"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Sunday, November 2, 2014

The Walking Dead 5.4: Hospital of Horror

Hospital are scary places, and have played decisive roles in many a horror movie.  Hey, they're scary in real life, especially in our day and age of Ebola and who knows what.   So, it makes sense that The Walking Dead, or one of its main characters, would sooner or later be situated in a post-apocalyptic hospital.

Beth has been out of sight but not of mind since last season, when she was kidnapped not quite under Daryl's nose but close enough.   We still don't know how exactly she got from the kidnapping car to the hospital in Atlanta, but there she is, in a place populated with the requisite mixture of people who prey on the weak, people struggling to maintain some sense of order, and those with a few shreds of humanity still intact.

Actually, on that last point, those shreds are pretty thin.  The doc who befriends Beth has her kill a bed-ridden patient, simply because, as we learn at the end, the patient was himself a doctor, and the doctor in the hospital of horrors didn't want any competition.

This hospital comes replete with a pit - literally - making this an episode of The Walking Dead meets Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.   But there are a few glimmers of hope, for Beth, maybe.   The orderly who helps her escape does make it to freedom, himself, even if Beth does not.   When I saw this, I was thinking, good, he's the way Daryl and Rick will now be able to find out where Beth is.

But the ending held another nice surprise - Carol wheeled in on a stretcher.   Not that seeing Carol on a stretcher is nice.   But she's still alive, and if anyone can get Beth sprung from this quiet madhouse, it's Carol.

Another good standalone story, which wraps up nicely with a splash of the reality - in the person of Carol - we've come to know and look forward to.

See also: The Walking Dead 5.1: The Redemption of Carole ... The Walking Dead 5.3: Meets Alfred Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone

And see also The Walking Dead 4.1: The New Plague ... The Walking Dead 4.2: The Baby and the Flu ... The Walking Dead 4.3: Death in Every Corner ...The Walking Dead 4.4: Hershel, Carl, and Maggie ... The Walking Dead 4.6: The Good Governor ... The Walking Dead 4.7: The Governor's Other Foot ... The Walking Dead 4.8: Vintage Fall Finale ... The Walking Dead 4.9: A Nightmare on Walking Dead Street ... The Walking Dead 4:14: Too Far ... The Walking Dead Season 4 Finale: From the Gunfire into the Frying Pan


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no cannibalism but at least a plague in The Consciousness Plague

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