The Entertainment Weekly Walking Dead episode 4 recap is here, what I thought were standout points are below.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
Rick & Carol's supply run; Carol is obviously feeling bad since Rick isn't praising her on a barbecue job well done. Carol is really mentally unstable, is in all types of denial, trying her hardest to justify what she did. Rick is like NO, YOU'RE CRAZY! You decided all by yourself that you were going to kill these people, you should have had a discussion with the GROUP, you're not the only decision maker! I agree with Rick.
What pissed me off about this whole burn-these-sick-people-immediately-to-prevent contamination plan, from the first sight of the charred victims is that it's just plain brainless! I know that she's training really hard to be the medical assistant of the group, but Carol is not a doctor, and here's the kicker, THEY HAVE A DOCTOR ON HAND! Not just one, but two! Granted one is an animal doctor, but still, who told her that she knows more than people who went to medical school and worked as doctors for years?! It must have been little Luna Lovegood of the zombie world, Carol's newly adopted daughter who thinks that zombies are people that are "just different". Why couldn't she just ask the doctors if killing and burning the two sick people would keep the zombie flu from spreading?
Carol clearly doesn't even know the first thing about how illnesses are transferred because she didn't even realize that there's no point in trying to be overly cautious now, you have all already been exposed! Viruses and bacteria have already been in your body a while before you ever start showing symptoms. So the people who are sick in prison, have been infected and spreading their germs for days now. Along with the fact that the people who started showing signs of sickness were allowed to cough all over the prison and everyone in it, before they decided that it was a good idea to quarantine them. Everyone has been coughed on already and breathing the same infected prison air, so how you trying to kill the contaminants after you've already been contaminated?! You're all likely carriers of the virus now, so either you'll get sick (like most of the people did) or you're immune to the effects (like the others who didn't get sick).
Plus, by the time Carol did think to kill the two sick people, they were already in seclusion away from everyone else, thereby not spreading anymore of their germs. Why couldn't she just leave them there? Nooooo, this genius went and killed them, dragged their bloody infected body all over the prison, burned them right outside the front door, and left the bodies there! That is definitely the OPPOSITE of being sanitary! She didn't even bother to try to clean up the blood trails! What if the disease is also transferred by blood? Now anyone can easily get the sickness because it's all over the floor and walls!
And Carol, since you know more than the two doctors that are sitting right upstairs, I'm sure you at least properly cleaned yourself before coming back into the main part of the building, since you have been handling contaminated specimens. You washed your body and got rid of your clothes and shoes before going back into the prison right? WRONG! I guarantee that know-it-all-Carol trailed the infected people's blood all over their part of the prison, and she probably didn't wash her hands either, so she likely spread the virus to every surface that she touched! Carol, if everyone wasn't already exposed to the virus before, you definitely made sure that the virus got to every single person in the prison, thanks to your brilliant virus containment plan that didn't need an actual doctor's approval. You are officially the dumbest member of the human race (that is left), please don't reproduce. Zombies are even better than you, at least they are learning new useful tricks like how to join together and knock down fences!
On the subject of infection spreading. Everyone needs to calm down about Hershel going into the infected prison cells and taking off his mask. He's a doctor, so he likely knows (even though Governess Carol didn't) that they've already been exposed, and either he'll get sick or he's likely immune since he isn't showing signs of the illness as of yet. He probably just doesn't want to tell everyone else that they've already been exposed because people might panic. But even Carl knew, he said, "cut the crap dad, I was already exposed, I must be immune. DUH!" Carl, that boy, this is the type of crazy everyone needs to become! He's like 12 years old acting like a 35 year old! He's smarter than everyone, more strategic, good at putting two and two together, and good at killing zombies. Carl will soon be my favorite at this rate. You go little boy!
Holly hobbles a lot and Larry limp arm; What kinda useless people are they that they locked themselves in a room scared to come out because of 1 single pajama wearing zombie?!? Are they serious? They were probably gonna stay in there forever and starved had Rick and Carol not gone into their house and killed the zombie for them. Well at least they were willing to prove themselves useful, only to prove themselves even more useless than we thought. Rick gave them weapons and Carol fixed Larry's arm, yet as soon as they walk out the door Holly loses her leg and gets eaten?! Her crooked leg wasn't even good enough for the zombies to eat! They said get that pathetic useless thing out of here, we'll take the rest. I mean seriously, did they really not even try to splint her broken leg up so it could heal straight? It doesn't take a rocket scientist or high tech equipment. Sticks and string would have worked, but I know they could have found better at one of the many stores there are or maybe in someone's house. But then again, they were scared to face 1 zombie, let alone the many that could be hiding in a store. How on earth did those weaklings survive 2 minutes on their own? Wow, just wow.
I guess their's still hope for Larry, his arm is fixed and we didn't see any parts of his body, so maybe he's a little stronger than Holly was, and is alive somewhere.
Tyreese and his death wish; He don't give a crap about nothing! Bob's like, stop playing in water, we're leaving, Tyreese just ignores him and does what he wants. They're trying to find a door to a building that hopefully contains medicine, Tyreese is hacking at the weeds like a lunatic. Zombies start coming through the weeds, grabbing at them, instead of killing it or getting it off of him (like the others did, like a sane person would do) Tyreese decides to try to help the zombie through the weeds. He pulls and pulls and won't let go of the zombie. I guess he's thinking, "oh, you wanna grab me zombie? How about I grab you back!" The rest of the group is like, "this dude be crazy!" I'm going to request that he finds a book on anger management while they're supply hunting.
Bob's sob story; Boohoo, I became an alcoholic in order to sleep at night. I'm recovering though, I even put the bottle I was thinking about taking before back. You know, the bottle that broke the shelf causing zombie bombs to fall through the roof of the store we were at which got a kid killed? Yea, that's proof that I'm no longer an alcoholic...Darryl should have asked him how he ended up being the only survivor of his two prior groups, cause that don't add up. Bob ain't a good fighter at all, that became clear when he was trapped at the store, when we had to watch him try to shoo the zombie away while screaming for help like a little BIATCH! So how did he manage to survive when no one else did, not once, but twice?
Not unexpectedly, as they are escaping the building that they raided, Bob-the-idiot trips. He almost falls into a bunch of waiting zombies, doesn't but now he's in a tug of war with the zombies below who have grabbed his bag. He really seems willing to die over this bag, Bob really refuses to let it go. Finally he manages to pull it from the zombies' grip and flings his bag on the rooftop. He seems kinda panicked as his bag flies through the air, when it lands we know why, we hear the clink of glass. Bob's obviously worried that something he collected is broken. Darryl is suspicious and looks in the bag to find what? A bottle of alcohol. This fool was risking being pulled into a pit of zombies just to save a bottle of booze! Darryl is livid and threatens to cut of Bob's balls and make him eat them (or something equally as scary) if anybody dies because of him. Bob-the-dumbass-alcoholic probably pee'd a little in his pants by the look or terror on his face. I've got to point out that Darryl is super hot when threatening stupid people's lives. I wouldn't have held it against you if you had just threw him in the pit of zombies though Darryl.
Finally, Rick has to let Carol go. Thank goodness! I couldn't stand how hypocritical Carol was being. She was telling Rick to take back his leadership role and start making hard decisions again, but then she was trying to tell him what decisions to make. Trying to force him to think that what she did was acceptable. Well no Carol, it wasn't acceptable. Even if Rick wasn't in his right state of mind to make decisions, there's at least 3 other people you could have discussed your plan with! Plus, you even killed someone who will be missed, and what is Tyreese supposed to be kicked out instead of you, when you're the one who was wrong? Because there's no way you two can live peacefully together again. You killed probably his only chance at a good wife in a world with a limited supply of trustworthy humans.
Rick told her (roughly), "I can't bring you back to the prison, away with you!" Sad that it had to go down like that, but it's her own fault for trying to run things on her own. Making your own decisions, especially about who should die doesn't work very well with the prison folks. She should have known they weren't cool with that by the way they all hate the governor. Why you acting like the person you know they hate the most, but expecting them to suddenly be OK with the dictator way of life? You really should SEEK HELP! Or become The Governess of your own community. We don't care what you do, just don't do it here! Adios Carol.
Now if only they will get rid of that nut job Bob before he also gets people killed.
