The Walking Dead Series Blog – After

The Walking Dead returns after its whirlwind of a mid-season finale – and this episode slows down to a halt as it takes its title literally. Lots of walking.

We get two storylines this week, following Rick and Carl as a pair and Michonne. Both groups are searching for shelter and their missing members, and one side is, unsurprisingly, more interesting than the other. Michonne is left wandering alone at the prison, armed with two new walker pets; while she is seen effortlessly beheading walkers as she always has, we finally get to see some more of her human side when she has to shoot the decapitated head of Hershel, who has turned into a zombie. Her long-awaited backstory makes  a quick appearance in Michonne’s eerily lucid dream featuring her husband Mike, her son and a friend who transition pre-apocalypse normalcy to full out zombies with no arms. We learn that there is a possibility that her husband killed himself and their son in order for save themselves from the state the world was going into.

Meanwhile, Carl and a seriously injured Rick walk the streets trying to find food and shelter, but as usual, Carl tortures his father by walking ahead, disobeying order and acting recklessly. Carl’s cockiness and rebelliousness comes back to bite him, literally, when he nearly gets killed twice – but the show throws him a giant pot of chocolate pudding to cheer him up. The two reconcile at the end of the episode which hopefully signals that Carl is going to start maturing and listening to Rick. Thankfully we see Michonne spot them in the house they’ve taken shelter in and the episode ends with her smiling, knocking on their door.

It’s great that we’re finally out of the prison, since the show has a tendency to stay in one place for way too long. This was a slow episode and without Michonne it would’ve been a struggle to pay attention. Next week’s previews show different parts of the group and a lot more action, so the show may be back on track again.