down in an abandoned house. Rick pretty soon goes into a comatose state as his wounds take there toil and Carl is left to rally against his Dad and some decisions the younger Grimes doesn't agree with. After some encounters with the undead Carl does manage to find a huge can of chocolate desert and makes a pig of himself.

Michonne is also trying to cope with going solo after things go pear shaped. She recruits a couple of the walking dead to provide some camouflage out in the wilderness and sets about finding some company. Following some tracks she soon comes across evidence that others have survived the prison battle and determines that she will find them. Are we going to experience happy reunions or will things take an even worse path?

After the all-out carnage of last week this time round we get more of a character driven episode with some action thrown in to keep us rocking. The episode focuses on Carl coming to terms with his father not being infallible, a requirement of becoming an adult, but as we should have expected this does involve a lot of teenage angst and a touch of rebellion. Carl needed to come to terms with the situation in his own way, and just so happens to realise that Dad might actually have a few ideas as to what to do in order to survive, all about the conserving ammunition for when it is really needed. Not bad for a show that most people simply view as being all about the walking dead. Okay I'll reiterate the statement we make at least once every few months, zombie outings are about the survivors, not so much about the flesh eaters.

Carl isn't the only one that needs to come to terms with current events

Meanwhile Michonne is going solo and we pick up her story right after she delivered the coup de grace to the Governor. One of my favourite characters pleased to see she is back swinging the katana like the bad arse she is. With no one to talk to, besides a couple of the dead she does the Michonne thing with, our girl has time to reflect on her life prior to the apocalypse. Seems she lost a husband and a young son to the walking dead onslaught and this is dragging her down. Naturally she is resilient and has her own private agenda to link up with other survivors.

While the episode might have introspection on high there is still some time for action and walking dead encounters. Carl discovers that he might not quite have things totally under control when it comes to dealing with walkers, and gosh darn it loses a sneaker while trying to escape a persistent member of the undead ranks. Equally Michonne gets to demonstrate her abilities with her blade on a mass of the undead ranks. Which is kind of an interesting scene considering she is almost in a daze till she notes a walker that resembles herself, which of course brings Michonne back to the land of the living and blade swinging.

The episode throws up one heck of an interesting scene for those of us who are purists about our horror. It's night, Carl has been raging on his unconscious dad, and with the room in darkness Rick sort of comes to in a distinctly undead fashion, yeah I also thought "holy fook they killed of Rick Grimes", won't give away the spoilers kids but it's a well-constructed scene that had me noting that ring of crystal. In case you missed it or haven't seen the episode yet, what you Holidaying in Outer Mongolia, it also makes another statement about Carl who realises he can't kill his old man.

Carl might have grown in my estimation over the last couple of seasons, he does what the adults can't do, but he still has a lot to learn. While Rick is out of it a couple of the walking dead come knocking, attracted by noise, Carl leads them away, so far so good the dude is completely in control. However while backing the dead up he runs into yet another member of the flesh eater brigade which indirectly leads to him falling over his own feet like a chick in a slasher flick. Situation awareness is not yet big for the teen, nor is conserving his ammunition in case he might really need it at a future date.

What the episode does do for the franchise is hit the reset button and clear some of the clutter from the first half of the season that threatened us with too many characters and a whole lot of dramatic overhead to keep track with. For sure there are going to be a bunch of other prison survivors out in the wilderness, and I would imagine there is going to be a gradual drawing together of the remnants but I am hoping they don't have like a zillion survivors for us to try and work out who's who. But fingers crossed we are going to be left with a half dozen or so characters, and some more brutal episodes to, uhmm, sink our teeth into.

There's a real difference between Commonwealth television and the U.S product, hey I'm a fan of a lot of U.S horror shows, but think the idea of splitting a season into two parts really doesn't work for our audiences. Over the last few years the venerable Doctor Who has been steadily losing market share and besides some weak episodes there is also the loss of steam during the mid-season break the show has inherited from North America. Must admit, huge fan of the Doctor and all, but generally by the resumption after the break I have moved onto greener pastures. This is only exasperated by U.S shows that build to a mid-season climax, which looks like a season ending show, and then have to retake the reins with new content during the second half of hostilities. Hence why I hang out for the disc release of shows and LFGP the entire seasons rather than making the weekly pilgrimage.

[Ed's Note: LFGP = Little Fat Guts Pig, greedily gobbling down something]

While last week's episode was all action and excellent this week's episode was more personal drama and excellent, proving that The Walking Dead can fulfil a heck of a lot of functions for the viewer. There might be some haters out there, and for sure some of those haters have legitimate grips, but there are also a whole bunch leaping on the "it's now fashionable to hate The Walking Dead" bandwagon, for those people it's episodes like this one that show how narrow minded they can be. Decent television is hard to find on the idiot box, The Walking Dead is providing that content on almost a weekly basis, with of course the occasional miss shot. Full recommendation on After kids, this is great television and for sure I'm real excited to be covering the franchise and looking forward to what dark delights might be awaiting us now that we have hit the second half of the season, the haters can go get a woolly rat up them, this one's a keeper for horror fans.