The Walking Dead: Season 1, Episode 5 Review: Wildfire

Wildfire

Original Airdate: November 28, 2010

Writer: Glen Mazzara
Director: Ernest Dickerson

Of course the massacre would be a turning point of the season, one thing from the comic that needed to stay for the show.  Besides establishing how dangerous this world is, it puts the Shane and Rick conflict to a near boil.  Although Rick believes that the weapons he retrieved kept the zombies from killing everyone, taking four strong people away from camp left them vulnerable to the attack in the first place.  He knows it and the loss of those people on top of not being able to help Jim informs his desperation in the end, slamming on the door in hopes that anyone inside will let them in.  Shane isn’t letting Rick off easy, but Rick’s growing influence in the group is wearing him down to where he contemplates killing Rick in a “hunting accident” before Dale busts him.

Also important to the episode is how the survivors treat the dead and undead after an attack.  It’s seems out of character for Rick not to take issue with the idea that the zombies get burned while the killed survivors get buried.  As Rick made them take note, the zombies were once people and eventually they all will become zombies themselves.  That lesson seems short lived, but maybe this just represents the theory Rick presents doesn’t work when it practice these former people slaughtered a ton of your newly formed family.

Then comes the issue of what they do with those killed by zombies or just bitten and quickly falling apart from it.  For this no one is affected more than Andrea, who spends most of the episode holding a vigil for Amy.  This really nails the hard toll the zombie apocalypse takes on a person.  How do you react when someone you love dies and you know they will come back?  Can you stand by while a guy drives a pick axe through their skull?  What if you wait and they come back, can you do what’s necessary or will grief and guilt override it?  I also liked how they handled Amy’s reanimation.  Instead of her awaking at full strength and pulling Andrea’s neck to her mouth, it’s like she’s waking up.

During the clean up Carol has a good character developing moment, cathartically pulverizing her abusive husband’s skull to a point where it made the guy who is doing this for fun uncomfortable.  I still like to think the excessive skull bashing and the torn apart corpse was more for his character being terribly written and serving no purpose.  Of the comic characters, she and Sophia are the least defined in the series, so maybe they’ll go in a different direction if they’re around for season two.  Besides seeing the live action version of the comic, an adaptation can be a fun was to explore an untraveled route.

As the bodies are being taken care of, Rick and Shane quarrel about what to do next.  It’s between Shane’s idea of Fort Benning, 100 miles away and the likelier safe spot or Rick’s of the CDC headquarters, closer and possibly a place to find out more about what happened.  Rick wins the argument as fuel is low and the Winnebago is falling apart without the hose the van had and just further eats at Shane.

Before the exodus, Morales and his family decide to go their own way in hopes of finding their family.  Considering how minor a character Morales and especially his family was, I’m not too frustrated that they went nowhere, but for a season that only had six episodes, why bother introducing so many characters that did little to nothing for the season arc?

Also dispatched is poor Jim, who was bit during the attack, but kept it secret until the morning after.  Thankfully they spare us the “survivor hiding a zombie bite” story seen in a lot of zombie movies and address it head on, where it becomes another part of the episode’s theme of how the survivors deal with the dead or soon to be dead.  Daryl’s ready to put him down before he so much as dies as preventative measure, but Rick sees hope in getting him to the CDC where he could be cured.  Instead, Jim decides that he won’t be able to make it and asks to be left behind.  While true to the comics, I wonder why no one brings up the idea that when he comes back he could be a threat to others.  Then again, at this point, there isn’t as much for him to go for.

The last act switches things up with the introduction of Dr. Jenner, a scientist who has been studying the zombie outbreak alone in the CDC’s bunker.  Being the last survivor in the facility, it’s a lonely and hard life.  For all intents and purposes, he is The Walking Dead’s Desmond Hume.  When Dr. Jenner is at his lowest, ready to get smashed and kill himself, the survivors come pounding on his door, just like Desmond when Locke slammed the hatch door.  In fact, it’s hard not to compare the final shot of this episode with the ending of Lost.

The stage setter for the finale, “Wildfire” does a good job reminding us of the stakes, thinning down the massive cast and getting the survivors to what should be an interesting stage for the season finale.  The last act feels a little like this episode ran short and the finale ran long, another symptom of cramming storylines from a 12 episode season to a 6 episode one.  Hopefully this is another thing that’ll be fixed when they get a full season.

Overall Score: 8/10

DON'T READ, SPOILERS BELOW (Highlight if you've read the comics)

Purists have probably not liked most of the first season as far as fidelity is concerned.  Outside of the first episode, extensive liberties have been taken bringing the show to a TV format.  Now they’re introducing the government’s last gasp of a response.  This is something the comics have chosen to ignore completely because without the systems of communication in place, how are they to know what happened?  That lack of knowledge helps drive the comic’s reality.  Giving the TV survivors insight into the chaos is a risky move, but could be interesting, and I doubt they’ll be there for long.