After the Governor's kamikaze attack on the prison in the last episode of "The Walking Dead" that aired two months ago, he has left Rick's crew in disarray. (If that was his ultimate revenge, he succeeded.)
The prison group has scattered into splinter groups. Some of the groups are rather small. For this episode dubbed "After," we only see two: Michonne, alone, and Rick and his son Carl.
The episode features some great emotional grace notes (mostly on Michonne's side) and a few annoying Carl moments that makes you almost wish Lori was back around to weakly yell at him for his youthful indiscretions.
Carl, played by Atlantan Chandler Riggs, gets his meatiest episode to date, spending a good portion of it by himself. I can't say that's a good thing. His character is approaching those petulant teen years. And he makes some serious mistakes that needlessly endangers himself.
Rick is in pretty bad shape after getting beat up by the Governor. His breathing is heavy. He's limping. His face is scrambled. Carl walks ahead of him with a look of disgust.
There's a certain tediousness when it comes to Carl and Rick entering what they think may be an empty building or home but probably has a zombie or two in it. First, they enter a barbecue shack. Carl is clearly peeved at Rick but isn't saying why. When a zombie approaches them, Rick tries to kill him with an ax. The ax gets stuck in the zombie's skull. Rick is weak. So Carl just shoots the zombie. Rick tells him not to waste bullets. Carl grimaces.
They find a home that appears empty. They hole up. Rick lays down to rest. The next morning, Carl eats breakfast with cereal found at the restaurant. He reads a book. He's bored. He tries to wake Rick, who is so zonked, he's literally knocked out. "Wake up!" Carl yells at him angrily. Two walkers arrive at the door, curious about the noise inside.
Carl exits from the side of the home and lures the walkers away from the house. He is walking backwards, a tactic he should have learned is stupid on this show because inevitably, a third walker pops up and endangers Carl. He ends up having to shoot all three of them. Each falls on top of him. That was a close one - and for no good reason. But Carl puts on his arrogant facade and pronounces, "I win."
He returns to the house and starts talking to Rick, who is still unconscious. He twists the story to say he saved his dad from three walkers. Then he gets to the heart of the matter of why he is acting so angry. He starts blaming Rick for the disaster that had ensued with the Governor.
"While we were playing farmer, I didn't forget," he said. "I still know how to survive. Lucky for us!"
Then he gets tougher: "I don't need you anymore. I don't need you to protect me... You couldn't protect Judith [presumed dead.] You couldn't protect Herschel [definitely dead]. Or Glenn. Or Maggie. Or Michonne. Or Daryl. [all alive, we assume.]. Or Mom. You just wanted to plant vegetables. You just wanted to hide. He knew where you wereYou didn't care. You waited. You hid behind the fence. They're all gone now. Because of you!'
"They counted on you! You were their leader!" he vented.
"But now -- you're nothing."
"I'll be fine if you're dead," he concluded, something you know he doesn't mean.
So he goes off and fishes around for more food. He enters yet another home. (Their yards sure are kept up well considering...)
He confronts a zombie and does a piss poor job handling it. He wastes more bullets. It almost gets him, instead grabbing his shoe. He closes the door on the sucker and writes a note on the door saying it got his shoe but not him. But again, he close to being bit - way too close. He then sits on the roof and eats 112 ounces of found chocolate pudding.
He returns to his dad. The facade of invincibility is gone.
After two near-death experiences, Carl realizes he can't go it alone. He isn't equipped.
Carl is so defeated that when he sees Rick come back to life - but possibly as a zombie - he can't shoot his dad. "I can't," he says. "I was wrong." Instead, he decides to just let Rick bite him if he has to.
But the writers aren't going to kill off Andrew Lincoln and take Chandler with him! Rick is alive after all!
"Carl," Rick says. "Go outside. Stay safe."
Carl reveals his true feelings: "I'm scared. I'm scared."
But he goes back to his lying ways once Rick feels better and tells him that when he went out, "I was careful." (You call that careful?)
Then it's Rick's turn to be vulnerable.
"I know we'll never get things back to the way they used to be," Rick admits. "I only clung to that for you and Judith. Now she's... gone. And you? You're a man, Carl. You're a man. I'm sorry."
"You don't need to be," Carl responds. The magic of forgiveness!
Meanwhile, Michonne thinks she's by herself moments after killing the Governor in the chest. She puts Hershel's head out of its misery, which is now zombified. Then she creates two more armless, jawless zombie buddies to keep the other zombies away.
Overnight, she dreams of life before the apocalypse, with her boyfriend and presumably someone she's related to. (Her brother?). They are in a Midtown loft talking about nothing in particular, then suddenly they too are armless. Nightmare alert!
She ends up aimlessly walking with a horde of zombies. She is emotionally bereft, then sees a zombie that looks kind of like her, with dreads and all. It freaks her out. Out of nowhere, she decides to chop the head off her zombie doppelganger. Then she starts slicing the heads off every zombie around her (about 15 in all), even the two armless buddies she keeps around for protection. She kills them all.
At the bbq shack where Rick and Carl had been, she talks a bit to herself about how her own boyfriend and son didn't make it, how she ended up being by herself. "Mike? I miss you," she said. "I missed you even when I was with you. Back at the camp, it wasn't you who did it... You were wrong because I'm still you. And you could be too. And he could be." She cries. [We don't quite know what she's talking about but we know something went awfully wrong before she met up with Andrea at the end of season two.]
She starts following footsteps she thinks are those of Rick and Carl. She is guessing but she eventually ends up at the home where Rick and Carl are holed up.
She smiles and laughs in relief - connection! She knocks. Rick peeks through the peephole and sees her and smiles himself. "It's for you," he tells Carl.
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