Tonight gave us the scientific explanation of the Dead, provided by Dr. Edwin Jenner (nearly the same name as Edward Jenner, in our real history the creator of the small pox vaccine). Jenner (Edwin - played by Noah Emmerich) is the last person alive at the CDC in Atlanta, which our band of survivors make it to. Jenner shows what happens when the virus - or whatever triggers the zombies - gets hold of a human. The human turned zombie subject of the mini-doc turns out to be Jenner's wife (I figured as much - or perhaps Jenner's son or daughter - when he told our people that the subject was someone very "close" to him.)
But there's no good news in this demo or anything else that Jenner has to reveal. The French said they were on the verge of a breakthrough, until they got over-run. This is the big extinction event for humanity, Jenner believe and avows.
But Rick and Shane neither believe nor accept it. We finally see how it happened that Shane left Rick in the hospital - it wasn't his fault - and the two and most of the team manage to break out of the CDC, set to self-destruct, to live another day (or as long, at least, as the first episode of the second season). Andrea and Jacqui (for different reasons) want to stay in the CDC and die along with Jenner, but Dale is able to talk Andrea out of this by threatening to stay in the building and die, too, if she doesn't leave with him. This was one of the best scenes of a powerful hour.
And the hour left us with a tantalizing clue to something - Jenner whispers it in Rick's ear, and we can't hear it. All kinds of theories are already abounding about the content of the whisper - some taken from the comic book series, which the TV series has already diverted from - but I'm guessing it's some sort of qualification that the future is not utterly hopeless, maybe the French communicated some information to Jenner that could be of value.
As I said in my review of the first three episodes, I'm not usually a big fan of zombie stories. But The Walking Dead is a big cut above the rest, and I'm glad it's shambling proudly along to another season.
See also The Walking Dead 1.1-3: Gone with the Wind, Zombie Style
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The Plot to Save Socrates
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15 comments:
I too am not a fan of the zombie genre but was drawn to TWD because of AMC. I assumed "V" was AI model #5. Closed captioning had it as "Vi" so that would be model #6. I thought patient #19 was connected to Jenner right after he mentioned it. That irony of course set up the omega sequence for the season finale. I'll be back next year for sure.
Hi Paul, Happy Holidays! I am not a Zombie fan but have found this series facsinating. I alao get disturbed by it in much the way Dexter should disturb us all. I'm sorry it was such a short season but great show
Happy holidays to you and your family, Dawn - makes me feel good to see you're still reading this blog!
And all the best to you, too, Darell!
Fantastic ending to the first season. I remember several people on the website bringing up the fact that the TV series has deviated from the comic in that they believed the CDC portion to be a sign of hope, potentially. To me though, it became a bigger nightmare than what the characters had already been dealing with.
Wasn't surprised either when Jenner revealed that TS-19 was his wife. Had a feeling when he said the subject had an extraordinary brain, just seemed very close to them to me. Figured it was a colleague at least, but wife was even better. However, I didn't expect the CDC to be on self-destruct mode. However, that only makes sense after Jenner talked about what is being stored there.
But I was hoping there would have been a little more explanation about where the zombification came from, since it hasn't been made entirely clear if it was caused from a virus, or something else entirely.
Perhaps that is in store for season 2? Have no doubts they will run into more human's, possibly even some form of government that remains.
But what I like about this show is that it reminds me of Lost, in reverse. Instead of the islanders being lost, the whole world apparently is, or again so it seems.
Questions I had answered though from this episdoe: It isn't all in Rick's head--he's not dying in bed and this is a last gasp by his brain to survive. Beginning of the episode proved that. It also showed why there was a bed in front of his door in the first episode. It also showed why Shane left Rick there to begin with, believing he was dead. I longed believed Shane never went back to check on him and assumed he was dead.
But new, very interesting questions:
What did Jenner whisper in Rick's ear? Big one, can't wait to see what that could be. Seemed very provocative considering Rick's reaction to it.
Was Rick actually dead when Shane was there with him in the hospital room? Could it be he's been resurrected for a reason, just not as a zombie?
Was there a helicopter or not? If so, where was it from?
Where is Meryl? Did he bring the zombies to the camp? Remember, Rick and his group walked back to the camp and seemingly never encountered any zombies along the way. That's a little hard to believe considering how many were present at the camp before they got there. Curious?
What caused "Wildfire", the spread of the zombification? Was it a virus? Was it nanobots? Was it mad cow disease? Was it a biological weapon of some kind? Was it an act of God?
Will we see the first instance when someone turned into a zombie?
Where will they go now? Seems all hope is still lost, unless Jenner said something good.
Could this end up being an experiment? Might explain the helicopter?
What will become of the father and son Rick first encountered?
This show reminds me so much of Lost it's just scary. Great story, great acting, enjoying every minute of it. And who knows it may eventually end like Lost did too, if it follows the comic book.
I'll share my find now of two Easter eggs. One is from the season pilot (alpha) and the other from the finale (omega).
The first was the stopped clock in Rick's room being frozen at 2:17. Perhaps coincidence but not after seeing that in the TS-19 episode Jenner states his wife's "reboot" time at 2H1M7S.
So we now have a solid "Genesis" clue but I ask, WHOSE genesis in TWD? Does humanity get a second chance or (what I'm going with) are the zombies cocoons with legs that are nurturing the next big leap in human evolution. Perhaps Jenner is wrong that it's our extinction event as it might be more of a gestation evolution event such as Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.
If so, the irony will be thick and exquisite, juxtaposing what Andrea did to Amy and what Morgan Jones did not do to his wife. The same with Jenner and his wife and how he and Jacqui decide to "opt out." It flips things inside out and allows us to perhaps cheer for the other side and hope that Jim doesn't get put down if he is seen again. They've already veered from the graphic novel I guess and it's what I'd do if I was a TWD showrunner (or showwalker?). ;-)
To quote the character Carol Marcus from Star Trek II:
"Well, put simply, Genesis is life from lifelessness." - Carol Marcus' summary proposal on the Genesis Project
I'm taking the irony of Amy receiving Andrea's gift of the mermaid pendant (meaning immortality?) on her "birthday" (also the beginning of her metamorphosis) as camouflage for the thicker irony that Andrea will later recognize what she has denied her little sister.
It's quite a paradigm shift to switch to the walker team after six episodes and wait for the eventual series finale to see what they do with it. The "mercy kills" of the little girl, the bicycle girl, Amy, and TS-19 just don't look the same to me anymore. I'm really hoping Jim stays out of the way of Daryl Dixon's crossbow.
I've got to add this as well. In this iteration of the zombie genre zombies don't eat brains. To me this suggests that walkers don't kill what they are trying to otherwise assimilate. The only way to "kill" a walker is to go after the brain.
Walkers also only eat living flesh and don't ever turn on their own. Juxtapose that with what Rick says in "We don't kill the living."
I'm definitely on "Team Walker" for the rest of the series now. Consider what Jenner said re: the synapses after death and how Mrs. Jones acted on the porch. Even if Rick would have caught this clue and reported it to Jenner it would only have gotten a horrid look from Jenner and then from Andrea.
Jenner went to his death and took Jacqui sadly with him, only adding to what will be a long trail of heavily ironic carnage in the series. And. I'm. Loving. It. ;-)
This series will end with a huge twist and reveal that our scrappy survivors are guilty of mer-manslaughter. ;-)
Here is my theory in several graphics.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2b5puyy
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2554wkn
So if I'm right it seems that TS-19 was indeed an "egghead" that Jenner naively turned into an omelet. Of course it's better that he will never know what he did to his wife.
Having the group eating eggs for breakfast might have also been a very subtle clue but I certainly don't need it to support my theory that I'm very confident will turn out correct.
I guess I was deluding myself that I had invented the affectionate term of "eggheads" as the showrunners must have also been thinking of that label before I came up with it. It hit upon me last night that Glenn calling the zombies the curious description of "geeks" early in the series was meant as a clue and indeed so it is. My update is thus: http://preview.tinyurl.com/28a5h9k
The difference between coincidence and synchronicity is that synchronicity is coincidence with a meaning or message. So with my already established view that the walkers will be demons metamorphosing into angels at the series end I recognized something more to support my Genesis discovery. Rick Grimes' sidearm is a .357 Magnum Colt Python. Yes, Rick is carrying a serpent.
I think I can say I've never been as excited to see the finale of a series as I am with this one. I hope the show has a good run before it takes its bow. Or would this be a "cross-bow". ;-)
Jim, I'll watch the boat just like Rick promised.
“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Synchronicity gave me a wormhole to leap through to what will be a correct analysis but now I realize that it is indeed chapter 2, verse 17 of the Book of Judges that was meant by Frank "Ferenc" Darabont.
Rick's hospital room number being 450 is another clue to Judges which "The Judge" markings on the Pontiac GTO were trying to tell me. So I'll have this show figured in a non-linear fashion with a wrong interpretation that led me straight to the correct answer. Synchronicity, indeed.
Add to this the extremely likely inclusion of Mackinac Island in Lake Huron for many very good reasons but with one being that 1980's Somewhere in Time was filmed there. It's plot contains an ontological paradox of a pocket watch. Combine Revelation's "ending of time" represented by many stopped clocks (that are also clues), the quote by Dale of William Faulkner and that Judges contains a Deuteronomic Cycle and I think the entire story can easily become an ouroboros (or halo).
From Rick's wedding ring to the ceiling lights in TS-19, I see mankind in a repeating loop of mortality-immortality. Great entertainment and a well thought out series mythology that not only follows the Book of Judges segueing into the Book of Revelation but also hiding many parallels to Gone With the Wind (recognized by our host here). The episodes are also being driven by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 The Song of Hiawatha as well and our main characters are wearing at least three hats at the same time. The Walking Dead is a brilliant piece of storytelling.
I've discovered and believe that my previous work will be correct but as an embedded layer of an overall coma-dream, with Rick Grimes perhaps having Dorothy Gale metaphorically in his family tree history.
The biblical references include Deuteronomy and Judges but by episode 103 we are in the realm of Revelation. The iterations of 217 range from the clock in Rick's room likely being meant for Judges with the one in TS-19 now firmly understood as Revelation.
With this last addition I leave you with a clue as to what was whispered by Jenner to Rick, and it's not about pregnancies or the infection. It will be revealed in the season two opening of Jenner providing Rick something he needs to reach Fort Benning and perhaps not such a good result after all.
The whisper is about a hidden government cache of food and fuel that Andrea says at the end of Wildfire they don't have any more of. The backup for what Andrea says is within TS-19's resurrection time of 2H1M17S.
I have also given a name to Merle's severed hand and am calling it "Dexter." ;-)
I freaking love this series!
Paul, I should have trusted my gut that the clock in Rick's room was Genesis. Regardless, I've come full circle back to it, which ironically is what I think Frank Darabont will do by likely showing us the 1st thing (linearly) we saw being Rick and Shane having Lunch in the car in the finale. I think Rick is (using trope-speak) a "Shaggy Dog" that's been shot and has died, seen in TS-19's flashback.
However, the continuity "errors" in that scene are not what they appear to be and are clues that what we saw in the flashback was the "real world." Thus, any complaints from zombie fans who won't like the finale (as I see it) unfurling a Biblical Revelation Judgement Day, [pause to allow this to sink in], then having both the zombies and ascending souls (casting off their tormented zombie bodies like butterflies casting off cocoon husks)only dissolve away in a blinding flash as Rick wakes from his coma (The Wizard of Oz).
This is not the end though as I see Rick going back to work with the nightmare fading quickly, glad to see that his wife and others that died are alive and well. However, instead of reality we are given Purgatory as it all begins over. Rick has come to the very gates of Hell (when on horseback) but turned away to continue onto Dante's Purgatorio and perhaps eventually Paradiso.
Although I arrived at it from other clues, Faulkner sealed the deal for me. Dale's quote in Vatos took me to the book and where it took its name from. This being Shakespeare's Macbeth- Act V, Scene 5.
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Thus, Rick is a dead shaggy dog and leaving no survivors as the show is about a zombie apocalypse I believe Frank Darabont will also use the "Kill Em All" trope with the skill he's noted for. :)
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