THE WALKING DEAD: Harvey And Adair Are STILL Here…

Season 4, Episode 12 “Still”

DUSTIN: It’s Thursday.

TIMOTHY: Yes. I know.

DUSTIN: We watched the Oscars instead of The Walking Dead.

TIMOTHY: Yes. I know. I was there.

Sooo….

So… what?

Do we really have to do this?

Yes, yes we do. It’s our duty to tell the people what happened.

BUT IT’S THURSDAY!!

And this probably won’t be published until Saturday, so not seeing your point.

((sigh)) Fine.

Ahh… Dustin?

Yes?

That is a GIF of a puppy falling asleep.

Isn’t it cute?

…

Fine.

Shot in the line of duty, Cynthiana, Kentucky police officer Rick Grimes wakes from a coma in the hospital to find his town overrun with walking corpses, referred as ‘walkers’. In this world, the walking dead –

Stop.

What?

That is the Wikipedia entry. For the comic book.

Grrr….

Write something real please.

Okay…. hey, is it just us? I don’t see Anne-Marie or Curtis around.

They watched the Oscars with us, sort of defeating the whole “live-tweet” thing, so it’s just you and me talking about AMC’s The Walking Dead, with SPOILERS and the usual questionable behavior. And you’re stalling. Get on with it.

So Beth and Daryl are a’runnin’ from the walkers, they find a car and jump in the trunk for a sleepless night of watching the hatch as walkers and a storm rage by.

Wait… no predictions this week?

Tim, I read the tv.com recap of the episode on Monday, don’t you think predictions at this point would be inauthentic?

… carry on.

AS I WAS SAYING… I love when this show begins with long scenes of no dialog.

Ok, wait a minute. So, why did the walkers leave them alone here? I mean, Michonne and Rick and several other of our guys here have covered themselves with zombie parts to make the walkers leave them alone, so it’s got to be a smell thing, right? Which wouldn’t be wiped out by hiding in the trunk…

In the morning, Beth and Daryl gather useful stuff from the wrecked car before heading on down the road. I wonder why they haven’t found their way back to the train tracks yet?

Hmmm.

Daryl is losing his touch, he misses a squirrel and breaks one of his crossbow darts. Meanwhile, Beth uses SCIENCE and a hole in the ground to start a fire. They prepare their forest camp and Daryl eats a rattlesnake in the grossest way possible.

I’m surprised we haven’t seen him break more bolts actually, and I was wondering what the broken glass was for, so pretty slick Beth.

I could watch these two sit around and not talk to each other all day.

Beth wants a drink. She has never had a drink, of course, because Hershel was a teetotaler and then all the zombies happened. She has decided it’s about time she starts.

Well, she has had a rough go of it lately. I could see needing a drink at this point.

You know, I am still not 100% sure how old Beth is supposed to be? I want to say… 16? But that just doesn’t seem right, so I’m going to go with 19. But it could be 13 and I wouldn’t be surprised.

She does have one of those faces… thinking 19 might be a touch old, so 17? 18? We’ve never actually had an age for her, have we?

Daryl does not answer, so Beth heads out by herself. This is going to the be the best beer run ever.

Oh, right, walkers.

Always has to be something.

Beth hides behind a tree and distracts the walkers by throwing a rock… because that has always worked so well… but then it does. All-righty.

So… let’s review. This season we’ve seen fire suddenly be an attraction for the walkers, rocks being effective distractions and the walkers sense of smell stop working. Errr… hmmm. OK. Hands of the writer. Sigh.

Turns out Daryl had been following her. Daryl takes her back to the camp so Beth basically freaks out and clues Daryl in on how terrible he has been. Turns out, she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life hiding in the woods eating snakes. She wants to spend the rest of her life hiding in the woods eating snakes and drinking alcohol, damn it!!

Well, Daryl has been in a bit of a funk lately, and the alcohol will make the snake go down easier, so I can see her argument here.

So out of the woods they go and … onto a golf course? This is going to be a very special beer run episode after all.

Oh look. Another place that is close enough to walk to that we’ve never seen before, even though Team Zombie had been at the prison for months. I think we just need to accept that they are kinda crap at this foraging-for-supply thing. Like really crap at it.

Walkers are a’comin’.

So Daryl and Beth break into the club house where they find the remnants of a camp. There are walkers all strung up in a corner which seems… counter intuitive. There looks to be a lot of good stuff lying around. Sleeping bags, lanterns, canteens… Beth steals a spoon that says Washington, DC and Daryl takes a bag full of cash.

I got the impression they were people who hung themselves, but that makes more sense than stringing them up… unless they are a warning of some kind? Wonder though, are these the original people from the club or folks who came to try and be safe there? Because there are too many windows and glass doors for my tastes for it to be safe.

The walkers arrive and Beth and Daryl head further into the club house.

Beth really needs some sleeves.

Beth is… looking for… wine. Really kid? Wine?

What, she should jump right to the hard stuff? It is a golf course though, one would think there would be more alcohol around…

Unfortunately for Beth, as soon as she finds a bottle she is attacked by a walker and has to use her wine bottle and her knife to bludgeon and stab the walker to death.

Daryl doesn’t say he’s impressed but he is.

Not so Daughter Fodder now, huh?

Through the hall, under a clock, through a door Beth finds the pro shop, time for a little retail therapy, you guys!! Beth decides… yellow is a good color to hide from monsters in.

Errr hang on. Why did we need to put the clock upright? Isn’t that a pretty solid zombie barrier Daryl just moved out of the way?

But she does put on a sweater, so… win win?

Hey, you asked for sleeves.

Someone has strung up a dead woman and written “Rich Bitch” on her chest. Beth and Daryl argue for a moment about the best way to deal with this indignity, before Daryl covers her up.

OK, so maybe the hanging walkers weren’t suicides. But we’ve seen this sign thing before, haven’t we? So who is doing it?

Down another hall… walkers arrive and Daryl takes them all on himself. Come on, Beth, be a man, we all know you have it in you!

I personally would have used a 9 iron or a driver, but Daryl dispatches all the walkers and ruins Beth’s outfit with a putter.

I was kind of hoping for a scene with a golf club outside on the green, but at least we got one. And c’mon, didn’t you think the moment Beth put on the pastels they’d be blood splattered by the end of the episode?

They finally arrive at the bar. Beth explains she needs to drink to finally feel better. She checks the wine list while Daryl steals crazy stuff.

Daryl is grabbing a lot of things that have no value in this zombie-infested world this episode. What’s going on?

Beth wants to drink peach schnapps. But Daryl says it’s gross. I agree, Daryl, I agree.

All the glasses are full of blood, which makes Beth super sad. Daryl tries not to notice that she is basically losing it. Finally he has had enough of her tears so he smashes her bottle of peach schnapps and leads her out of the bar.

Thus saving her from the inevitable schnapps hangover. This is a good thing Beth. Say thank you to the nice man.

Hey, when did everyone decide they had to read at the beach? I’m not much of a beach person, but wonder if Kindle is so sure no one wants to enjoy the stupid water and surroundings of the beautiful dumb resort you spent, like, $5,000 getting to that they decided to make being able to read in the brilliant tropical sun their only selling point? Seems like kind of a gamble to me, Kindle.

This critique of a random commercial is brought to you for no apparent reason, but hey, we have been known to digress.

Back in the woods, Beth begins to play the guessing game about what Daryl did before the end of the world, but Daryl is not having it.

Her guesses are all pretty bad, so I’m hoping she’s joking? She’s met Daryl before today, so prison guard? Really?

He takes Beth to a house he and Michonne found… and there is a still in there. Beth is about to get krunk on some moonshine!

Again, within walking distance of the prison, so…

Hey, here’s a thing: Why didn’t anyone ever say “Hey why don’t we make that back woods still our backup meet up site for if the prison is, oh, I don’t know… overrun by marauders?” Plots, I guess.

It is a mystery how our team is so bad at this survival thing all of a sudden; hell, they left a note for a certain girl lost-in-the-zombie-infested-woods a few seasons ago, telling her where to meet them, and that was one kid. 

Into the house they go. It’s pretty busted, but it’s better than the woods. Daryl pours her a glass and Beth is all… maybe I shouldn’t… but then she drinks. She hates it because alcohol tastes like burning. But she decides to be a trooper and have another drink.

Moonshine hangover vs. schnapps hangover. Huh. Improvement?

Later, Beth finds a weird bra… thing… and Daryl starts telling her all about the house and how he basically grew up in a clone of it. It’s pretty cute.

Beth decides Daryl needs to get drunk too, so he obliges. They play ‘Never Have I Ever’. I don’t know if I like this… I don’t know if I get what they are trying to do with this relationship… is this brother sister bonding or… sexy times bonding… or… what… I really….

They called it “I Never” where I grew up, and it really doesn’t end well, and I really don’t want them to go the sexy-bonding route because that just… no. No please.

Anyway Daryl hates ‘Never Have I Ever’ and decides to pee in a corner.

Well, so much for any sexy anything. Mood – whatever it was –  killed.

He kind of loses it… I don’t know…

They argue… and yell at each other.

It’s beautiful. I love you, Beth. (I’m kind of sorry that it took you 3 seasons to become a relevant character on this show)

It took you this long to call her Beth, and even if I think this scattered Team Zombie thing is going on too long, and I do, having her off with just Daryl does give us some character time with her, something just about everyone else had gotten before now, except her.

It’s brother sister bonding. (I hope)

Finally things are calmed down. Beth tells him she loves being drunk, but she can’t do it anymore because she can’t feel happy drunk all the time. Daryl tells this story about how terrible his life was back in the day. And how Meryl was a jerk and how Daryl was a jerk because of Meryl. And there was a Mexican stand-off. It’s not a great story.

We know this though, don’t we? I mean the details are new, but Daryl has kind of told us this already, wait, OK, he hasn’t really told Beth, so that makes sense. And despite our usual rants against the monologue present in these reviews, I’m not bothered by either of these two giving them. There’s a certain… intimacy here that makes them work better than most of them have.

Turns out Daryl was a low-level thug in the sway of his brother before the end of the world. It took the end of everything to make him into something.

Again, something we already knew, but it’s not bothering me because it’s Beth. Congrats kiddo, you finally got character development.

Beth tells him that she really thought they would be fine at the prison, and that Hershel would die old in his bed surrounded by grandbabies.

And that’s… just really sad. Honestly sad.

I am REALLY scared for Tara, you guys.

This is seriously the The Breakfast Club of The Walking Dead. I love this.

Beth says someday, she will die and Daryl will be the last man standings. And then he’ll miss her.

You guys, now I’m afraid for Daryl.

And Daryl tries to protest, but she’s not having it, and we know that of the two of them the odds are much better for him than they are for her, and if the writers have him die protecting her I’m pretty sure the internet will explode.

So then they decide to burn the shed down. Because they have to put the past in the past.

Oh, then a The Mountain Goats song plays. I love The Mountain Goats.

Using the random items Daryl had been collecting all episode they burn down the still.

I think they’re gonna be okay, you guys. Well, until Daryl sacrifices himself so Beth can live.

But they aren’t very bright. Seriously? You burn down your shelter in the middle of the night, your shelter in the zombie-infested-woods, the newly attracted-to-fire-zombies in the-zombie-infested-woods, and you’ve been drinking 50-proof or more moonshine, and sure it’s emotionally satisfying, but you couldn’t wait until the morning when you’re sober and can see?

Take a breath.

I don’t think you’re going to have to wait long. The rest of Team Zombie is going to find them both dead surrounded by tipsy walkers.

Drunk zombies. There’s an untapped subgenre.

Ah, they’ll be fine. It’s just that this season has been good, and hasn’t had as many dumb moments as some of the others, so the whole Heavy Hand Of The Writers thing is just glaring when it’s here. Anyway. You called her Beth the whole time.

I did. I like Beth now. That could mean she’s going to die soon, but for now, I shall retire Daughter Fodder. There will be a small ceremony later.

I’m sure there will be.

You’re not invited.

And on that note, we’ll be back in, well, a few days really, because it will be Saturday before this goes up, and then we’ll be on to the next episode.

We’ll be quicker this time.

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[Show web site at AMC]     [Previous recap: “Claimed”]