Snap Into a Slim Jim

Recapped by Angel Cohn · Aired 11-28-2010 · S01E05

Now that Rick has retrieved his beloved walkie-talkies from the zombie-riddled streets of Atlanta, he's trying hard to communicate with Morgan, sending daily desperate messages to him. But while he's off doing this, the rest of Camp Terror is trying to figure out how to get Andrea away from Amy, so they can smash Amy's brains to bits. It doesn't work, even when Dale gives her a pep talk about his wife dying of cancer. But finally, when Amy reawakens on her birthday, Andrea uses her trusty gun to blow her sister's brains out. It's about freaking time.

My sweet little Glenn has little to do in this episode, aside from insisting that they bury their own, instead of burning them. I'd pick this option, if only because the smell of rotting flesh sounds pretty gross. Darryl wants to take no chances, which is probably the smarter decision, and basically says this is payback being her bitchy self because they all had to go and handcuff Merle to a roof and leave him for dead. Again, he might not be wrong.

Also at Camp Terror, Carol seems to relish the opportunity to be the one to smash her dead husband's brains in. In fact, she wields that pickax well, and maybe a little bit overzealously. Can't say as I blame her. And the cameramen seem to love this so much that they've chosen some crazy angles and let the blood spatter hit the lenses like crazy. I'm guessing they were thrilled about this, because they probably wanted to kill themselves after being stuck dealing with the melodrama between Shane, Lori and Rick. God, so fucking annoying these three. Wah, you went to Atlanta with all the guys and now everyone is dead. Wah, you want to go to the CDC to get a cure for this before we all end up dead. Wah, you stole my girlfriend even though she was technically still your wife. Wah, I want to shoot you, but can't find a time when Dale's not looking. Wah, I'm sweaty and gross and haven’t worn a bra in weeks but both of these guys are having a pissing contest over me, guess this whole "last woman alive" thing is working out in my favor. You get the drift.

The Camp Terror crew head out to the CDC -- well, Morales and his family decide to cut their losses and head to Birmingham. Fare thee well, Morales. Jim got bitten during the fight and has to fend off the entire camp, who wants to behead him, but then gets tossed in the back of the camper, where he slowly starts losing it. He begs to be left by the side of the road to die alone. It's sorta sad, really. He was one of the few people I actually liked on this show.

Over at the CDC, we see a guy identified by a wildfire code, recording his progress in his underground lab. He works in a biohazard suit on the zombie tissue and is seemingly all alone. Because of sleep deprivation, he spills something, creates a toxic fume, loses all his samples, starts drinking and contemplates suicide.

Then we see him alerted to the fact that the Camp Terror troupe has arrived. They are stumbling around rotting corpses and basically turning on each other for agreeing to go along with this plan and being left in the middle of the city without gas or a plan. Guys, always have an exit strategy. Still, their asses get seemingly saved when Wildfire opens a gate to let them into the CDC. They may not be smart, but they sure are lucky.

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At the crack of dawn, Rick sits in a field, looks at Atlanta and makes a walkie-talkie call to Morgan. Good thing that his trip to the city at least yielded something, though it remains to be seen if we'll ever see poor Morgan again. Maybe he's better off holed up in his house with his kid staring at his zombified wife than stuck with the Camp Terror crew. I'd pick zombie wife over Shane any day. Rick blathers on about his good fortune of finding his family. Yeah, yeah, quit your bragging. He does at least tell Morgan that the walkers have infested Atlanta, but I'm thinking that Morgan would be smart enough to see all the abandoned cars headed out of town and figure this out for himself instead of riding in on his high horse like some people.

Andrea sits holding the hand of Amy's dead, not-yet-re-alive corpse, while Lori asks if they can take the body to dispose of it somewhat humanely. Andrea ignores her. Hey, that's one more thing that Andrea and I have in common: I like to ignore Lori, too.

Darryl's having a grand old time with a pickax and the dead walkers' skulls. Rick tells Shane and Lori that he'll go talk to Andrea and just explain why they need to smash her dead sister's skull in. Only she's not having it. The second he walks over in his condescending way, she pulls out her pistol and aims it at his head, reminding him that she now knows how to turn the safety off. She wants to kill Rick, too? Andrea might be my hero right now, even if she is miserable about the death of her whiny sister.

Darryl thinks that he can take his arrow and shoot Amy in the brain from a distance, before she gets all reanimated and tears through camp. When he's shot down, he goes to help Morales with some corpses. They start dragging a nameless member of Camp Terror towards the burning pyre, and my sweet Glenn says that they bury the members of their camp instead of burning them. It's kind of annoying, but it's all my sweet Glenn gets to do all episode, so I hate to complain. Darryl reluctantly agrees to do as the majority asks, but calls bullshit on this, as they did leave his brother for dead. Where's Merle? I sorta miss his racist, belligerent ways.

Jim staggers over to Jacqui, who notices that he's bleeding. She wants to know if he was bit or otherwise injured. He denies it, only calling it a little scratch, but Jacqui tells everyone that a walker bit him. He's soon surrounded by the weapon-wielding men of the camp. He grabs a shovel, but T-Dog grabs him and Darryl lifts his shirt and they see a big old bite mark on his torso. Aw, poor creepy Jim. I sorta tolerated you.

Darryl wants to put a pickax in his head... and Amy's. When Rick wonders if that's what Darryl would want if roles were reversed, he says "Yeah, and I'd thank you while you did it." I'm kind of loving Darryl right now. Perhaps because he's the only actor (aside from my sweet Glennn, of course) who can convincingly deliver any emotions. Sure that emotion is all anger, but you've got to admit he makes some sense, and his dialogue isn't all crappy-sappy. Points for the violent jerk! Making me feel better about liking Darryl is Dale, who says that their bloodthirsty zero-tolerance-touting resident actually makes some sense. Rick doesn't think this is a road they should go down, and thinks they should seek out some help... in the form of the CDC. He says they were supposedly working on a cure. Shane doesn't believe that they exist, and thinks that their best bet isn't the CDC, but the Army base 100 miles away that would be heavily armed and offer them protection.

Darryl doesn't care for all this talking-talk and tries to kill Jim. Rick and Shane stop him. Man. Don't they realize they're just prolonging the inevitable? And could they listen to the majority once in a while? God, I hate Rick and Shane.

Dale goes over to Andrea to pay his respects. They have a long and really dull conversation where he talks about his wife dying of cancer and his issues with it. Then she explains that she has guilt because she always missed her sister's birthday. He says that these girls are like his daughters. Cloying. I kind of wish I was dead like Amy during this scene. Especially since the whole scene amounts to nothing, as she still refuses to let her sister's brain get smashed in. Oh, and she finally puts the mermaid necklace around her neck. Ugh. Any goodwill I had towards Andrea at the beginning of this episode has diminished entirely.

Carol, on the other hand? She takes that pickax from Darryl and starts going to town on her dead abusive husband's brains. Maybe she's a little overzealous, but he had it coming. As I mentioned in the recaplet, the director clearly loved this scene, too, as they angled the camera to best show off all of the blood and brain matter spattering.

Amy starts breathing and twitching, and instead of running like a normal person, Andrea just sits there rubbing her face and trying to comfort her on her re-birthday. What the hell kind of idiot is she? Anyway, after Amy starts clawing at her face and hair, Andrea finally nuts up, takes her pistol out and shoots her in the brain. Like that won't draw unwanted attention from other walkers in the area. Whatever. At least Amy is really dead this time. Can we forget that she ever existed now? Great, thanks. Moving on.

Shane and Rick dig graves, and then Shane lectures Rick about running off to the city and getting a lot of people killed. Rick argues the opposite point, saying that the guns are what saved them. Frankly, I just wish they'd both shut up. Can't they dig graves quietly like Jim did last week?

Everyone comes over to watch, discussing burying their dead, coming up with rules and figuring out who is in charge. Lori says something about mourning, but she's like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Jim hallucinates zombies.

More burying people. Acting humanely, blah, blah. Tears for people they barely know. Carl wants to know if they are safe, Rick promises he won't leave them again. That's not really an answer. No wonder Carl cries all the time. Rick asks Lori if she blames him for being away, and she says something. Stupid, poorly acted melodrama. Ignoring.

Inside the trailer, Carol takes care of Jim. Rick talks about the miracle cure. Jim just wants a grave of his own. And for Rick to take care of his boat.

Shane asks Lori to talk sense into Rick about the CDC thing. More annoying dick measuring. The boys go out in the woods together to debate the fate of Camp Terror. CDC. Army base. CDC. Army base. CDC, because I have a family. Army base, because I fucked your wife and now want to kill you. As the two of them investigate a noise, Dale shows up and sees Shane aim his gun at Rick, and gives him a dirty look. Shane's "intense" face is quite possibly the most hysterical thing I've ever seen in my life. Definitely the funniest thing to happen on this show in weeks.

Back at Camp Terror proper, Shane says he's going along with Rick's CDC plan because they all need to stick together.

The morning Rick's back on the walkie-talkie giving Morgan some very contrary advice. "I know I said not to go to Atlanta, but we're totally going to the CDC and I'm leaving you a map taped to a flashy red car so you can go straight into the city and follow us to our certain doom... you know, if you ever decide to off your zombie wife. Toodles."

Jim wakes up; he's still human, but he doesn't looks pretty. Rick and Shane get the caravan all ready, but Morales and his family decide to go their own way. They want to go to Birmingham, even if that means they don't have anyone looking out for them. Considering that the rest of the camp is heading into zombieland and they lost a bunch of members just two nights before, I don't think they are so crazy. And they aren't going in the camper with a soon-to-be zombie. And they get a pistol and some bullets to take with them? Plus, they don't have to listen to Shane. Morales.... Can I come with you?

They travel down the road with mixed emotions, until the hose on the camper finally breaks. He needed the one from the van that Merle took. Darryl and Shane head off down the road to a gas station. Jacqui says that Jim's getting worse, so Rick goes in to tell him that they'll be driving again soon and to hang tight. Yeah, that's not what he wants, not that Rick cares at all about other people's opinions ever. Jim says that the driving is causing him excruciating pain, and he just wants to be left on the side of the road to die.

Rick comes out of the camper to tell everyone what Jim said. Dale basically says that they should have asked him his opinion in the first place. So against Shane and Rick's self-righteous principles, they leave him by yet another tree to die. Rick tries to give him a gun in case he wants to kill himself, but Jim the martyr would rather that the Camp Terror residents have the weapon. Plus, I think maybe he's looking forward to being a zombie so he can kill Rick. Or maybe that's just me. Might be just me, because all of a sudden Darryl is looking oddly sensitive and... somewhat attractive? This show has warped my brain.

We return to a completely different show, but hey, you won't see me complaining. I'm still waiting for the all-Merle show. Or the Darryl/Glennn buddy crimefighting show. Either way. For the time being we're blissfully separated from the Camp Terror crew, and we're shown a video recording by "Wildfire MSB3417 Active." He says it is 194 days since Wildfire was declared, and 63 days since it went global. That doesn't sound promising for Morales' family in Birmingham, but still, better than being with the Camp Terror crew.

Dr. Jenner says that he's been shutting down various parts of the CDC to save power. He's made no progress on a cure. He's not sleeping and he's kind of going crazy. He does seem to be trying to stick to a routine, even though he's apparently all alone. He puts on his biohazard suit, goes into a lab, cuts up some zombie flesh, dozes off, plays with a centrifuge, looks at mutating cells under microscopes and accidentally knocks over a toxic test tube into the zombie flesh, and he has to go into a decontamination chamber and watch as all his work actually goes up in flames. He screams in frustration.

In the transmission we see him drinking some wine and complaining that the only good samples he had are now gone. He then starts to question why he's even sending the missives, as everyone is probably dead. Still, he tells the computer that he's going to get drunk and tomorrow he's going to kill himself. Then we see a big wide shot of the empty rows and rows of desks. I'd go crazy, too.

By Angel Cohn

The Camp Terror caravan has finally arrived at the CDC, and luckily most of the walkers seem to be really, really dead. There's rotting flesh and flies everywhere. Inside the building, we see Jenner picking up the moving lifeforms on a security camera and staring in disbelief and possibly annoyance at them. The CT crew starts to go into meltdown mode as some zombie walkers start creeping up on them, and they realize that the CDC is totally locked up and empty. Carol starts crying. It's getting dark, they have no place to go, they have no fuel or food... and apparently He's the Sheriff has no back up plan. Solid idea to bring not only your family but everyone else's into the middle of the city, without any escape route planned out. That's the problem with thinking you're right all the damned time.

By Angel Cohn

Rick sees the security camera move, though everyone thinks he's lost it and is just grasping at straws. Inside, we see Jenner and he's wishing them to go away. This Jenner must be some kind of genius, or just a really good judge of character. Rick just starts desperately pleading with the camera, saying that they're basically killing them by leaving them outside, as more and more walkers start to surround them. Just then, the gate opens, allowing them inside. I don't think this was Jenner's wisest move. Not only are they going to be super annoying houseguests and probably use up all his remaining resources, who knows what kind of contaminants they might be bringing in with them? I hope he throws them in some sort of holding cell week. Again, the final closing shot of the door opening and pouring out light was kind of great, but a show cannot survive on end scenes alone.

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