Review: The Walking Dead ’Indifference’

Once again, showrunner Scott Gimple and the crew for season 4 of The Walking Dead have impressed me.  With the focus shifting to the characters of the story and how they develop and deal with everything that’s going on, the series has come away from the stale team vs. complications format that permeated most of the first three seasons.  As the story continues, I find myself more invested in everyone instead of just seeing them as characters that are “likely” or “unlikely” to be killed before the season’s end.  ‘Indifference’ really hammers this home by showing some of the characters at their most vulnerable.

As the episode starts, Rick and Carol are heading on a run into town to find supplies.  Daryl and his team are trying to find a new car so that they can finish their own quest to get some medicine in time to save the sick folks back at the prison.  And though we see the requisite number of zombies and zombie killings this episode, where the story shines is in what each character has to face along the way.

Tyreese is still dealing with the loss of his girlfriend and the potential death of his daughter at the hands of the disease.  He’s gone slightly over the edge and is acting suicidal.  Luckily, Michonne is there to reel him in a bit and he helps her in turn to think about her own reasons for running rampant in her quest to find the long-missing Governor.  Bob has his own demons that he’s wrestling with, though he seems to be losing the battle.  And Carol and Rick have to deal with her decision to kill the two initial carriers of the sickness in an attempt to stop its spread.  In the end, most of the crew comes out with the short end of the stick.  Rick’s final decision and Carol’s eventual end are the crux of the show, though I’m guessing that their story is not over just yet.

This time around, the action scenes were brief and to the point, with no more zombie encounters going on than were necessary to satisfy the general audience and make the world feel like the undead are still roaming everywhere.  The actors and actresses did an excellent job, far better than most of their performances throughout previous seasons.  The directing is better, the mood is gloomier and pretty much everything was done to near perfection.  With each passing episode I remain skeptical, feeling that the show will once again drop into mediocrity as was the pattern of the past, but each time my skepticism is proven to be unfounded.  The Walking Dead is getting better and better and doesn’t look to be stopping its progress anytime soon.

Some may complain that the show is getting slow again, that there needs to be more zombie fights and action and all that crap.  But those people are missing the point of what this show is supposed to be about.  Now that the series is getting darker and grittier, it feels a lot more like everyone is living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  Let’s hope the trend keeps up.

For a sneak peek at next week’s episode, ‘Internment’ head to this site and check it out.

Photo Credits -           

Indifference courtesy of haveuheard.net