The episode begins with Rick and Shane sitting in their cop car discussing their romantic woes. It’s immediately apparent that these are two guys that have a history and are definitely comfortable working as partners and friends. Shit goes south and Rick wakes up in an abandoned hospital and is greeted by a town overrun with flesh hungry zombies and begins his search for his wife Lori and his son. Rick encounters a man and his son that mistake him for a zombie at first and smash him in the head with a frying pan. When he awakens, they nurse him back to health and fill his belly with some warm food. To repay them he takes them to the Sheriff Station where they all have their first shower in over a month and stock up on weapons. The man and his son head out in the opposite direction of Rick and I assume they will not be returning to the series.
While the story of The Walking Dead is nothing revolutionary, it succeeds in its ability to humanize the zombies and generally make the viewers feel sorry for them and view them as human beings and not brainless shambling husks.
The Walking Dead is full of heart and tugs at the viewers’ heart strings while presenting a world gone bad, a world filled with horror. The scene where Rick apologizes to a legless, crawling zombie before mercy killing it by saying “I’m sorry this happened to you” really resonated with me. As did the scene with Morgan looking through the scope of his rifle, spotting his zombified wife, shambling towards the house with a blank gaze on her face. Wiping away tears, trembling, he sights her in and prepares to put her out of her misery. He knows she’s a zombie, and she deserves to be mercy killed, yet he cannot pull the trigger. Another scene briefly shows a caravan filled with survivors at a camp. Among these survivors are Rick’s old partner Shane, his wife Lori and their son. Shane and Lori get into an argument and it becomes known that they are having a relationship here, which raised my only question of the episode: Why did Lori & Shane leave Rick alone in the hospital and start a relationship? These are scenes I walked away from the show remembering and loving.
It was a powerful episode and had me hooked after one viewing. The Walking Dead is an absolute powerhouse of writing and casting. I felt every character in the episode was an accurate lifelike representation of the comic book characters I have read and loved previously. I look forward to the next episodes and can’t wait to see where this baby is going to go. This is a series that is going the distance.
