The Walking Dead Recap, 4×5: “Internment”

Hey, have you guys noticed that the last four episodes in a row started with the letter I? Infected, Isolation, Indifference, and now Internment. Clearly the writers are up to something, here.

Anyway, when last we left our… er, “heroes,” Rick and Carol were having a very boring conversation about the most intense subject ever, which ended with Carol leaving forever. The supply team found their meds, but Bob gave in to the monkey on his back and opted to pick up some alcohol instead, which pissed everyone off. Meanwhile, the walkers are probably going to knock the fence down this episode, and Hershel is being the best veterinarian ever. Also, if Glenn dies, I’m going to riot.

Rick is driving back to the prison. He’s feeling a lot of feelings. We can tell because of the very dramatic music, as well as the very dramatic shot of autumn leaves being turned up by his car, followed by a very dramatic close-up of his face and damaged hand and then an even more dramatic close-up of the watch Carol gave him. Clearly he is going through some stuff, and possibly even some things.

Then he passes a… walker? Very badly injured person? Getting eaten by a couple of dogs. Yeah, that’s right! Dogs. I don’t want to hear any more nonsense from anti-cat people about how if you die alone in your apartment with a bunch of cats, they will totally eat your corpse to survive. So will dogs. One isn’t better than the other, okay, guys?

Of course, Rick drives right past them. I’m sure we all feel more sad about the dogs getting left behind than we do a potentially alive mangled human being. Then we jump to–

UGH AWFUL CLOSE-UP OF COUGHING MOUTH. I’ll spare you the screenshot, don’t worry. Hershel is tending to the sick back at camp, and he’s still not covering his face. Jesus Christ, Hershel, I recoiled from that guy’s bloody cough and I am protected by the magic of television. You’re, like, actually in the show. You should really be taking better precautions.

Glenn and Sasha are helping Hershel inject the guy with something. I know nothing about medicine other than what I learn on TV dramas, but it looks like they’re trying to intubate him, because they’ve got one of those creepy throat-speculums and they’re trying to jam it down his windpipe. Eventually they calm him down enough for it to work. I think. I had to close my eyes. Walkers biting each others faces off or whatever is just fine and dandy but medical procedures? Nope. Shut it down.

“Some council meeting, huh?” Hershel says to lighten the mood. When Sasha points out that they’re missing new members, he continues,  “I think we should make some new rules before they get back. I hereby declare we have Spaghetti Tuesdays every Wednesday.” Never change, Hershel. He has Sasha take over the breath pump and takes Glenn with him on his rounds.

As they walk through the rest of the quarantined area, they find a guy already dead from bloody flu-face. Glen takes out a knife to finish the job but Hershel stops him, and instead grabs a stretcher from somewhere to wheel the dead guy out. Glenn points out that it’s going to be impossible to sneak Henry — Intubation guy? — out without being noticed. He also points out that he might die before Henry so his objections might be moot. NO, GLENN. You are not allowed to think like that. Hershel agrees with me, and they wheel the dead body out.

Except then Lizzie finds them. Aaagh, damn it, kid. Hershel puts on his best “Grinch trying to fool Cindy Loo Who” and tells her that Mr. Jacobson just needs a quieter place to rest up and that he’ll be back for Christmas Day or whatever. She’s probably not buying it, but he distracts him by sending her off to go read a book because “We’ve all got jobs to do,” and her job is apparently reading.

In the quieter place, Glenn’s about to stab their stolen Christmas tree in the head. He and Hershel talk just enough for Mr. Jacobson to rise from the dead — and I’m pretty sure Hershel might have read last rites, because he’s got a book open, too — and Glenn nabs him right between the eyes. Fun!

And then the title credits finally show up. Dear God, that was like a ten minute cold open.

Now we’re with Maggie as she meets her father in the glass-protected visitor’s center, where Carol and Lizzie spoke last episode. She immediately wants to know where Glenn is, and Hershel replies that he’s all tired out from being Hershel’s nurse for the day. Maggie wants to come in and help instead, but Hershel refuses, and then changes the subject by asking about Beth. She’s fine, but Hershel looks tired, Maggie says. He tells her he loves her and honestly? It’s the first time all season that I’ve really felt deeply connected to the relationships between these characters. See what good things can happen when you’re not constantly cutting back to Rick looking sad?

Hershel comes back and Glenn is there waiting for him. So he wasn’t resting after all — he just didn’t want Maggie to see him looking like hell because it would probably be that much harder to keep her out.  

Outside at the fence, Maggie is overcoming her frustration at the situation by stabbing a bunch of Walkers in the head. She hears a car pull up and goes running to the gate. It’s not the supply team, though. It’s Rick. God damn it Rick, you ruin everything!

Naturally the first words out of his mouth aren’t “Is the supply team back?” or “How is everything?” Instead it’s “CARL? JUDITH?” Which, to be fair, probably wouldn’t annoy me as much if it weren’t coming out of Rick. Maggie says they’re fine, and asks where Carol is. “GLENN?” Rick says, because he doesn’t want to talk about Carol. “HERSHEL? SASHA?” Yeah, they’re all fine except Daryl’s not back yet. Where’s Carol?

There’s an awkward silence. “It was her,” Rick says. “She killed Karen and David.” Wow, so he’s actually going to cop to what she did rather than just pretend that she got eaten by walkers or whatever. That I was not expecting. Rick continues to basically sum up the events of last week, and honestly? Watching Maggie’s reaction to the information is more interesting than that whole episode was. Girl’s got range, y’all. He ends by telling her to keep it a secret and she agrees, but doesn’t seem up to looking him in the eyes.

And then, of course, Rick can’t leave it alone. “Would you have brought her back?” He asks. No, Maggie says. He was right to send her away, even though she doesn’t think she’d have been able to. So get over it, Rick. We’ve got bigger things to worry abut, like how this clump of walkers is bigger than the one that took the fence down and something‘s gonna happen.

Rick goes searching for Carl and finds him — he hasn’t had to use his gun, he tells Rick, and Judith is with Beth. Carl thinks he’s probably not going to get sick at this point and wants to help, but Rick won’t let him. “You can’t keep me from it.” He says. From what? Rick asks dumbly. “From what always happens,” he replies.

In quarantine, Hershel checks up on Glenn, who’s pumping Henry’s air for him. Then he goes to help Doctor S (is Caleb his first name?), who’s refusing treatment. He knows enough about the virus to think he’s in the end stages of the disease, and decides that Hershel needs to focus on the people who can get better. He’s also pretty convinced that if Hershel tries to help him, those other people will get as bad as he is, and they’ll all die one-by-one, which is pretty grim. Hershel interrupts him to take a look at his face. Yeah, I hate to side with somebody who’s not Hershel here, but Caleb’s already got blood pouring out of his mouth and eyes. Might be best to move on.      

When we come back, Hershel is shutting everyone’s doors. One guy runs out of his cell, hits a wall, and collapses to the ground in a seizure. Hershel has to stab him in the head while everybody else watches. So that’s not great. He can’t do it and pleads with everyone to get back in their cells, until Sasha comes along with the stretcher.

The song playing in this scene, by the way, is “Oats in the Water” by Ben Howard. It’s no “El Paso” or anything, but it’s pretty great. Hershel covers the body up with a blanket before stabbing it — AND THEN RICK SHOWS UP. Because Hershel accidentally wheeled the body into the visitor’s area.

It’s only the third one they’ve lost, Hershel tells him. “I talked to him yesterday about Steinbeck. He told me a quote: ‘A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.’ That’s exactly why I didn’t want them all to see what happens. I know they know. But I didn’t want them to see it right now.” Aw, poor dude. This is his first sicky-stabbing and he’s anxiously trying to justify it to someone who totally gets what he’s doing. At least you’re waiting until after they’re pronounced to burn their bodies, man.

Rick says something boring about how Hershel’s inspiring people with his will to continue on and how he’s totally doing the right thing. Hershel still believes that “there’s a reason” and they talk very loosely about the idea of God without actually saying the G word. Then Rick finally tells him about Carol, which freaks Hershel a bunch.

Speaking of which, you know what else freaks Hershel out a bunch? Coming across Sasha passed out on the ground. NO, GIRL. NO DYING ALLOWED. She’s not bleeding out of her face so there’s still a chance for her. The girl in the next cell that Hershel clearly saw covered in blood before going to help Sasha, not so much.

Back outside, Maggie and Rick are fortifying the fence with a bunch of logs they cut down earlier. They talk about Hershel and how Maggie really shouldn’t be going in there. To illustrate Rick’s point about this, he gets tripped by a walker and Maggie has to chop its arm off to free him. “See, aren’t you better off helping outside?” he says. She seems unconvinced, albeit pretty excited that she got to chop something’s arm off.

Sasha is waking up. Hershel’s got an IV in her — apparently she was just dehydrated. Meanwhile, Glenn is pretty sure he’s accidentally killed Henry. At least, he doesn’t have a pulse anymore. Glenn tries to perform CPR but it doesn’t work. He tries to call Hershel but gets seized by a bloody coughing fit. Stop it stop doing that there are 20 minutes left in this episode and you have to liiiiive NOOOO .  

Hershel continues to make his rounds in the exact opposite direction of the Walker girl, and there’s this really horrible forboding music and I would like the episode to stop now, please. Lizzie comes across Glenn wheezing over Henry’s corpse, which is opening its eyes. She calls out for Hershel louder than Glenn can. And then walker girl runs out, too. Aaaah things are happening!!

The walker girl overpowers Hershel immediately, and a bunch of the sick people rush out to help. One of them even has a gun for some reason. But of course that guy was lying about his friend “just sleeping” three seconds earlier, and his friend starts gnawing on his arm from behind him. Great job, guy. Meanwhile, Lizzie is slowly trying to lure Henry out away from Glenn. So now we’ve got three walkers. Everything sucks.

Well timed commercial break, and we come back to Rick because of course we do. He’s looking for Carl. They both heard gunshots, presumably from the quarantined area, so hopefully they’re gonna go save the day. Maggie heard the gunshots too and is freaked. Out. She tries to break the door down with her axe but instead she gets it caught in the door, and then the handle breaks.

Lizzie trips while leading Henry away because she’s not looking where she’s going. She’s also holding her book JUST by the back cover, which makes me unnaturally upset. Hershel runs over and throws Henry off the railing, then puts her and another kid in a cell while he goes to check in on Glenn. He does not look good, but he’s also not bleeding from the eyes yet, just the mouth, so he comes back around to find Caleb, who is also a walker. Hershel has to break Caleb’s arm and then stab him right in the face to get away.

Meanwhile, Carl and Rick are fortifying the outer fence? Apparently Carl’s taking over for Maggie while she goes to check out the prison gunshots. They’re not worried because they’re idiots they think Maggie would have gotten them if it were really bad — and to be fair, the fence needs to be better fortified, so they are doing an important job. But not well, because one of the wood pieces snaps while they’re working, and then another one does. It’s too much for them and they have to run.

They plan to back the bus up against the inner wall of the fence so it’ll hold in the morning. In the meantime, though, they’re gonna need all of the guns. Rick teaches Carl how to use what I think is an automatic rifle (I know as much about guns as I do about medical procedures) as they run back to the inner fence, which the zombies have already knocked down, and start letting the bullets fly. I’ll be honest, it’s kind of badass. They’re tossing each other magazines and shooting walkers in the head and I could basically watch this all day.

Inside the quarantine, Hershel leads some of the walkers from the little kids by tapping his rifle against the bars of one of the cells. Maggie’s still trying to get in, so she fires a bullet into the glass of the visiting area and leaps over the window. Hershel’s pretty much already got his walkers taken care of at that point, though, so he comes back to Glenn and remembers that they’ve still got that intubator. Except it’s stuck inside Henry. “Son of a bitch,” Hershel says.

Then Maggie sees Hershel with Henry.  Hershel tells her not to shoot the intubator bag, because they need it to save Glenn. So she shoots him in the head instead. Ugh, and now they’re going to put that bag into Glenn? Gross. She goes up to try to clear his airway until Hershel gets there with the intubator, and they do this thing all over again. Two close-up intubations in one episode? Guys, what are you trying to do to me here.

At least Glenn objectively understands what’s happening to him, and gives over much more quickly. It’s done in a couple of seconds, and Maggie and Hershel are left to talk about what she’s doing in here. Lizzie comes back as well, because nobody wants to listen to Hershel today. She decides to use her foot to play with the blood and gross on the floor. I’m worried about this child.

Carl and Rick have successfully defended the fence and are stabbing the last of the walkers. And then–

THE SUPPLY TEAM IS BACK!

They immediately run in and give Hershel the meds. Maggie tells him to go rest now that they’ve got more people to help out. Instead he goes over to Caleb’s stabbed head and closes his eyes as “Oats in the Water” plays again. He opens his book back up again, and we see more more clearly that it’s definitely a bible. But then he closes it back up and breaks down crying. Poor Hershel. I think we might have just watched him lose his faith right there.

One last scene before the end of the episode — it’s morning. Rick splashes his face with water just like he did in the season opener, but it’s not the idyllic scene it was back then. Michonne is piling dead bodies on the back of a truck to drag back out beyond the fence. Glenn made it through the night and is breathing on his own again, Hershel tells Tyreese. Daryl and his magic dick call Hershel a “touch sunnova bitch.” “I am,” Hershel says.  But then Daryl asks about Carol. Uh oh. You talk to Rick ’bout that shit, Hershel tells him. Then he asks Michonne if he can tag along and gets in the passenger seat of her body truck, and they drive off into the metaphorical sunset like the badasses they are.

But wait! All is not resolved!

If this were the type of show to use the “dun dun DUN,” that would go here.

The next episode does not have an I at the beginning of its title, so I’m going to go ahead and guess that they were using this naming device to mark the episodes that dealt with the prison sickness. Now that they’ve got the medicine they need, it’s safe to say that this storyline’s been resolved and we can move on to more Governer-related madness. The fact that they were looking to wrap it up definitely worked in this episode’s favor, however. My own issues with intubation grossness aside, it was a lot more compelling than anything else we’ve seen this season. It would be great if they continued on with this momentum, but we’ll see.

 Meanwhile in related links

• If only Clementine were a character on the show, too
• Check out the 20 minute short documentary, A Decade of Dead
• Screen Junkies give The Walking Dead an honest trailer

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