TV Review: THE WALKING DEAD: Season 4, Episode 3: Isolation

AMC‘s The Walking Dead Isolation TV Show Review. The Walking Dead: Season 4, Episode 3: “Isolation” amounted to a prison break. Between a never ending series of burials (with personal affects as grave markers), the in-house outbreak , and the apparent murder of Karen and David, something had to give. First to go: Ty (Chad L. Coleman) and Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) temperament. From there, began a steady fracturing of the cast.

Tyreese was understandably upset over Karen, but Rick’s effort to talk him down resulted in gentle giant Ty turning violent. After being on the receiving end of Ty’s rage, Rick reciprocated, spraining his hand and leaving Ty battered. “It’s always the quiet ones you have to look out for,” the old saying goes; and when that someone is built like Ty, I would think it best you not push his buttons. Rick invoked Karen, to talk Ty down, and should have known better. The fact that Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) had to pull Rick off of Ty, after the tables turned, meant that Rick still had some crazy in him.

Elsewhere, Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) had contracted the virus and sought out Dr. Subramanian (Sunkrish Bala), only to find that he was infected as well. With his patients dying, dead or turned, they had to warn the others that the outbreak could not be contained. It then fell on Hershel (Scott Wilson) to once again take up the mantle of group healer, while Daryl and Michonne (Danai Gurira) prepped for a long range medical supply run. The scene at the Dr. S block, with Sasha essentially taking a walk through the damned, served as a preview of what was to come. Michonne and Dayle, displaying some noticeable chemistry, decided they needed extra bodies for their run; but given the outbreak, there was not a readily available pool to call on. Daryl approached Ty, but Ty had other priorities.

Rick and Ty had managed to put their altercation behind them, but quickly fell out again over what was in the best interest of the prison’s population. Rick wanted to focus on dealing with the outbreak; Ty wanted enforced justice. Both had valid points. No kind of community can be maintained without some kind of law & order – particularly where murder is concerned. On the other hand, matters of law & order would mean little if there was no one left to protect. TY and Rick went their separate ways on that matter, but Ty’s priority shifted once he learned about Sasha. He refused to join Daryl’s expedition in order to ensure Sasha did not wind up like Karen. The exchange between Rick and Ty was an effective demonstration of where personal integrity and the greater good would diverge in a prolonged crisis. There was, however, a much better example in evidence since the season began.

Rick had the prison’s child population separated and put Carl (Chandler Riggs) in charge, but not without a quick word on the necessity of his gun. Hershel opted to stay in this section, but was confronted by a gun strapped Carl while attempting to leave the compound. Unable to stop him from leaving, Carl decided to run escort. This outing not only marked the return of Carl’s sheriff’s hat and custom silencer, but it allowed Carl and Hershel to redress Carl’s last use of the silenced pistol. Hershel got Carl to show restraint when they encountered Walkers that were clearly no threat. At that point, it seemed more people were interested in getting out of the prison, than securing it.

Back at the prison, the setting had, for the moment, switched from Zombie Apocalypse to a bubonic plague scenario. With the outbreak veering towards full blown epidemic, the stream of walking damned, headed to quarantine, started to come with pleading and bargaining. Carol was clearly beyond it all. When Lizzie (Brighton Sharbino) joins their ranks, Carol sent her off with a hug, but told her to go to Glen if she wanted to be tucked in. Carol later suffered a “brain dead” moment, getting hung up on clearing a water line and retrieving an embedded blade from a Walker’s skull. Those actions allowed her to be cut off and surrounded by Walkers. Rick helped her out of that one, on his way back from doing some forensic work at the burn site.

I had mentioned in my last review that a key clue to Karen’s killer was given in one particular scene, and involved the identity of the other body. That body belonged to David, someone who worked the fences alongside Karen. The thing was, only the council members knew about David’s status. “Isolation” kept the clues coming; anyone revisiting the episode with its reveal in mind will see them plainly. With my suspicions already in place, I was able to appreciate them in real time; but I still found the frankness of the reveal a touch disturbing. I expect there will be a lot of fallout in the wake of Karen’s murder, with Rick squarely in the middle. The rationale behind what happened to Karen and David did not line up with the fence Walker feedings, however; so there may be another, potentially more dangerous, serpent in the garden.

Ty took a cue from Sasha’s hopes for the medical run’s success, and joined Dayle, Michonne and Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.). On the road, there was a brief sign of life on the radio, but then they literally ran into a Walker herd of thousands. Immobilized, they made a break for it, but Ty had a “brain dead” moment of his own. After stewing in the car long enough to be surrounded and cut off, Ty went into a berserker fury and was left smashing all comers with a hammer.

Given the near pacifist outlook of “Gentle Ben Ty,” up until Karen’s murder, I had to wonder whether this rage marked a new development for Ty, and he had no idea how to deal with it; or if he had been managing it, this whole time, and was no longer in control of it. Either way, Ty had literally become a force to reckon with on the show.

As much as The Walking Dead strives for a measure of unpredictability, there remains some element of convention to it – some of that even in the form of cliches. Glen (Steven Yeun) contracted the virus and all I could think was that a cure was now imminent. Both the prospects of Ty’s death, ‘roiding out against impossible odds, and his survival, beyond that point, would be time honored plot turns. I played the odds, figuring “Tyreese-saurus Rex” was a story that needed to be unfolded in future episodes – particularly around Karen’s killer.

There were technical issues. The access points along the fence, used by Rick in Carol’s rescue, seemed easy for Walkers to find and breech, to me. Even Army medics go through basic training, but Bob has not struck me as a military trained solo survivalist. The first shot he fired seemed off from the Walker that was hit, but that may all be nit-picking beyond the call of duty.

I have also been meaning to harp on the lack of ramparts, along the perimeter fence (they seem to work just fine, at the main entrance), but a scene between Hershel and Dr. S touched on an issue I’ve had with the series almost from the beginning. The Zombie Apocalypse genre pretty much guarantees two things: lots of splatter, and lots of close quarters combat. I never could figure how characters in this series could so regularly cover themselves in Walker goo without getting infected. Ingestion, inhalation, incidental cuts/ pre-existing wounds, any and all of the above were likely to result in infection, given the cast’s combat history. No masks, no gloves, not a whole lot of running water or grooming opportunities; infection beyond bites and scratches should have been a real factor. Hershel getting a face full of coughed up blood seemed to finally make it an issue. They may keep it in the context of the flu virus, but it’s a start.

Carol’s recent evolution reminded me of Shane’s. She had been steadily withdrawing from the group – even her relationship with Lizzie and Mika has had a degree of emotional detachment to it – and adopted an “at all costs” attitude. With Daryl and Michonne bonding, I would have been inclined to put her on the death-watch list even without her crossing the line she had. On the other hand, there has been a certain selflessness to her outlook – unlike Shane – that could add a whole new spin to the episode’s reveal. However unlikely, a surprise outcome in the face of an open-and-shut case would be a master stroke, of sorts.

It is becoming clear that the prison arc of The Walking Dead is coming to some sort of climax or conclusion, and it is just as well. The prison – while representing the need for security, in a chaotic world, and serving to highlight character bonds and conflicts, under confinement – ultimately amounts to a period of stagnation. One key component to the show’s success (the whole genre, in fact) is the examination of the effects a total cataclysm has on society and human nature. Such an examination cannot be expected in a total microcosm, nor should the world be expected to always come to a singular setting. The plague angle demonstrated, once again, why population centers should be avoided, under these circumstances, and I think the show runners should take the out.

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