The Walking Dead: Slabtown
Where has Beth been since being kidnapped by some people in a Cadillac with a white cross on the rear window? Some place weirder than you imagined.
Beth awakes in a hospital, wearing clean hospital clothes and with an I.V. Seems good. A doctor and a cop walk in and things get weird immediately when the cop says, “We saved you, so you owe us.” We quickly learn that Beth is now some kind of indentured servant who can’t leave the hospital until she works off her medical debt. The place is run by cops who abuse their power and are total assholes. Congratulations Beth, you’ve returned to the pre-zombie world!
Oh no, it’s just some jerks clinging to the belief that things will get to normal, therefore they have to…let some cops rape people, I guess? I didn’t really follow all the logic here. Officer Dawn was in charge and had taken over from some guy who went crazy, but she couldn’t really keep the other cops in line, especially one super skeevy dude named Gorman. That scene with Beth and the lollipop was grosser than the super graphic amputation scene.
There’s one nice guy there, Noah, who’s in the same situation as Beth. He tells he’s figured out they intentionally rescue people they perceive as weak and let stronger victims die, but they don’t know what Beth is capable of. Dawn is kind of psycho and likes to slap Beth.
Beth heads up to the roof with friendly Dr. Steven and see bombed out Atlanta. He explains that the city is too overrun to escape the jerks in the hospital. His value as a doctor is the only way he can stand up to Gorman. He tells Beth to give a patient that Dawn had been worried about his meds and call it a day. She does, but the meds make him seize and die. Noah takes the fall, and much later Beth realizes Steven did it on purpose when she learns the patient was also a doctor. Steven can’t abide competition.
Seeking Dawn’s key for the escape she and Noah have plotted, Beth finds that Amber has killed herself in Dawn’s office. Gorman walks in on her and tries to trade sex for not telling Dawn. Amber turns just then, and Beth knocks Gorman down so he can get bitten to death. She takes his gun and the key, then takes off, sending Dawn to her office on the way out. I think the most tense, suspenseful scenes are always when someone is searching a room or office and you just know someone’s going to walk in and bust them.
Beth and Noah have a harrowing trip down the elevator shaft where they dump the dead bodies. Luckily a pile of corpses cushions the fall. They make their way outside, with a few good jump scares and an awesome scene with Beth plinking zombies in the darkness, lit only by flickering flashlight and the muzzle flash of her gun. There are too many walkers to complete the escape, though. Noah gets away but Beth is tackled by cops and “arrested.”
Back inside Dawn slaps Beth again. Beth confronts Steven, then walks down the hall with a shiv and a determined look in her eye. But just then a new patient is wheeled in. It’s Carol. Well, that changes things quite a bit. And this still doesn’t explain what was going on when Daryl returned last week and said to someone in the woods, “You can come out.”
With excellent pacing, weirdness, and lots of little mysteries to unravel, this is shaping up to be my favorite Walking Dead season.
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Posted by Ed Grabianowski
on Sunday, November 2nd, 2014. Filed under Dark TV, Headline.
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Tags: walking dead
