This week’s The Walking Dead entitled Infected showed the group in jeopardy within the prison from new enemies.
The Breakdown
A surprise at the very beginning of the episode was one that only viewers know about. The scene showed us the walkers around the gate and someone we could not see with a small light in the dark feeding rats to the walkers.
On last week’s episode, Patrick died suddenly and turned into a walker as the episode ended. This week’s episode Infected picked right up with Patrick as he made his way down the cell block and feasted on another newcomer. The newcomer turned as well and from there it spread. The walkers were feasting and the newcomers were their meals.
Soon the rest of the group found out they had walkers in the prison and in a very explosive part of the episode the walkers were taken down. Rick finally found his way back mentally and was able to assist in killing the walkers with the group.
After a short meeting, the group was able to figure out that it started with Patrick and his flu-like illness. What was the illness? No one knew but what they did know was that they were all exposed to some sort of infection that killed rapidly. They decided that they needed to stay away from the rest of the group that was not in the cell block near those with the sickness.
One of the bitten newcomers was a single father with two young girls. The man said good-bye to his daughters before he turned. Carol was there to look after the girls for their father and encouraged the older one to take her father’s life. The girl could not do it, so Carol was the one to stab him before he turned.
After that, Carol spent time with the two girls talking about the walkers and being strong enough – mentally – to be able to defend themselves against the walkers if needed. Carol seemed to be carrying out her promise to the man to look after his daughters.
Michonne had an unexpected moment with Beth and baby Judith. The baby began to cry loudly as the three were in a cell together. This seemed to really aggravate Michonne, so Beth took her out of the cell but soon returned. She asked Michonne to hold Judith. Michonne refused but was handed the baby anyway. After a moment Michonne began to squeeze the baby affectionately while crying. Beth saw this and left the two alone.
When many of the group were outside, Maggie frantically called them over to the part of the fence where the walkers were about to break through. There were so many that they were weighing the fence down, almost to the ground, and the posts were not holding. The group worked to take out the walkers around the fence and then noticed the rats, or rat parts, lying on the ground in that specific area.
In an attempt to draw the walkers away from the fence, Rick used sick piglets as bait. Daryl drove the truck pulling a trailer behind while Rick threw the piglets to the walkers. Rick was obviously back in form, BUT had a hard time with this task.
In the midst of the chaos was a short-lived love story between two newcomers; Tyreese and Karen. Unfortunately for them both, Karen became ill and was kept away from the others. Everyone assumed she had the flu-like sickness that killed Patrick.
Carl ended up telling Rick about Carol’s knife lessons during story time, even though Carol asked him not to say anything. Rick said he would not stop her.
At the end, Rick talked to Carl and returned his gun to him while he was in the middle of burning down the pig barn due to the infection. Later Tyreese went to check on Karen and only found a trail of blood. The trail let outside where he found her burnt body along with one other.
The Analysis
Infected was a great episode of The Walking Dead. Again, there were a lot of moving parts, but the stories came together as usual.
Who is the one feeding the rats to the walkers? No one knows yet, but that should make things pretty interesting as the story progresses. I think it is obvious that it’s a newcomer, but whom? And, why?!
The story line with Tyreese and Karen was a little perplexing at first, but seeing her burned body at the end led us to know why we were watching that love story to begin with. Who burned her body along with the other next to her? I am pretty sure that I know, do you?
It was good to see Rick back in action and taking out walkers instead of cucumbers. I think we knew that he would get back on track; it was just a matter of time. He was still emotional though as we saw him struggling in the scene with the piglets. (That was a hard one for me as well.) This scene really showed us, in more than just the obvious, Rick’s internal struggle as well.
Onto the illness…I have a few thoughts on how and where it is coming from, but I will hold off on the details for now to see if I am right. I think they worked this into the story perfectly, especially since there was hesitation on taking in all of those newcomers. Did one of them bring an infection into the prison? Or, is it coming from somewhere else?
I think that this season of The Walking Dead is definitely off to a good start. Last week’s premiere led us right into another action-packed, emotion-packed, walker-packed episode. I bet that next week’s episode really heats up!
