Rambling TV: The Walking Dead recap + thoughts on True Detective

HBO aired an awesome behind the scenes look at season 4 of Game of Thrones. You can watch it in all of it's glory here. Sati of Cinematic Corner also has a great breakdown of it here. 



The Walking Dead - episode 4.9: After

We start up immediately after 4.8 left off, with the prison in ruins. Michonne walks through a sea of walkers and decides to make two new "pets" as she's leaving, she comes across Hershel's reanimated head and puts him down.

We cut to Rick and Carl walking down a dirt road. Rick is still wounded, and he yells for Carl to slow down. Carl to put it lightly, is getting real tired of Rick's shit. They argue over several things. Who will take watch when they come up to an abandoned bar, who will take out a walker, when to eat the little food that they have. Carl even drops Shane's name to Rick. During the night, Rick passes out and can't be woken up, so Carl decides now would be a good time to give him a little speech about how he doesn't need Rick to protect him anymore. He didn't forget how when Rick had them hiding and playing farmer. That it's Rick's fault that the others are dead. Carl had a ton of good points, and this essentially mirrored the speech his much younger counterpart had in the graphic novel.

Carl goes out on a few runs on his own and soon realizes that he can't quite make it on his own. He nearly gets eaten by 3 walkers, then when he's in a house, another surprises him, causing him to waste all of his remaining bullets. He then has a moment of zen on a roof top eating a gigantic can of pudding.

Carl get's back and Rick is still passed out. During the night, Rick starts making moaning noises and starts to crawl towards Carl. He's too afraid to shoot his dad. Finally, Rick says "Carl" and he knows he's not turned. Carl holds his dad's head and tells him "I'm scared" over and over. Rick probably should've started with saying "Carl" before dramatically crawling over to him like that. Just a thought.

Let's get back to Michonne's story, which was by far the most interesting. She actually finds Rick and Carl's tracks early on, but decides against following them. She's defaulted back to her 'lone wolf' mode. She takes refuge in a car and has a dream about her two previous "pets." Only they weren't her pets then, they were her boyfriend Mike and their friend Terry. The dream starts out well enough, they're in a beautiful kitchen, Michonne is preparing food. But the scene starts changing. Her kitchen knife turns into her katana. The conversation changes from pre-apocalypse to during. Mike mentions he doesn't want to be at a camp and is afraid for "him." That him is Michonne and Mike's child, who runs up to her at one point during her dream. Then the scene changes again, Michonne is no longer holding her boy, and her friends are now armless like her pets.

I loved this little insight to Michonne. It proves the theory that she had a child of her own - remember how emotional she got holding Judith? I got the idea that Mike killed their son to "protect" him. The only question that's left is how Terry and Mike got turned. Remember, Michonne didn't know that everyone is infected until she got to Woodbury, so they'll have to get bitten at some point. I wonder if we'll get another flashback of that?

Michonne is walking through a sea of walkers with her new pets, imagines one that looks like her, and suddenly goes all HULK SMASH and kills them all, including her new pets. She doesn't want to do this on her own anymore. She goes back to the tracks and follows them. The episodes ends with her being reunited with the Grimes boys. That moment was really sweet, when I had read a spoiler synopsis for this episode, I thought this sounded incredibly cheesy, but I loved the way they handled it.

Next week's episode is going to focus on the other groups, so we probably won't see Rick, Carl and Michonne. I'm really not a huge fan of these bottle episodes, but I'll have to reserve full judgment until I watch them.

True Detective - episode 1.4: Who Goes There

*Sticking with Rambling TV's theme for today, Lisa is getting real tired of Hart's shit, so she shows up at his house and confesses everything to his wife. When Hart arrives home, he finds some suitcases and a note. He also calls Lisa and yells at her, ending with "I'm going to skull fuck you, you bitch!" Charming.

*There's a lot of people online saying that Lisa went too far by doing that. Are you kidding? Sure she was wrong to have an affair with a married man, but Hart showed up drunk at her house, kicked her door down and assaulted her date. THEN he threatened BOTH of them. I think she was kind of within her rights..

*I loved the interrogation scene with Mitch at the beginning. Joshua Leonard was very convincing.

*I'm surprised Hart's divorce happened already. I knew it was coming since he doesn't have his wedding ring on in the present scenes, but I didn't expect it so soon.

*Injecting ink and cayenne to create track marks is kind of genius.

*I'm very thankful I don't live in a neighborhood like the one in the final scene of this episode.

*Speaking of final scene, that long take was INTENSE. That's some of the finest cinematography I've seen on TV in awhile.