Walking Dead 1.02 “Guts” Recap

We start in the survivor camp, with a red bucket carried to Rick’s wife Lori. Inside the bucket are mushrooms, which may or may not be poisonous (yum!). Lori tells the lookout Dale to keep an eye on her son and Dale tells her to shout if she sees anything.

Lori heads into the woods to do some more foraging. A rustle in the trees behind her. Something watching her. Is it a zombie? A bear? No! It’s our favorite horny misogynist Shane who proceeds to bang Rick’s wife on some pine needles. Lori, feeling a tad guilty as Shane mounts her, removes her wedding band from around her neck. How touching.

Meanwhile, back in the tank, Rick converses with his new CB buddy who tells him that he’s pretty much screwed. what with all the zombies surrounding him and all (thanks kind stranger!). Rick decides to run for it while the Walkers are feasting on his horse. He finds a beretta with one 15-round clip and a single grenade. Rick climbs out of the tank, bashes the one zombie still on it. Limps down the street, firing head shots as he runs. Ducks into an alley where he joins up with his new friend Glenn who’s wearing a baseball cap and a backpack.

They escape up a fire escape. Glenn tells Rick he’s a dumbass for riding into town like Clint Eastwood. They make it to the roof, head down into a building, through the exit and back into another alley. Glenn tells his walkie talkie friends he’s got someone with him. More zombies. Two figures in dark protective suits emerge from a door and bash some undead skulls with bats. Rick’s reward for escaping is having a woman named Andrea point a gun in his face, blaming him for drawing out the Walkers. This new group of city survivors were here to scavenge, quick in and out, without drawing attention to themselves. Bad Rick.

Trapped in a clothing store, Rick tells the group he was trying to flag a helicopter. He’s promptly mocked by the group for suggesting such an absurd thing.

Someone fires shots from the roof. The group heads up. This is Dixon and he likes playing zombie sniper. Gets called out by a man named T-Dog for wasting bullets. Dixon refuses to take orders from a “n-word”. They fight, Dixon kicks multiple ass (he’s a BIG racist), including Rick’s. Beats the crap out of T-Dog, puts a gun in his face. Spits on him. Dixon puts himself in charge (brute strength winning the power position) until Rick butts him with the sniper rifle and cuffs him to a pipe. Rick gives Dixon a kumbuya speech on how the world is different now, there’s no white trash racists or n-words, only “white or dark meat”, us or the dead. Dixon doesn’t quite agree with Rick’s philosophical viewpoint. Rick puts a gun to his head, Dixon doesn’t believe he’ll pull the trigger because he’s a cop. Officer Friendly says that all he is now is a man looking for his wife and son, and anyone getting in the way of that will lose.

Stuck on the rooftop, the city gang weighs their options. Rick offers the sewers as an escape route. Thankfully one of the group, Jacqui, worked for the city zoning office and knows how to access the sewers in the sub-basement. Glenn will only go down with one more from the group. Rick stays above because he’s a good shot. Morales goes with Glenn into the tunnels.

Back up top in the store, the Walkers continue working on the storefront windows. Andrea apologizes to Rick for the gun in the face. Rick accepts the apology because “people do things when they’re afraid.” Shows Andrea the safety on her gun was still on.

Dixon tries to convince T-Dog to get him out of his cuffs. T-Dog knows Dixon wants to shoot Rick when Rick returns.

Back in the sewers, Glenn and Morales run into a grate with a zombie behind it, feasting on a rat.

Andrea fondles a mermaid necklace in memory of her sister who loves the fantastical. The zombies break through the first layer of shop glass. They need to find a way out, but the sewers aren’t it.

Spotting some construction equipment below, the city group plans to create a zombie diversion. Learning that the Walkers respond to hearing and smell, Rick decides to chop up one of the dead Walker bodies to cover a few of them in its guts so they can reach the construction equipment and use it as a distraction. They grab a zombie body and Rick reads out the name on the dead zombie’s license and finds a picture of the zombie’s girlfriend. “He used to be one of us”, Rick tells the group in an effort to preserve a little humanity. Rick ginsu’s the body in a splatter of chopped limbs and guts. Wearing gloves and protective jackets, Rick and Glenn reach in and spread themselves with a healthy helping of zombie guts. They even toss in some intestines, hands and feet around their necks for good measure. Rick gives T-Dog the key to free Dixon in case the plan works.

Rick and Glenn give their best zombie walks, trying their best to mingle on the street. Thunder starts to rumble. A storm is coming.

Back at the trailers, Shane teaches Rick’s son how to tie rope knots with Lori looking on. A message on the CB as T-Dog asks for Shane. We now know that the city group is part of the country folk. The message says they are trapped in a department store and then the signal is lost. Shane makes the call not to go after them and risk the rest of the group. We can see the city of Atlanta in the far background.

Rick and Glenn continue their zombiethon on the streets of Atlanta, still undetected. That is, until it starts to rain. Doh.

The zombie guts start to wash off. Now all the Walkers are starting to give them that glazed “Hey, wait a minute! I think I’ve just been punked!” stare. Finally, one of the Walkers goes for the kill. Rick splits its head open with an axe. They run, chopping and hacking their way down the street.

Rick and Glenn hurl themselves over the fence to the construction equipment. Rick takes zombie shooting practice with the Walkers who climb over the fence, while Glenn gets the keys from the box on the wall. They reach a moving truck. The fence goes down. Here comes the undead flash mob. They drive off.

The next step in the plan is to create noise to draw the Walkers away from the department store. Rick breaks into a sports car to set off its alarm, then Glenn drives the sports car to create the distraction while Rick continues in the truck.

The rooftop crew heads down to meet the truck, leaving T-Dog with a decision: free Dixon, the racist pig who beat the crap out of him, or leave him handcuffed on the roof? Dixon begs: “Don’t leave me, it’s not human.” T-Dog goes back, but he trips, and the key falls down a shaft. It’s an accident, but T-Dog leaves Dixon behind, locking the rooftop door behind him for good measure.

Glenn uses the sports car to get the zombies chasing after him as some of the Walkers finally break into the store. Rick backs the truck up to the store’s delivery platform. The rest of the city group climbs in just in time.

T-Dog tells the group he dropped the key, but they aren’t quite believing him. Glenn drives out of the city in the sports car with a scream of exuberance. And 1.02 comes to an action-packed end.