The Walking Dead - S4E5 - Internment
Previously on The Walking Dead, ‘Indifference’
Prison Blues
This episode starts with Rick driving home after kicking Carol to the curb. I was kinda worried he was going to do that dumb shit Lori and Daryl did and get so distracted by his thoughts that he runs himself off the road and into walkers, but nope. He just drives on with his crazy eyes.
At the prison, Sasha and Glenn are trying to hold down a patient, Henry, so that Hershel can intubate him. It’s rough because Sasha and Glenn look like they’re a cough away from heaven, but they get it done. Hershel makes them drink his magic tea and then suggests that as the only council members present they have spaghetti Tuesdays every Wednesday… but first they need spaghetti. I love that he got jokes amidst all this death. He tasks Sasha with squeezing the bag while Glenn accompanies him on his rounds. He tells Glenn that will keep the man alive as long as they’re willing to do it. As long as it takes.
They find someone has died in his cell and Hershel insists that they take his body away so no one has to see them stab him in the head. Glenn wonders how that’s going to work when Henry dies because his cell is upstairs. Hershel tells him that if it comes to that, Glenn will help him. When Glenn asks what happens if he’s not there, Hershel tells him to shut his mouth and just help him get Mr. Jacobson on a gurney. Creepy-Ass Lizzie sees them wheeling away Mr. Jacobson and Hershel basically tells her to stay out grown folks’ business. Later, Glenn stabs Mr. Jacobson in the head just after he turns. Hershel says he doesn’t want anyone to see what they have to do.
Hershel meets with Maggie and they talk through the glass window. He assures her that Glenn is okay and resting. She wants to come in to help, but he insists that she stay out. We see later that Glenn wasn’t really resting, he just didn’t want Maggie to see him like that.
Maggie is doing fence duty all on her own when Rick arrives. He asks about Carl and Judith, Glenn, Hershel, and Sasha. I guess fuck everybody else. She tells them they’re fine and that Daryl and crew aren’t back yet. She asks about Carol and he tells her what Carol did and what he did. He says he’ll tell Hershel, but that she shouldn’t tell anyone else. He asks if she would have done it and she says he was right to do it, even though she’s not sure if she could have.
Rick checks in with Carl who wants to come and help. Rick refuses and Carl says that Rick can’t keep him from what always happens. “Maybe,” Rick says. “But I think it’s my job to try.”
Glenn is taking his turn squeezing Henry’s oxygen bag so Hershel checks on Caleb. He knows he’s in the end stages and tells Hershel that he should make sure everyone’s doors are shut. He tells Hershel that he should go because he still has a chance, but he won’t. When he finally gets a good look at Caleb, he sees that Caleb’s eyes are already starting to bleed.
Hershel loses another patient who dies in the hallway. He tells the other sick people who came to watch to go back to their cells. Some listen, but I’m just wondering why the fuck those cell doors aren’t closed! Sasha comes out to help Hershel get the dead man on a gurney. Hershel takes the body to another room to stab him in the head, but through a sheet.
Rick arrives and Hershel tells him they’ve lost three people so far and they’re burning the bodies out back. The dead man had told Hershel a Steinbeck quote just yesterday: “A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.” And he says that’s why he doesn’t want them seeing what happens to the bodies. Rick says they also see Hershel and all that he has done. They then talk about the fact that nothing will be the same once they get through this and Hershel still believes there’s a plan. A reason. Then Rick says, “I need to talk to you about Carol.”
Hershel goes back to closing cell doors, but stops when he sees Sasha has passed out in her cell’s doorway. He rushes to help her, and totally misses that the woman in the cell before hers has died. While he’s helping Sasha, the dead woman opens her eyes. Oh, Hershel!
Maggie and Rick are taking large logs of wood and propping them up against the fence where the horde is still gathered. Maggie asks if he doesn’t think she can help her dad inside, but when Rick is tripped up by a walker and Maggie helps him up, he says he’s glad she’s out there with him.
Sasha wakes up and thanks Hershel for what he has done. She isn’t sure she’d still be there if Hershel wasn’t so damn stupid. Hershel says he’s going to take that as a compliment. Henry stops breathing and Glenn does chest compressions until he starts breathing again. He tries to call for Hershel, but he starts coughing and choking on his own blood.
Hershel is closing cell doors when he comes across one with a man and a sleeping boy inside. The man insists on not waking the boy up and not leaving him. He closes the door. Hershel is then attacked by the walker we saw awaken earlier. The man comes out of the cell and is about to shoot the walker when a woman from another cell comes out and breaks the walker’s leg. The boy who was sleeping was really dead and has turned. He bites the man on his gun arm and that causes him to shoot and shoot wide. He shoots the woman who was helping in the head. That’s about five kinds of fucked up. The walker with the broken leg is trying to get at Hershel and the man with the gun is now being devoured by the boy (his son?) Things aren’t looking good.
Henry is waking up, but Lizzie calls him away and starts to taunt and lead him down the hallway on the second floor. She’s walking backwards and Henry, who still has the intubation tube down his throat with the oxygen bag attached, is following.
Rick goes to get Carl and enlists his help in putting the posts up against the fence because he has instructed Maggie to go check on the gunshot.
Lizzie falls backwards and Henry lands on top of her. Hershel saves her by tossing Henry over the bannister. He lands on something… but he doesn’t fall to the second floor. Lizzie explains that when she was able to distract Henry from eating Glenn, she thought there was hope for him. It’s also important to point out that Lizzie didn’t use the knife that Carol had given her. Hershel puts Lizzie in a cell with a little boy and goes to check on Glenn who is still choking. Dr. Caleb is dead and tries to attack Hershel through his cell, but Hershel puts him down.
Meanwhile, Carl and Rick have to make a run for it when one of the wood pieces break and the walkers bust through. While Hershel is loading up a shotgun that Caleb had in his cell, Carl and Rick go all co-operative Call of Duty on the walkers. And it is fucking awesome. Never thought I’d say this two season ago, but Carl is DA MAN.
Hershel still has the presence of mind to lead the walkers who are coming up the stairs away from where the children can see before he puts them down with the shotgun. After some effort, Maggie makes her way into the sick area and takes out the walker who had the gun earlier. She watches from below as Hershel struggles with Henry on the gate he fell on. Hershel wants to get the intubation bag for Glenn. He warns Maggie that if she misses, she can hit the bag and they need it for Glenn. She shoots anyway and nails the shot because Maggie is a badass, too. While Maggie clears Glenn’s airway, Hershel cleans the tube with some alcohol and then intubates Glenn just in time.
Um, when is someone going to check on Sasha?
Hershel tells Maggie he didn’t want her in there, but she says she had to just like he did. Lizzie comes walking up because she doesn’t fucking listen. She wants to know if it’s over and Maggie says she hopes so. Then Lizzie plays in the blood Glenn coughed up with the toe of her boot because she’s fucking creepy pants.
Rick and Carl are making sure all the walkers that are on the ground have head wounds. They killed a fuckton of walkers. I think Carl has reached Do Whatever the Fuck He Likes status. Then Daryl and the rest arrive. Tyrese wants to know about Sasha, but Rick can’t tell him anything so he rushes in to see for himself. Sasha is miraculously still alive.
While Bob and Maggie administer the medicine, Hershel goes to Caleb’s cell and closes the one eye he has left after Hershel had stabbed him in the other earlier. He opens his bible and then cries.
He’s Baaaack
The next morning, Michonne is helping with walker cleanup. Carl is surprised that Rick let him sleep in, but Rick figured Carl needed his rest. He’s going to talk to Daryl, but opts to go off and spend time with Carl instead.
Tyrese and Hershel ask after Glenn and learn from Hershel that he made it through the night. Then we get this great exchange.
Daryl, about Glenn: “He’s a tough sumbitch.”
Hershel: “He is.”
Daryl: “You’re a tough sumbitch.”
Hershel: “I am.”
Hershel then goes off on a ride with Michonne to dump the bodies. While Carl and Rick share a moment in the crop fields, munching on pea pods, we see they’re being watch by the Governor.
Shit just got real.
