Carol!
She wasn't with Daryl at the church after all, as implied (possibly) in the cliffhanger scene last week. She somehow ended up at Grady Memorial Hospital where Beth was "enslaved." That was the last moment of the episode. We don't know why she split off from Daryl. Hopefully we find out soon.
The rest of the hour was Beth at the hospital. (Rick & Co. take the week off.) At first, it seems like all is good. There's electricity! There's food! There's a doctor! There are cops in cop uniforms who look clean, like the world is still normal.
But Beth quickly figures out all is not well. Cop Gorman had fought off walkers and saved her life. Leader Dawn says in the opening scene: "You owe us."
Result: she becomes an indentured servant, helping however she can. She meets Noah, another servant who spends a lot of time doing laundry and ironing, it appears.
Beth learns bits and pieces from Noah, Dr. Steven Edwards and cop leader Dawn Lerner about life at Grady. Gorman, the man who saved her, is a creepazoid and wants to "do" her as payment. She sees they grow vegetables on the roof and eat guinea pigs. She learns Dawn is in control and picks and chooses who lives and dies. She watches Dr. Edwards drop dead folks down the elevator shaft to feed the walkers wandering the first floor.
Dawn tells her that they are simply awaiting folks to come save them, that they have created a semblance of a mini-society and are surviving. Noah tells her that when he came, they told him they could only keep him, not his friend. He figured out they saw him as weak, that he could be someone they could control easily. They see Beth that way, too: young, healthy but pliable.
She is not as pliable as they think.
Midway through, something odd happens. A man comes in that Dr. Edwards doesn't think is worth saving. Dawn says he should be saved. There is tension. For reasons I can't figure out, Dawn even slaps Beth.
Dr. Edwards later tells Beth to give medicine to the injured dude he didn't want to save. The man quickly has a seizure and dies. Noah covers for her and Dawn beats him. Dawn later admits to Beth that she knew Noah was lying but felt he had to be punished anyway to maintain order in her little world, where all shirts must be spotless and the floors clean.
Noah tells her they should escape. Beth agrees. He thinks Dawn has a key in her office. Beth goes in to look for the key. She finds Joan, one of the survivors who had earlier gotten bit and had her arm chopped off to save her, dead in the office. Joan had earlier tried to fight off creepy Gorman's entreaties and died as a result.
Beth finds the key but then Gorman enters and wants to "do" her then and there. She pretends to give in, then hits him in the head with a bottle. He falls, just as Joan turns. Joan bites Gorman and he's a goner. Beth grabs Gorman's gun.
This is just the right time for Noah and Beth to leave the scene. He had blankets tied up. She uses them to shimmy down the elevator shaft. He tries to as well, but a walker on a separate floor startles him and he falls into a pile of dead, eaten carcasses.
His leg is messed up but he is still mobile. Beth shoots a few walkers and they escape, only to see many many more outside. Beth keeps trying to fight them off and looks like a goner. But cops grab her just as Noah slips through a fence and gets away. Beth smiles as a couple of cops take her down.
Later, Dawn asks her why she did what she did. Why didn't she just stick around and be a good indentured servant?
Beth tells her nobody is coming. That there is no such hope. "We're all gonna die," Beth says. Dawn punches her... again.
Later, Dr. Edwards fixes her up with stitches from Dawn's punch to her forehead. By then, she had figured out what was going on. She realized the dude she had "accidentally" killed was also a doctor. Dr. Edwards had him killed. He was in a position of power as the only doctor in the house and having a second doctor around would make him more vulnerable to the likes of Gorman. So he purposely gave Beth the wrong meds to kill him.
Eat or be eaten works in all ways, shapes and forms, eh?
In the final scene, Beth is ready to kill... somebody... (Dr. Edwards?) but she sees Carol roll in. And we are on to next week, where the focus appears to be on Abraham's crew as they try to go to D.C. and save the world.
Observations
I do enjoy when the producers focus on other survivors, even at the expense of the lead characters. It's a risky story-telling technique but it does give us a new perspective on how humans are enduring in a crappy situation.
I'm surprised they used the name of an actual hospital in Atlanta, as opposed to a fictional name.
We never do find out how the hospital still has power. Presumably they have generators with a LOT of fuel.
We don't exactly know how folks enter and exit the premises but presumably, Noah and Beth were not allowed to go that way.
Downtown Atlanta looks pretty roughed up, thanks to the military, as told by Dr. Edwards.
Good to see Tyler James Williams ("Everybody Hates Chris") as Noah. Everybody may hate Chris but not you! Will we see him again? He was not in great shape there limping away with no weapons. But my guess is we will.
We have no idea what happened to Beth earlier and why she was even left by herself, being attacked by walkers. Who were her kidnappers? It's still unclear. But there's no doubt it's tied with Carol and Daryl chasing down the car that Daryl had seen last season taking Beth away.
Lines
"She saw us past it, kept us together, kept us alive." - Dr. Edwards, crediting Dawn.
"You call this living?" - Beth.
Creepiest moment
Gorman shoving that lollipop he had just sucked into Beth's mouth. Ewww...
Deaths
All those walkers on the first floor Beth shot, plus the one she slammed with her foot. The elevator shaft dead guy. Missing Arm Joan. The Other Doctor. And Creepy Gorman.
Talking Dead trivia
A non-functioning hospital in Newnan was used as Grady Hospital.
The painting Dr. Edwards found outside the High Museum is called "The Denial of Saint Peter" by Caravaggio. The scene was used to say, "Can anyone in a post-apocalyptic world even appreciate art?" He also uses Peter's dilemma in the Bible as part of his own dilemma when it comes to killing the other doctor to save himself.
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