Warning: Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen this episode yet!
Episode 6: "TS-19"
A little disappointing for a season finale. I get the point of the whole CDC arc -- there's no hope, and that point has to be hammered home to the survivors as well as the audience. So many zombie stories end with a rescue, either in the form of the military/government finally striking back (World War Z, 28 Days Later) or some crazy isolated scientist coming up with the cure (I Am Legend). Well, in this case, it's not about just holding out until the crisis is over. No one is working on a cure, no military is coming to the rescue. (I suppose the best case scenario is to last long enough for the zombies to starve or decompose or whatever.)
So you have to establish that there's no government, no cure, no savior coming. It's not enough just to wait out the apocalypse -- it's about surviving in an entirely new world. I get that. Maybe if they had more than six episodes to work with, they could have had this in the middle of the season instead of at the end; it just felt like a build-up and then not much of a payoff. No cliffhanger, just driving off into the unknown.
Random questions:
What did Jenner whisper to Rick? The big question, of course. If you read the comic books, there's a few possibilities, but so far they've strayed from the comic books enough that I wouldn't be confident assuming it's something from the comics. Maybe he saw something in the blood tests, or maybe he saw Shane and Lori, or maybe he wanted to know if Jacqui was going to put out. ("Hey, I see we have 10 seconds left...")
Did the French come up with a cure? OK, so maybe forget everything I said about there being no hope? Maybe they wanted to give a little light at the end of the tunnel for the truly optimistic viewers out there. Still, what Jenner said -- the French "thought they were close to a solution" before running out of power -- doesn't sound too promising to me. And besides, what are they going to do, try to sail to France? Still, the French scientists staying in their labs while everyone else ran off is a nice aversion of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys meme.
Is Andrea pregnant? That's not what happens in the comic books, of course, but there are a few clues: First, when they draw blood, she gets lightheaded; second, in the shower, she does the classic After School Special rape victim pose (hugging knees, staring off into space); and third, after the big meal, she throws up. Then of course we have her almost committing suicide at the end of the episode. Maybe the mystery whisper was Jenner telling Rick that Andrea is pregnant, and that she's unhappy about it? Should we all just assume she was raped by Meryl?
Line of the night goes to Daryl again:
Shane: What are those lights?
Jenner: It's a person's life. Experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere, in all that organic wiring, all those... ripples of light, is you. The thing that makes you... unique, and human.
Daryl: You going to make sense, ever?
I also like Daryl continuing to bash the metal doors in the background as everyone is quietly trying to reason with Jenner.
Now, onto the kills!
Tough to see if the military actually killed any zombies in the open, or if the zombies killed any soldiers. (They grabbed one guy, but we don't see what happens next.) Let's just move on to the bust-out at the end of the episode: Shane shoots two, Rick shoots one. Daryl cuts off a head, but come on Daryl, you of all people know that doesn't kill them! Now you just left a bitey head laying there on the ground for someone else to trip over. (Good thing it was probably wiped out by the blast.) Shane then turns around and takes a shot that looked like he was aiming... that's probably a third kill for him. But T-Dog took a shot that looked like it wouldn't have even hit the building. Miss!
This episode:
Humans Killed: 4
Zombies Killed: 40
Season Total
Humans Killed: 4
Zombies Killed: 86
Season Leaderboard: Rick 40, Daryl 9, Shane 8, Morales 7, Glenn 6, Merle 6, Morgan 3, T-Dog 3, Jim 2, Dale 2, Andrea 1
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