The Walking Dead - "Beside the Dying Fire"

Season 2, Episode 13 

“This isn't a democracy anymore.” 

The basis of most of the complaints against The Walking Dead essentially boils down to how the characters talk too much and there's just not enough zombie killin'. By that logic, tonight's season finale, which seemed to be pretty much nothing but zombie killin', should have been a slam dunk, especially considering how adept the show has proven itself at staging zombie scenes in the past. However, something must have gotten lost in the translation of expanding those zombie attacks to a longer running time, because tonight's episode was actually sort of boring, despite all of the action that took place on screen.

Credit where's it due – tonight's season finale rarely got bogged down in the sort of needless conversations that have plagued this season's worst episodes. But I also believe that its was those conversations, which were so relentlessly dull, that helped to make those zombie attack scenes, which were often just as narratively pointless as the conversations, actually interesting. They've just seemed like better scenes because things were actually happening, not because of any sort of increase in narrative quality, and the fact that I'm just now realizing this points to just how powerful juxtaposition can be in terms of perceptions of quality.

To that end, I also have to give the show credit for how it handled the zombie scenes in tonight's episode, which were directed with the same panache as they always have been, and were able to generate action and tension that kept my eyes glued to the screen for no other reason than I was actually intrigued by what was going on. Most weeks, I have to force myself to keep watching during the more boring scenes of any given episode; tonight I didn't have that problem to such a high degree.

So then why do I come out against this episode as “boring”? For the simple fact that it didn't have the proper sense of stakes to make the scenes as palpable as the best ones of the show have been. This is best exemplified by the deaths of characters space-wasters Jimmy and Patricia, who the audience knows so little about that their deaths have practically no impact. Without any connection to these fictional people, I can't really say that I'm sad at their passing, and even if their deaths indicate that yes, a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland is dangerous, and on a level that the show hasn't always adequately expressed in the past, it also would have made the world feel even more dangerous if a more established character had died as well. Characters like, I dunno, Dale or Shane. Oh, wait...

It was this same lack of stakes that also hindered the non-zombie scenes of the episodes, scenes that I'm convinced could have worked had only the pacing been tweaked a little bit. Once the group escapes from the now-zombie-infested farm (minus Andrea, who I'll get to in a minute), there are several discussions that make sense given the circumstances, but which roll out way too quickly on top of one another to really work. While Carl acting like a little shit because Lori's not at the meeting spot on the highway, and then Rick and Herschel having the back-and-forth about whether it's better to go back and look for her or keep moving on should have been a solid debate on post-apocalyptic morality, it was ultimately cut short by the fact that it only a few minutes (of screentime anyway) for the rest of the group to roll up to same exact spot, thus cutting the debate short before it really had a chance to develop.

The same goes for Andrea, who's accidentally left behind on the farm (a good start), and who's fate the show teases could be similar to Sophia's when Rick purposely decides to leave her behind (an even better buildup), but who is then revealed after the commercial break to be doing just fine on her own, thank you very much. The show eventually gets to showing Andrea in trouble as her ammo runs out and she has to resort to hand-to-hand combat in order to survive, at which point her fate is thrown into question, but showing her successfully battling zombies, then cutting to the rest of the group, and then cutting back to her finally in actual peril isn't the best way to build tension. However, I do give that scene credit for closing on a shot of mysterious new character, who apparently has armless zombie slaves attached by chain to her body, an image so bug-nuts crazy as to be entertaining.

But that seems to have been The Walking Dead's MO for most of this season: put out a middling-to-adequate body of an episode, and then end with a cliffhanger that makes the audience want to keep watching. This appeared in the other section of the episode as well, as we saw the group grow increasingly upset with Rick's leadership in a very short amount of time, then have their frustrations believably escalated to higher degree when Rick reveals that he's known this whole time that every person, alive or dead, is in fact infected with the zombie virus, and thus it doesn't matter how they die, everybody will rise again.

Yet that wasn't the most powerful scene, mostly because it was so blindsiding in it's pacing as to lack proper dramatic weight. No, the real crackerjack of a scene came a few minutes later when Rick, fed up with everybody questioning him, goes off on a rant full of righteous anger, apoplectic at the fact that no one is grateful for him having helped (most of) them to survive as long as they have. Regardless of who was right and who was wrong in this argument, there's something dangerous to Rick now, who declares himself the unequivocal leader of the group based solely on a subjective sense of morality, and I hope this is something that the show explores next season.

However, great closing scenes don't make for great overall episode, and much like last year's season finale, this one felt a little underwhelming, especially considering that the three previous episodes had all been showing varying signs of improvement in terms of the show's storytelling abilities. To that end, “Beside the Dying Fire” felt like a episode that left a lot of budding tension off somewhere while it focused on the more superficial plot developments, and that left me feeling cold all over again.

Other Thoughts:

You probably thought I was going to talk about the compound that filled the last shot of this episode. The truth is, it just looks like yet another location for the show to place the group for a season with very little logic as to why, and thus I really can't be bothered at this point.

So this reveal about the rampant zombie virus explains why we shouldn't have worried when the characters stopped caring about coming into contact with zombie blood. I'd say “my bad”, but it doesn't stop the characters from looking any less stupid, considering they didn't know about the virus' properties until now.

Also, I want to say that there was a scene in the season one finale that hinted at Jenner telling Rick this secret, but I can't be positive, and it's bothering me because I can't tell exactly how blindsided we're supposed to be at this news when Rick reveals it. Can somebody confirm/deny this for me?

Also not helping my perception of the zombie virus reveal: The fact that it also got wrapped up in Rick revealing to Lori that he killed Shane, which led to her unbelievable reaction of anger, especially considering that she was the one pushing Rick to kill Shane in the first place. I applaud Chris Hardwick for calling Glen Mazarra and Robert Kirkman out on this fact during The Talking Dead, and I reject there pithy “she's pissed at herself” response. Lori's acting shitty because the show doesn't have a handle on her character, pure and simple.

But hey, that cold open with the helicopter leading the zombies to Herschel's farm was pretty cool, and hinted at some greater conspiracy that might actually result in some raised stakes for the show.