The Walking Dead: Season 3, Episode 8: "Made to Suffer"

For all the anticipation and careful setup over the last several episodes of The Walking Dead, the show's mid-season finale was somewhat anticlimactic. Many burning questions were introduced leading up to the episode. What will Andrea (Laurie Holden) think when she finds out about the zombie daughter the Governor (David Morrissey) keeps hidden inside a cage and all those heads floating inside wall-length fish tanks? What will Merle (Michael Rooker) and Daryl's (Norman Reedus) reunion bring? How is Rick (Andrew Lincoln) going to get Glen (Steven Yeun) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) out of Woodbury? All of these are answered, if not in a particularly satisfying way. We do, though, get bombarded with more questions. "Made to Suffer" delivers on tension, action, and confrontation, but it's all pivot and no release.

The episode's primary focus initially seems to be Rick's mission to penetrate Woodbury and rescue Maggie and Glen. He remains suspicious of Michonne, who disappears after helping Rick's group sneak into the town. Meanwhile, the Governor scampers around trying to manage the residents' fears that their haven's been infiltrated. He also wants to keep Andrea away from the action so she can't learn that the intruders are members of her former group. He's away from much of the episode's action until his confrontation with Michonne in his quarters, where his cool surface disappears when Michonne kills his zombie daughter and the two engage in an intense fistfight that ends with him likely losing an eye. Afterward, he weeps and hunches over his lifeless daughter with a shard of glass protruding from his eye—the defining image of the episode and likely the defining moment for the character going forward.

Click here to read the full recap at Slant Magazine’s blog The House Next Door.

The Walking Dead: Season 3: Episode 7: "When the Dead Come Knocking"

When it first started, The Walking Dead was about the immediate sensation of living in a post-apocalyptic world. In the shadow of a crumbled society, survivors adjusted to the violent realignment of their lives by banding together, struggling to stay human. Now, because of all they've seen and suffered, the characters who've made it this far are shells of their former selves. Survival is no longer simply a matter of avoiding being eaten by zombies; it also requires a frigid sense of detachment and perhaps even cruelty, both of which course through "When the Dead Come Knocking." No one anymore seems to know what it means to be human.

The opening shot of Merle (Michael Rooker) scraping a splintered table with his knife-arm immediately sets the tone for what follows. With Glen (Steven Yeun) shackled and refusing to give up the location of his group, it's not long before Merle begins torturing him. When Merle sets a walker loose in the room, Glen's ensuing struggle to get free and kill exudes a striking primal ferocity. Such a desperate struggle for survival hasn't been seen since Andrea (Laurie Holden) was being chased through the woods at the end of season two. It's a key moment for Glen, too, who until this point in the season hasn't had much of a presence.

Click here to read the full recap at Slant Magazine’s blog The House Next Door.

The Walking Dead: Season 3: Episode 6: "Hounded"

When we last left Rick (Andrew Lincoln), he was digging through a zombie's intestines looking for what remained of his wife. It was a grim moment and another illustration of The Walking Dead's increasingly despairing outlook. At IndieWire earlier this week, Alison Willmore wondered whether the series is presenting an argument for the end of humanity. Given the trajectory it's taken thus far, that's not a far-reaching notion. That the writers continue to delve deeper into human despondency and ax more members of the cast in the process quite frankly makes it difficult to see any redeeming future for the characters, and perhaps the series itself. Nevertheless, every so often an episode gives us a fleeting moment of stillness and humanity that cuts through the surrounding gloom. Such a moment arrives late in "Hounded" just when you think Rick might be headed for a total breakdown. For much of the episode, he's away from the group and preoccupied with strange phone conversations with unknown callers. His desperate pleas for help initially suggest that he may be losing it, but this thread evolves into an unexpected moment of catharsis that the series needed as much as its protagonist.

Rick's storyline is one of several in which characters strike up or rekindle a connection. Daryl (Norman Reedus) also experiences a similarly heartening event after he discovers that Carol (Melissa McBride) is still alive, a scene that's intercut with Rick's return to the group. These developments are why "Hounded" may represent The Walking Dead's most significant attempt to revive a sense of hopefulness. But the cruel joke of the episode is that these tender brushstrokes are threaded into a more cynical view that comes into focus through other plot circumstances. Namely, this episode places events in motion that will lead to an eventual collision between the Woodbury community and the prison survivors.

Click here to read the full recap at Slant Magazine’s blog The House Next Door.

The Walking Dead: Season 3: Episode 5: "Say the Word"

After last week's episode of The Walking Dead ushered in a new level of intensity with the deaths of two major characters and the birth of Lori's (Sarah Wayne Callies) baby, "Say the Word" is comparatively stagnant. This makes it consistent with the narrative rhythm that the writers have committed to since the show's second season: After a dramatic turn of events, everything slows down, often for several episodes. "Say the Word" fits comfortably within that broader framework, but it makes better use of its quieter interludes than similar episodes and also offers a handful of isolated standout moments.

One of these is early on, when the Governor (David Morrissey) is listening to soothing classical music and brushing the hair of his zombie daughter in his secluded second-floor abode. She struggles, but the Governor wrestles the girl's contorting body into a position in which he can safely hug her and tell her how much he loves her. The scene is somewhat of an extension of last season's thread involving Hershel's (Scott Wilson) insistence that walkers are human. Though given what we already know about the Governor, like how he watches the jangling severed heads floating in water tanks for his own pleasure, his hair-brush routine conveys more than simply denial. Rather, the Governor's secret fixation on reliving the past signals a deep level of psychosis masked by his seemingly fair-minded leadership of the Woodbury community.

Click here to read the full recap at Slant Magazine’s blog The House Next Door.

The Walking Dead: Season 3: Episode 4: "Killer Within"

The latest episode of The Walking Dead, "Killer Within," opens on a hazy morning at the prison where Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his band of survivors have settled down. The serene atmosphere is offset when a lurking figure opens the gates and baits walkers into the facility. With its dreamlike, foggy setting and a conspicuously waist-down perspective of the saboteur, a peculiar sense of disconnect underlines the implications of what's being depicted. The scene ends with a single close-up of a heart placed on the cold cement. It's a foreboding image that gains magnitude as "Killer Within" gives way to a sudden strike of tragedy. Moreover, the pre-credit sequence lends insight into how the episode amounts to a particularly poignant, if also problematic, entry in the show's run.

I'll return to the significance of the opening scene in a moment. First, let's take a look at how the episode builds to its ultimate disaster through stark tonal contrasts. With apocalyptic shows like this, moments of levity are few and far between. "Killer Within," however, goes so far as to offer something resembling a sustained cheerful mood as it gets going. Now having fortified the prison, Rick guides the crew about the mundane tasks of building a home. Small character moments are peppered along the way and gel nicely together as mini-portraits. Hershel (Scott Wilson) shows progress walking on crutches; Glen (Steven Yeun) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) get busy in the watchtower; even Rick and Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) share a brief hopeful exchange from a distance. After a tense encounter with the surviving inmates and a conversation among themselves about whether to allow the prisoners to join their operation, the group is still in better spirits and apparently in control.

Click here to read the full recap at Slant Magazine’s blog The House Next Door.

The Walking Dead: Season 3: Episode 3: "Walk with Me"

"Do you think they remember anything? The person they once were?" a man asks in the latest episode of The Walking Dead. This is the kind of question you'd expect from someone in a George A. Romero zombie film, specifically one of the more recent ones, wherein zombies exhibit traits of their pre-zombie selves. Here, though, the significance of the question doesn't concern zombies so much as how the human survivors of a zombie uprising project their own fears and insecurities onto the living dead. "Walk with Me" is a notable change of pace for The Walking Dead for several reasons, most clearly its shift in plot trajectory to initiate a new storyline with a new group of survivors. More importantly, however, it's about unearthing the past and recalling a distant life. This becomes clear at the outset, when Andrea (Laurie Holden) and her travel companion, Michonne (Danai Gurira), are discovered by a familiar face at the site of a helicopter crash.

After the first two episodes of the season focused so intensely on Rick's (Andrew Lincoln) fleeting humanity and the group's strategic actions to gain asylum, "Walk with Me" introduces a new survivor group that takes Andrea under its wing. Unwittingly abandoned during the group's escape from Hershel's farm, Andrea came under the protection of Michonne, and together—along with two armless, jawless walkers—they survived the winter. Following an encounter with Daryl's brother, Merrill (Michael Rooker) at the start of the episode, Andrea and Michonne are plucked from the dystopian wilderness and end up in a place that would seem to be its opposite.

Click here to read the full recap at Slant Magazine’s blog The House Next Door

The Walking Dead: Season 3: Episode 2: "Sick"

If last week's season premiere of The Walking Dead teased the promise of a rebound from the choppy second season, this week's episode pivots forward into more fruitful dramatic terrain. It articulates the growing anxieties of the weary-minded members of the group, honing in on their struggle to retain control in the midst of rising threats. This plays out in two central scenarios amid the claustrophobic surroundings of the prison, where conditions are graver and Hershel's (Scott Wilson) life is in jeopardy after being bit by a walker. While Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), Carol (Melissa McBride), and Glen (Steven Yeun) attend to Hershel with the dimming hope that he'll survive the wound, Rick (Andrew Lincoln), Daryl (Norman Reedus), and T-Dog (IronE Singleton) jostle with four prison inmates who've been cocooned from the outside world and now lay claim to the facility.

The former thread consists mostly of the standard "hope and reminisce" dialoguing between characters that's earned The Walking Dead some negative criticism. However, Rick's encounter with the four inmates takes the series into dangerous new territory. The inmates' intentions aren't quite clear, though their ringleader openly engages Rick in an alpha-male battle of wills that intensifies through the episode. Despite the threat of outsiders to the group, Rick is forced to negotiate a compromise with the prison survivors because they have access to food and also possess a better knowledge of the facility.

Click here to read the full post at Slant Magazine’s blog The House Next Door.

The Walking Dead: Season 3: Episode 1: "Seed"

[Editor's Note: Over at The House Next Door, I will be penning review for The Walking Dead's third season. After each recap has been posted over at Slant, I will also post a preview (with a link-through to the full piece) here on this site. Finally, on a somewhat related note, to read my full review of the second season of The Walking Dead, click here.]

The Walking Dead's season-three premiere suggests that the program's showrunner, Glen Mazzara, and writing team have listened to everyone's gripes about season two's frequent and labored pontificating. Bearing almost none of the heated bickering and discussions of morality that personified the previous season, "Seed" is about persistence and strategy. It picks up several months after Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the group's escape from Hershel's (Scott Wilson) farm, which was overrun with walkers. Despite any unrest among them, the group exhibits a renewed sense of unity as it trudges on in an increasingly dangerous world. In the pre-credit sequence, Rick, his wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), Hershel, Daryl (Norman Reedus), and the rest of the gang raid a home in the middle of the woods and share a brief meal consisting of canned food. If for no other reason, the sequence is striking for its silence. Without a word of dialogue, the opening ostensibly sets the series forth in a new direction, thematically and otherwise.

The characters inevitably get back to talking, but mostly absent from their conversations is all the unsubtle moral agonizing. The writers seem more confident in the new material and the urgency with which they deliver it. Some of the characterizations and performances are marked by obviousness, such as the way Rick appears to be less human with each passing moment, and how Lori still seems intent on breaking the barriers around them. Overall, though, the characters more concerned about survival. Consequently, the series more closely resembles the sprawling dystopian vision it suggested in its first season than the soapy dramatic palette of the second. The moments shared between characters are punctuated by quiet exchanges, such as in an early scene around a campfire when Hershel's daughter, Beth (Emily Kinney), is encouraged to sing. The scene is drawn out to nice effect, articulating both the hollowness and camaraderie that now defines the group.

Click here to read the full review Slant Magazine’s blog The House Next Door.