‘The Walking Dead’ 4.13 Recap: “That’s a Redneck Brunch Right There”

This week brings us another episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ without star Andrew Lincoln. Instead, we continue to find out what’s going on with Daryl and Beth, as well as catch up with Maggie, Sasha and Bob Stookey.

Speaking of Bob, he’s the main focus of the pre-credit sequence, which has him wandering the countryside alone, drinking cold medicine (for the alcohol content, of course), and making shelter for himself. He runs across Daryl and Glenn, and we realize this is actually a flashback to when Bob first joined our group of survivors.

Back in the present, Maggie, Sasha and Bob must kill some Walkers during a heavy fog, which makes them very hard to see. (Walkers are always silent until they’re right up on you, you know!) For a second, it looks like maybe Bob got bit by one, but he claims that the zombie bit right on the bandage covering his shoulder. This sounds a little suspicious at first, but Bob shows no signs of being sick throughout the episode, so I guess he’s okay.

The trio now has a broken compass and only a handful of bullets left. They come upon one of those signs leading to “Terminus” and Bob mentions that he heard that name on the radio way back when he was part of the group that went looking for supplies (when half the people at the prison were sick). Bob thinks they should head there – as does Maggie, who suspects that Glenn might be waiting for her there. Sasha, on the other hand, doesn’t like the idea. We’ll find out later that she’s afraid it will confirm that Tyreese might not be alive anymore.

They vote and agree to go to Terminus, but after making camp for the night, Bob and Sasha awaken the next morning to find Maggie gone, with a note written in the dirt that they shouldn’t risk their lives for her. They start out to search for her, coming upon another Terminus sign, next to which Maggie has painted a message in blood for Glenn to go to Terminus.

While all this is going on, Daryl and Beth come upon a graveyard and funeral home. Going inside, they discover a nice stash of food and assume that someone stored it there and may soon come back. Later that night, while Daryl rests in one of the caskets (I hope that’s not foreshadowing!), Beth plays the piano and sings to him. The two decide that this might be a good place to stay for a while.

Of course, no one gets a moment of rest in the zombie apocalypse. It isn’t long before a whole horde of zombies attacks the funeral parlor. Daryl and Beth get separated, and while Beth is able to run outside, Daryl winds up getting cornered down in the embalming room. Just when it looks like our hero is done for, he manages to work his way out of the room and out of the building as well. He sees a car racing away (we assume it’s Beth, but aren’t sure) and realizes that he’s on his own once again.

Meanwhile, Bob and Sasha spot a small town with a building that Sasha believes will provide good shelter. However, Bob insists that they should keep looking for Maggie. Sasha tells him that she’s going to the building alone if she has to, so Bob goes for broke and plants a kiss on her. Isn’t it odd that so many viewers are creeped out by a potential relationship between Daryl and Beth, but no one has blinked an eye over Bob kissing Sasha? The age difference between these two characters is almost exactly the same as the age difference between Daryl and Beth. Oh well, it doesn’t really matter, as Bob’s show of affection doesn’t get him very far. Sasha still goes to the building. Now all five of our characters in this episode are on their own.

Sasha isn’t by herself for long, however. After she gets inside the building, she notices Maggie lying near an ice cream truck next to a couple other dead bodies. Seeing a Walker approaching Maggie, Sasha goes to pound on the window, and it completely falls away from the building, waking Maggie in the process. Running outside to help her, the two women fight side-by-side and kill the Walkers. Together again, they decide to catch up with Bob and head to the mysterious Terminus together.

Daryl, on the other hand, isn’t going anywhere. Exhausted and frustrated over losing Beth, he sits down in the middle of the road and doesn’t move for what appears to be hours. He’s approached by a gang of mercenaries who – yep – are the same gang that broke into the house Rick stayed at just a few episodes back. Daryl springs to life and puts the leader – a gray-haired and bearded fellow named Joe (played by Jeff Kober from ‘Sons of Anarchy‘) – in the crosshairs of his bow. Joe laughs at Daryl and asks, “Why hurt yourself… when you can hurt other people?”

This week was another limited character study. That’s pretty much been par for the course since our gang has left the prison. I liked this episode, mostly the stuff with Daryl and Beth, who are quickly becoming my favorite duo on the series (which, of course, means that one of them is likely to die soon). Bob’s character seems to have done a complete 180, as he used to be kind of creepy, but this week seems to be a pretty decent guy. Which begs the question, can he be trusted?

4 comments

  1. I have a couple of nit-picks about this episode. Why was Maggie just lying down on the ground out in the open? Was she playing dead? Does that really work? There was a truck right behind her that she could have hid in.

    When all the zombies burst into the funeral home, Daryl and Beth had a very easy solution that they totally blew. All they had to do was run up stairs. Zombies don’t climb stairs. (The writers even had Sasha point this out with all her talk of the importance of getting to high ground in that building she liked.) Worst case scenario, the zombies might try to crawl up the stairs, where they could be easily picked off one by one. Instead, Daryl runs downstairs where they can follow him and trap him in the embalming room. WTF?

  2. “we assume its beth having been kidnapped driving away”

    because her bag is on the ground and she would have stuck around for atleast a little while for darryl seeing they have fallen in love with eachother. darryls smirk and “you know” when shes askng him what changed was like a kid in highschool after a first kiss.

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