Beth doesn’t plan
to stick around this episode.
All right, “Walking Dead,” we get it
— there is no sanctuary, anywhere.
Besides some brief, bucolic moments
on Hershel’s Farm and in the prison (also under Hershel’s watch), every other
community that we’ve stumbled across in this grave new world (Woodbury,
Terminus and now Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta) has snakes in the grass.
The more people you cram together, the more deranged they seem to get.
Of course, compared to the cannibals
at Terminus, waking up to indentured servitude in a hospital police state is
almost cozy. Except for those handsy officers — I guess comely little wards
like Beth (Emily Kinney) are supposed to consider sexual assault and possible
rape as a small price to pay for being kept “safe.” HMO-no!
So this week’s episode of “Lost” —
sorry, “Dead” — begins with a close-up of Beth’s eyes opening some indeterminate
period of time after she and Daryl were attacked by walkers and separated last
season. She’s in a hospital bed and hooked up to an IV, with a fractured wrist
and a stitched gash under her eye.
It’s been so long since we last saw
Beth that I honestly couldn’t remember if she’d sustained these injuries
previously, or if this happened during the attack. (I recall her foot being
hurt, but not her hand.)
She doesn’t remember how she got
here, so she understandably starts freaking out and pounding on the locked
door, and I’ve gotta give the girl props for resourcefulness — when she hears
people outside, she yanks the needle out of her arm to use as a weapon.
And in walk a doctor in a clean,
white lab coat, and a cop in a clean, full uniform — two relics of days gone
long by. What is this?
The medic, Dr. Steven Edwards,
diffuses the situation by introducing himself and Officer Dawn Lerner, and
explaining that Beth is being treated in Atlanta. Our girl demands to know how
she got here, and Dawn coldly says that her officers found Beth alone on the
side of the road (no sign of Daryl), surrounded by “rotters,” and that she now
“owes them” for saving her.
And here we go.
Each community that we’ve come across
has had its own rules. The cruel roadies that Daryl fell in with believed in
claiming property, and lying absolutely was not allowed. You joined the
Termites or you fed them, and they were so methodical that they counted bullets
and even ate their own. Remember, the body on slab in the season premiere was Gareth’s
own brother. In lieu of flowers, please send spices to season the deceased.
We learn the situation at Grady
Memorial Hospital is that everyone plays their part: Noah, the handsome young
custodian, mops the floors and cleans the uniforms — and quickly bonds with
Beth by slipping her a lollipop from Dawn’s office. (Props to him for the
“Lollipop Guild” reference.) The officers patrol the hospital, go on runs for
supplies and to “rescue” more men and women for this nuthouse, and they also
keep careful track of all food and resources that the wards use.
And the wards, like Beth? Well, by
virtue of being rescued, operated on by the good doctor, and now taking
advantage of this group’s hospitality, these wards are now in debt. So, they
are expected to work off their debt by performing menial labor in the hospital
— and keeping the officers “happy.”
In case what THAT entails wasn’t made
clear, we meet the most one-dimensional, creepy, sexual predator cop, named
Gorman, who lays it on thick with Beth (who’s barely 18) the moment he sees her
conscious.
He and his partner were the ones who
found her “wriggling in the road” with one zombie “high on your thighs.”
Fortunately, Gorman “got there first.”
Every word is dripping with sexual
innuendo, and Beth looks disgusted and terrified. He demands that she show a
little appreciation for saving her life, and warns her that “everything costs
something.”
Beth becomes familiar with this
tit-for-tat mantra during her first day at work as a nurse-in-training at this
medical center. Dr. Edwards (are the writers “E.R.” fans?) brings her into a
room where one patient is on battery-operated life support. There’s little
chance he can recover from his wounds, so the doc pulls the plug — Dawn’s
orders. Resources are reserved only for those with a fighting chance, who can
in turn make themselves useful.
So if Beth hadn’t woken up soon
enough, the plug would have been pulled on her, too.
After mercy-killing the lost patient,
Dr. Edwards shows Beth the creative way in which they dispose of the bodies:
dumping them down an elevator shaft into the basement, where a milling herd of
walkers will eventually eat and dispose of them IF they get the corpses before
they’re cold. (So picky, these zombies.) “It’s not the most dignified disposal
system,” says the doctor, “but we work with what we have.”
Again, I was reminded of Terminus,
and how desensitized the Termites became to butchering fellow human beings.
Same here; it’s all in a day’s work: unplug the patients who aren’t responding,
and give the scraps to the hungry zombies. It’s post-apocalyptic composting!
Beth continues bonding with the
doctor and Noah the janitor, while repeatedly antagonizing Dawn. Noah hides
candy in her scrubs, and the doctor shares a bite of his breakfast (roasted guinea
pig, yum yum) and gripes about how boring the end of the world is.
“You feel safe enough to feel bored?”
says Beth incredulously. “You’re lucky.”
Dr. Edwards and Dawn underestimate
Beth because she’s petite and pretty and young, but they don’t realize how
battle-hardened surviving outside of walls for much of the past 2 ½ years or so
has made her. Dawn, Edwards and these officers are in fact the ones who’ve
become soft and warped by hiding inside the hospital for so long. It’s easy for
us as audience members to forget that, too, which is why I’ll admit I’m always
surprised when I see Beth doing something resourceful — like pull out her IV
for a makeshift weapon. It’s a nice trick on the showrunners’ part, to rub our
faces in the fact that many of us have long considered Beth one of the weakest
links, when in fact she has plenty of tricks up her sleeve.
Sometime later, a couple of bodies
are wheeled in, the catalysts for revealing the ugly truth behind this
seemingly peaceful and secure living situation. Finally, some action.
The first is Gavin Trevitt (pardon my
spelling), who fell from a fourth-floor apartment while trying to elude some
zombies. Dr. Edwards immediately writes this one off as another lost cause and
a waste of resources, but Dawn shows surprising interest in this case, and
demands the doc do whatever he can. He, in turn, seems uncharacteristically
hesitant to help. He manages to stabilize Trevitt, but complains that he
doesn’t have the equipment to resolve the man’s internal bleeding.
And that’s when Dawn bitch-slaps Beth
across the face hard enough to reopen the stitches on her cheek.
“Try to grasp the stakes here,” she
snaps at the good doctor, who then has to re-stitch Beth.
Next up, a ward named Joan, who tried
to escape, is dragged back in by Gorman. A walker has taken a chomp out of her
arm, and she vocally refuses medical care, demands they leave her be — but Dawn
makes the call that they will save her life whether she likes it or not, and
that entails amputating her arm. Without anesthesia. So much for that
Hippocratic Oath we assume that Dr. Edwards once took …
And lucky Beth gets to help.
Jesus, she’s doing more working as a
ward in this hell hospital than the interns did during most of the first season
of “Grey’s Anatomy.” And with a broken wrist.
Joan spews plenty of vitriol at
Officer Gorman, and it’s clear that Beth isn’t the only one he’s made unwelcome
sexual advances on. In case you weren’t sure whether you liked Gorman or not,
he calls Joan a “smart-ass whore.” So no, we don’t like him.
Beth learns from a little laundry
room tête-à-tête with Noah that no one who comes to this community leaves
alive. He’s been stuck there for a year, but he’s been biding his time to blow
this Popsicle stand as soon as he can pick his moment.
“See, they think I’m scrawny, they
think I’m weak, but they don’t know sh-t about me and what I’m about — or what
you are,” he says. Beth smiles. Yay, she’s found a friend. And we’re reminded
not to underestimate Beth.
Dawn offers a dinner tray peace
treaty that night (which would be nice, except she has to make it all creepy by
telling Beth, “I know you didn’t have breakfast” — just a gentle reminder of
how closely their guest is being watched). She tries to explain how things work
here: “I’m giving you food, clothes, protection. When have these things ever
been free?”
Beth points out that she never ASKED
for their help — she was dragged here unconscious — but Dawn brushes that off.
Beth did need the help at the time. They did save her life, after all. And now
she owes them. As soon as she works off her debt, she can go. But the catch
here is, she’ll never work it off; every day, she’s going to eat the food, wear
the clothes … if she gets sick, the doctor will heal her up. If Dawn smacks the
crap out of her, Beth will have to be stitched up again. It’s a trap. She’ll
just keep accruing more debt every day, until this is the only life she knows.
Beth doesn’t plan to stick around,
though. She tells Noah she wants in on his escape.
So Beth is humming later on while
she’s mopping the blood in Joan’s room — they can take away her freedom, but
they can’t take away Emily Kinney’s cross-promotional recording contract! — and
Joan comments that hearing Beth’s music is really nice. She alludes to the deal
Dawn has struck with the cops, about turning a blind eye to the cops
manhandling, and, we assume, raping the wards: “It’s easy to make a deal with
the devil when you’re not the one paying the price,” she spits.
Beth fully learns what that price is
when creepy Officer Gorman comes into her room uninvited later, sucking
suggestively on the lollipop that Noah had given her. He forces the sweet
contraband into Beth’s mouth in a really uncomfortable shot (“I’m returning it
to its rightful owner”) that’s mercifully interrupted by Dr. Edwards catching
him. He tells Gorman that Beth is not “his,” and that he can’t have Joan
anymore, either (and there it is), but Gorman warns that no one can stop him;
not Dawn, not Edwards, because it’s only a matter of time before a stronger,
better boss, and another doctor, come along.
Beth tries to understand why Dr.
Edwards doesn’t just up and leave, and he takes her on a full tour of the
hospital — including the snarling walkers pressed up against the gates on the
ground floor. Escape is suicide. They’re in the middle of Atlanta. There are
zombies everywhere. Of course he’s staying in the hospital. And Beth should,
too. And she should be GRATEFUL.
Then he brings her to the roof to
survey to charred remnants of fire-bombed Atlanta, and he explains how
everything went down; they were in the middle of evacuating patients when the
bombs fell, and all the patients he let outside died. Dawn and her partner,
Hanson — who was previously in charge — held the peace for as long as they
could inside the hospital, and they came up with the system of having anyone
they save compensate them by working at there. But then Hanson cracked. He and
some other people were killed. Dawn stepped up. And now her cops are running
wild, and she’s letting them while she waits for someone to come save them.
This hospital is a house of cards on the verge of collapse.
“You call this livin'?” Beth asks.
She recognizes how tenuous the peace is in this place, and she’d rather take
her chances out in the wild, thank you very much.
And now we learn that even the doctor
realizes it’s not as safe in this community as he pretends it is — and he’s not
above some underhanded self-defense. He asks Beth to administer Mr. Trevitt’s
medication before taking the night off, “75 milligrams of clozapine,” he
clearly states.
So Beth gives the patient the dosage
as Noah swings by to say hi — and the body immediately goes into convulsion and
crashes. Dawn positively FLIPS OUT about this, and Noah tries covering for Beth
— and gets the crap beaten out of him for it. Besides suspected rape, there’s
also police brutality running rampant in this place.
Kind-hearted Beth fesses up to Dr.
Edwards that it wasn’t Noah’s fault, and that something happened after she
administered the clozapine to the patient … which the doc tsks-tsks. And he
tells her that was the wrong drug, and that he’d clearly said a different drug.
Beth calls bullsh-t on that.
So why did the good doctor kill a
man, and set up two innocent teens to take the fall?
Because Dawn is not only thrifty with
resources — she’s also thrifty with people, which she makes clear in a visit to
Beth’s room shortly after she finishes pummeling poor Noah.
Everyone is worth something — whether
it’s doing the laundry, killing zombies … or being a sex toy that keeps the
officers happy. And if you’re not helping “the greater good,” then there is no
use for you here. And Beth is definitely not the greater good, in Dawn’s eyes.
Dawn began judging Beth the second
the girl was wheeled in, because of the scars on her wrists from when she cut
herself in season 2. “Some people just aren’t meant for this life,” she says —
meaning Beth — “and that’s OK … as long as they don’t take advantage of the
ones who are.”
Dawn keeps figuratively (and
literally) hitting Beth with accusations of how weak she is, how she needs
protection — when in reality, Dawn is the one who has been hiding for the past
couple of years and deluding herself that help is on the way, that someone is
going to come and save her. Meanwhile, Beth has been the one out in the world
with Rick and his gang, facing the walkers head-on, facing reality, and
accepting the fact that if you want saving, you’re gonna have to save yourself.
Beth is worth much, much more than Dawn realizes, and I really hope this bad
cop learns from her mistake.
So Beth and Noah hatch a plan to
escape that day — while Noah keeps Dawn busy, Beth will search her office for
the key to the basement, and then the two can slip out. Unarmed. Past walkers.
You kids realllllly didn’t think this
through.
And while searching Dawn’s file
cabinets (and was anyone else yelling: “Why the HELL are you looking for a KEY
in a FILING CABINET when you know it’s CLEARLY going to be in a locked desk
drawer?”), Beth finds the late Mr. Trevitt’s wallet — and she learns he was a
doctor at another hospital.
So that’s why Dr. Edwards tricked her
into murdering him — because with another doctor in the building, suddenly
Edwards’ prized role and social hierarchy as the only medical practitioner in
this hell hole becomes threatened, because frugal Dawn doesn’t need two
doctors.
And then Beth notices a pool of blood
on the floor. And lying behind the desk is Joan’s body; she committed suicide
with a pair of scissors, and scratched “F--- You” on the floor. Her head is
still undamaged, however, so it’s only a matter of time before she turns.
So Beth breaks into Dawn’s desk using
a letter opener, and gets her hands on the basement key just as Officer Gorman
catches her. He hasn’t seen Joan’s body yet, but he can see he’s finally got
some real dirt on Beth that he can use to his advantage. On the floor next to
Beth’s feet, Joan starts to reanimate (and am I crazy, or has her body rapidly
decomposed in a matter of seconds?). So Beth pretends to give in to Officer
Friendly, and as he very grossly begins SMELLING her (really, dude), Beth grabs
the lollipop jar, smashes it over his head, and ducks out of the way as the
zombie version of Joan finally exacts her revenge on Gorman, and tears out his
throat Rick Grimes-style with his teeth.
Beth gets out of there — smartly
grabbing Gorman’s gun first — and passes Dawn in the hall, smoothly telling her
that she saw Joan and Gorman in her office, and that they’re looking for her
(nice!). Then Beth and Noah make their escape, rappelling down the elevator
shaft with a rope made from bed sheets. Unfortunately, Noah falls and hurts his
leg. So now he and Beth are limping through the dark basement, and we only see
the walkers surrounding them by the flash of Beth’s gun whenever she fires.
(Beth seems to have an inexhaustible supply of bullets in this thing.) They get
outside, and while Noah just manages to slip through a gap in the chainlink
fence, Beth is caught again by Joan’s officers, forced to the ground, and
handcuffed. Damn!
Dawn confronts Beth in her office,
but Beth turns on her and accuses her of letting Gorman attack the women in
this hospital, and verbally slaps the cop with, “No one’s comin', Dawn. No
one’s comin'. We’re all gonna die, and you let this happen for nothing.”
And that’s when Dawn beats the CRAP
out of Beth. We see the doctor stitching Beth up again in his office afterward,
and her face is a symphony of bruises, and she’s got a new, stitched gash on
her head. He tries comparing himself to St. Peter — Peter had to deny Christ
when he was arrested, or else he would have been crucified, too, blah blah
blah. Beth’s not buying it. But after the doc leaves his office, she slyly
palms his surgical scissors.
So Beth is walking in slow-motion
down the hall toward the doctor, the scissors in her hand … when her attention
is caught by a gurney with a new patient on it being wheeled in.
At first I thought it was going to be
Noah … but the hair is silver … and then a ray of sunlight falls on the face
and OH MY GOD, IT’S CAROL. Unconscious and beaten to all hell.
Blackout.
Last Gasps:
·
What the HELL
happened to Carol?! And what clue does having her show up at the hospital give
us about who Daryl was calling to in the bushes last episode? I think either:
1. Daryl has stumbled across Noah,
and Noah explains that Beth is at the hospital — that’s why Daryl looks so
grim. But how did Daryl lose Carol along the way?
2. Somehow Daryl does have Carol and
Beth behind him, and Carol is so hurt that she is hanging back with Beth.
3. It’s just Beth, as something grave
has happened to Carol in the hospital.
4. Hey, it could be Morgan — although
it seems like Morgan is a few weeks behind them, judging by the growth on
Rick’s sign when we saw him in that post-credit sequence.
·
What was Beth about
to do with those scissors before she saw Carol? She wasn’t hiding them well, so
it looks like she was about to use them, right? I just find it kind of shocking
that she’d go for such an overt strike on the doctor so soon after her failed
escape attempt.
·
I love learning the
different words that various survivors have for the zombies. Rick’s team calls
them “walkers.” The Governor called them “biters.” Sam and Ana called them
“skin-eaters” in season 4. Now we can add “rotters” to the list.
·
I also liked playing
“spot the cop” this episode — because almost everywhere Beth went, there was
one of Dawn’s officers standing nearby, whether it was the cleaning supply
closet, or the hall or, if you looked closely, even the sniper looking down on
Beth and Dr. Steven while they were on the roof.
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