The Walking Dead – Review of ‘After’

The Walking Dead is back from its winter hiatus and, oh boy, we’ve got an episode all about Carl. What went down on “After”? Check our Walking Dead review to learn all about it.

LOSER: Disembodied zombie heads of friends

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Michonne is the last woman standing after the prison has fallen due to the Governor’s attack and she’s coping with her grief by randomly chopping zombies’ heads off. But then she stumbles upon Herschel’s reanimated zombie head and, after some pangs of emotion — or about as close as Michonne can get — she puts him down with a sword through the head. We should all be lucky to have such good friends.

Also of note for conspiracy theorists out there: The Governor was shown dead with a bullet in his head so, no, it was not deliberate that they didn’t show his corpse in the last episode and he will not be back. Thank God.

BIG WINNER: Fans of Carl who’ve been dying for him to get more camera time

You know how everyone loves Carl and thinks, “Gee whiz, I wish they’d give that little ball of acting magnetism the lion’s share of an episode dedicated to him”? Oh, no one thinks that? No one at all? Well apparently no one told the Walking Dead writers because we’re treated to a bevy of Carl-laden goodness.

Rather than bore you with the minutae of it, here’s the summary:

-Carl fights with Rick because he’s mad that Rick hasn’t protected everyone, including his mom and sister

-Rick goes into a minor coma due to the injuries sustained during the prison battle

-Carl then seizes the opportunity to have the worst monologue ever with Rick’s lifeless body, talking about how he doesn’t need Rick any more and he’s his own man and it’s just pretty bad how they just let this kid act for so long by himself

-Carl goes on some misadventures which almost result in him getting eaten multiple times in multiple situations. He loses a shoe in an altercation with one zombie then eats a very large can of pudding to celebrate not dying

There is A LOT OF FUCKING CARL, guys. A LOT.

LOSER: Michonne’s solo adventures

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Michonne, emotionally ravaged by the prison situation, goes back to strapping a couple of de-armed, de-jawed zombies onto herself and wandering through herds of zombies. She has some horrible flashback/dream that reveals she used to have a life in which she’d critique art with her boyfriend and his friend while raising an adorable child. It’s a pretty far cry from chopping off zombie heads with a sword, I suppose.

Michonne eventually decides that she’s willing to be human again after seeing a female zombie who sort of looks like her, ditches her zombie guards and chops off the heads of approximately 700 more zombies, and then goes to track whatever human it was whose footsteps she previously ignored. How she knows those footprints are human footprints and not zombie ones, I don’t know, but after literally one day of her emotional baggage, clearly she’s ready and willing to feel human again.

WINNER: Rick’s non-zombification

Rick finally emerges from his coma but does so in fairly zombielike fashion, testing our beloved new adult man Carl. Carl thinks he’s turned into a zombie since he’s all groggy and not speaking and can’t get up and it’s dark out but he can’t bring himself to pull the trigger on him and is prepared to get eaten alive by his dad. Some real zombie Oedipus shit going on here. But it turns out Rick is still human, evidenced by him saying “Carl” and Carl is relieved and, obviously, Carl’s happiness is all we care about.

Meanwhile, Michonne tracks the footprints to the house where Carl and Rick are currently holed up and sees they’re alive in there and she’s happy, Rick and Carl are happy, and maybe there is hope for humanity for at least one second each day.

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Interesting way to come out of the gate after the winter hiatus. I certainly get why Carl’s story should — SHOULD — be the most interesting here; he’s a child of this apocalypse, coming of age as the entire world goes to shit. How this affects him should be compelling and interesting. Small problem: The kid actor they have playing Carl just isn’t good enough to carry the emotional weight of the situation. And maybe no actor his age could…it’s not exactly an easy thing to do. But Carl is particularly uninteresting in the role and, unfortunately, we’re either force fed his stories or they have to admit his theoretically-interesting emotions entirely. It’s a crappy spot for the shoe to be in but that’s the basic math of it.

Either way, until the group is reunited, it seems like we’re going with more of a LOST version of storytelling with individual characters getting episodes to develop and that seems promising. More time with Daryl or Michonne or fleshing out the little girls and their zest for murder seems like it could be interesting and help us feel more investment in these tertiary characters rather than just as potential zombie bait. But as far as a start? Well, “After” really isn’t much to make you yearn for more.

Two and a half out of five zombified Herschel heads from me on this one. Sorry, Carlphiles.