'The Walking Dead' Season 4, Episode 4 recap: Beth is tracked down to 'Slabtown'

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.