Down With The Sickness [The Walking Dead Dissection]
Posted by Justin on March 19th, 2012
A season comes to a close with the cast a little lighter, many bullets fired and a few lessons learned.
This might not be a democracy but it is the final Dissection of the year so you might as well click through a read it.
Zombies!
Kirkman’s first rule of zombie physics: a horde in motion tends to stay in motion. The pack o’ walkers that descended on the farm at the end of last week’s episode hit early and often.
The one element of this series that hasn’t suffered in this extremely uneven season as been the action beats. Even when the storytelling in lacking, the runnin’ and shootin’ sequences have always felt tight and suspenseful. Since this dominates a full half of the episode this week, there is really little to criticize.
Sure, some of the rules seem a little fuzzy to me. If it’s feasible for the group to hide in cars on the highway while a horde staggers by, why couldn’t they just turn off the lights and stay in the house? Daryl dismisses this by saying that the walkers would just tear through the house. But I think that’s just because he saw the intro where the pack of zombies breaks through a wooden barricade.
Anywho… it doesn’t really matter if their choices are dumb or not. You can chalk it up to panic and the fact that Rick isn’t there to lend is steady hand since he’s trapped between the house and a hard place with Carl.
We get what we came for. Wholesale zombie slaughter.
T-Dog
So T-Dog escapes with Lori and The Youngest Daughter Who Tried To Commit Suicide In That One Episode. He says it’s pointless to look for them and they have to hit the coast. Lori, who is now without her husband and son protests and demands he either turn around or let her out.
Which is when it hits me, has ANYONE EVER ASKED WHAT T-DOG’S REAL NAME IS? Seriously? What if this entire time he’s been waiting for someone to bring it up. And what would his reasoning be for keeping it a secret? Is it embarrassing?
Okay, while trying to find a good T-Dog picture I am reminded that T-Dog’s real name is Theodore and he reveled it in the episode Bloodletting this season.
Bottom line, if you want to nab two chicks and take them hundreds of miles away from their families, you better have a more familiar name than T-Dog.
Reunion
I can’t be the only one who had the slow “we found each other” theme from Lost playing in his head as all the cars pulled into frame.
Infection!
We get the “big” reveal which has been teased since the final episode of last season. We are all infected. More specifically, you don’t have to get bitten to turn into a zombie.
It’s obvious that Kirkman is very proud of this and he should be. It’s easily his biggest original contribution to the zombie genre. A defining element of this franchise.
But that being said, I am not really sure this piece of information warranted the kind of build up it got.
It really doesn’t matter to our characters. No one is particularly worried about dying of natural causes. Murder is always going to be a sticky issue everyone has opinions on. So, really, what’s the big deal about the infection? How does it really affect the plot or the motivations of the survivors?
As much as I despise the BUT IN THE COMICS! arguments, I thought the revelation of suicide turned zombie was a pretty brilliant way to illustrate this.

A Stranger In The Woods
Andrea gets separated from the group and stranded in the woods. Low on ammo and down to her last breath, a walker twice her size falls on her and it looks like curtains. Until the swipe of a kitana launches the zombie’s head into the air. We see a cloaked figure holding chains connected to a pair of armless walkers.
Those who read the comic know it’s Michonne, a weaponized woman who has found her own, shall we say unique, way through the apocalypse.
We don’t see her face because up until right after the show, there was no announcement on casting. Creator and Executive Producer Robert Kirkman revealed on the Talking Dead that she will be played by Danai Gurira. As with most of the casting, she looks quite a bit like her comic alter ego. Apparently she’s on HBO’s Treme, any viewers of that show can chime in on if she’d particularly suited for this role.
I’m interested to see how she mixes into the show. Her addition, along with The Governor represent a larger than life element to what has been more of a human drama this season.
But… there is just something nagging at me about this… it probably has something to do with the other reveal…
Hard Times Ahead
The final shot of season two is a slow revelation of a prison.
This foreshadows our survivors next home as foretold in the source material.
Here is my thing: if you never read the books, which 95% of all the viewers have not, what does this shot mean to you?
It’s not particularly visible. Rick and company don’t take refuge in it. It’s just a dark prison. At least Michonne is an interesting (and at this point ambiguous) physical specimen and intersects with a main character by the end.
I just wonder what the expected reaction is.
In Summation
Once I have a little more time to think about this season I’ll do a recap/look ahead. In the meanwhile, the show continued a trend of strong episodes that almost made me forget how frustrated I once was with this series.
Almost.