Episode Title: “Alone”
Writer: Curtis Gwinn
Director: Ernest Dickerson
Previously on “The Walking Dead”:
I have a feeling that if last week’s episode, “Still” had been combined with “Alone” then it would have been a great episode of “The Walking Dead.” But on their own, we had one lackluster episode and one pretty good episode.
“Alone” is easily the superior of the two episodes simply by keeping a tight focus on two groups of characters while delivering some much needed development for a few of the supporting players.
Bob (Lawrence Gilliard, Jr.) turns out to be the biggest recipient of backstory and characterization in this installment. Although Bob isn’t involved in the episode’s climactic action sequence, he is the glue that holds Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) together. However, the opening moments take us back a few months when Bob was at his lowest ebb. At that point, Bob was on his own and just looking for a place to safely get drunk when Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Glenn (Steven Yeun) found him. Bob had reasonable answers to their three questions, but he didn’t particularly care where he was going.
In the present, Bob has every excuse to sink back into depression. However, the presence of Sasha and Maggie seems to have lifted Bob into an optimistic state of mind. It’s a sharp turnaround for Bob, but it went a long way towards making him more likable.
There are full spoilers ahead for “Alone,” so if you missed last night’s episode of “The Walking Dead’ then you should probably skip this review or else Beth will drive off without you.
“The Walking Dead” special effects team deserves recognition for the zombie fight in the fog near the beginning of the episode. It felt like a fresh way to depict a walker battle on this series and it seemed like a legitimately dangerous situation.
After a close call for Bob, Sasha is more determined than ever to call off the search for Glenn even if Maggie wants to go off on her own. When Maggie essentially takes the hint, Sasha is almost relieved to have avoided the argument… until Bob insists upon catching up with Maggie.
On the surface of it, Bob has better reasons to stick with Sasha than with Maggie. Sasha is emotionally available and romantically attracted to Bob while Maggie is another man’s wife. But Bob isn’t going after Maggie because he wants a relationship with her. It’s just the right thing for him to do even if he has to leave Sasha behind.
This could have badly backfired on Sasha. While Sasha’s suspicions about the sanctuary known as Terminus should probably be heeded, her reluctance to even hold out hope for her brother Tyreese was harder to understand. Even if Tyreese was dead, Sasha’s best bet was to stay with Bob and Maggie.
That character turn was almost redeemed when we see Sasha in her newly secure building… and she’s emotionally devastated by her newfound solitude. Then Sasha had a chance for an actual redemption when she spotted Maggie and teamed up with her against another horde of zombies.
Maggie and Sasha reconcile before catching up with Bob. And in just this episode alone, that trio seemed like stronger characters after their interactions here. That was probably the point of separating the characters into smaller groups after the fall of the prison. But it didn’t work out quite as well for Daryl and Beth (Emily Kinney) last week.
This week, Daryl and Beth had a better storyline to support their bonding moments. While Daryl attempts to teach Beth how to track a walker, her foot is caught in an animal trap. After Daryl frees Beth, they take sanctuary in a funeral home that’s suspiciously well stocked and maintained. Yet nobody’s home.
I like that we never meet the person who was living in the funeral home before Daryl and Beth arrived. Although if said person is still alive, they’d probably be pissed to find out that someone raided their food supplies and let zombies into the house.
Perhaps one of the reasons that Daryl and Beth had a much more compelling connection in this episode is that the tension of the previous episode wasn’t hanging over their heads. That’s a valid choice, but I still feel that last week’s episode had the least forward momentum since the second season when everybody was stuck on the damn farm.
Beth’s optimistic outlook finally gets through to Daryl and he floats the idea of waiting for the funeral home squatter to return to see if they can all live together. Of course, moments later Daryl makes the boneheaded move of opening the front door without seeing if there were any zombies on the other side. And thus, their sanctuary was lost.
I have a theory about that. I think that the person living in the funeral home realized that there were people inside and he (or she) set up the walkers at the front door to clear out the building again. It got Daryl and Beth outside in a hurry, but now there are a lot more walkers inside.
Beth’s disappearance may be significant, as I believe she was taken against her will. She wouldn’t have abandoned Daryl or dropped her bag so easily. Someone had to have taken Beth and that has the potential to be very ugly and very dangerous for her to deal with.
The one thing that we know for certain is that Beth wasn’t taken by the same group of thugs that invaded the house where Rick (Andrew Lincoln) was staying. That’s because the very same group catches up with Daryl after he stops to rest and despair about losing Beth. Their leader, Joe (Jeff Kober) seems to be impressed by Daryl, but that’s probably a dangerous situation for Daryl as well. Keep in mind that one of these psychos choked out his own man over a bed. And that was someone that he knew. So Daryl needs to watch his back here.
While “Alone” only took a few minor steps towards reuniting the prison survivors at Terminus, its character moments were more rewarding and it felt like a step in the right direction. If the survivors don’t start reuniting before the finale then the second half of this season will be like the second coming of the farm. But “Alone” gives me some hope for the three remaining episodes of the season.
