“We need more guts,” Rick Grimes told his fellow survivors tonight, and after all the grime and nastiness of the episode, I think there were some viewers at home telling themselves the same thing. Minute for minute, tonight’s episode didn’t have an incredible amount of gore, but there was one scene of the episode – and we all know what scene that is – that really pushed the envelope for how much blood can be shown on TV. One of the shots made me, like Glenn, really want to hurl. For the first time ever, I was really, really thankful that television doesn’t utilize smell. That would have just been devastating.
But the merits of this episode should not be based on the ick factor; it, like the comic, really focused on the characters. Like Morgan and Duane last week, Rick got to interact with a whole new cast of characters. And, interestingly, many of these new acquaintances were new to even readers of the comic book as well. In fact, aside from a few, like Glenn, these characters were all completely new or drastically altered. I’ll get into a more in-depth comic comparison later this week for those of you who have traced the steps of Rick’s illustrated alter ego.
The new cast of characters, as far as television purposes go, were essentially forgettable. Aside from the aforementioned Glenn, only a couple of survivors were memorable for any reason other than being completely annoying. There was the racist hick Dixon, who was mercifully (for us at least) left stranded on the roof of a building. He served a purpose, sure, but he was the most annoyingly two-dimensional character in the entire show. The others were mostly story devices, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing given how little time we’ve spent with them.
Of course, there’s the big question: will we see Rick meet up with his beloved family – and Shane – in next week’s episode? Quite possibly. I know one thing: I’ll be watching. B
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