‘The Walking Dead’ Recap ‘Slabtown’: Dawn of the Dead

On ‘The Walking Dead’ recap for ‘Slabtown’, the story where Beth has been ever since the close of season 4 is revealed and needless to say she’s gone from the frying pan into the fire….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

If you haven’t figured it out by now, there aren’t many nice people left in the world of The Walking Dead. If the old adage ‘nice guys finish last’ applies in present day reality then it certainly applies to a world overrun by zombies. Where survival is the greatest luxury worth living for these days.

While Rick and his survivors have been mostly kind (comparatively), we’ve run into cannibals, hunters and towns full of people living under the thumb of a megalomaniacal sociopath. Take a guess where the long missing Beth ended up?

When Beth wakes up from a drug induced slumber she’s in Grady Memorial Hospital where some unknown care takers picked up her from the middle of the road while she was battling a group of “rotters” (I’ve watched just about every incarnation of zombie movies since “Night of the Living Dead” and I’m still not sure why The Walking Dead insists on calling these things everything but zombies — so far we’ve got walkers, biters and rotters). She fractured her wrist in the process so they brought her back to the hospital for treatment.

This was the final moment we saw Beth in season 4 when a car with a cross painted on the back of it was seen speeding away as a frantic Daryl did everything he could to save her before the vehicle sped off into the darkness. Two weeks ago, Daryl and Carol saw a similar car and gave chase and then last week, Daryl popped out of the woods seemingly all alone before inviting some unknown person or persons to come out of hiding behind him.

Well let’s squash your hopes right now — that cliffhanger didn’t get answered. We still have no clue who was in the woods with Daryl. We now know why it wasn’t Carol that popped out right away, however, and it may not even be Beth. I have a theory but stay tuned for that following the rest of the recap.

Strange Bedfellows

When Beth wakes up with an IV in her arm and stitches on her face, she’s clearly confused. When a cop named Dawn and a doctor named Dr. Steven Edwards explain how they found her, nursed her back to health and now consider her in their debt, she doesn’t exactly watch confusion melt away. It doesn’t help matters much that there’s another officer nearby who defines rapey when he looks Beth up and down like he’s about to steal his dinner after not eating for god knows how long.

Beth clearly wants to go anywhere but here, but she’s let in on a little secret right out of the gate — they saved her, patched her up and made her whole again. She owes this little town a debt and she can’t go anywhere until she pays it.

Dr. Edwards seems decent enough, but even he’s living on the edge because the only reason he survives is because he can provide medical attention to those living in the hospital and any other survivors Dawn and her deputies bring back on the infrequent runs they go on in the outside world. He tries to befriend Beth over a guinea pig dinner (ewww) before being called back into action to safe a man who jumped from the first floor of a building as well as an escapee named Joan, who would rather face the undead on the outside than whatever was living inside the hospital.

There’s you first clue this is bad.

Dr. Edwards doesn’t want to save the fallen man, but Dawn insists, which leads me to believe she knew him in some way. As far as the woman — she still owes from her time in the hospital so they can’t let her die so soon. So Dr. Edwards amputates a gnarly arm she’s sporting after she was bitten on the outside. It’s a pretty gruesome scene, but like a bill collector, Dawn isn’t letting anybody go until they are paid in full.

The Devil Inside

Beth meets a nice kid named Noah inside the hospital. He proceeds to further exacerbate her concerns about the real problems existing in this ‘safe zone’. When he was picked up, his father was with him, but they had to make a decision right then and there because only one of them could survive. In reality, Noah believes his father was abandoned because he was a big guy and they saw him as a potential threat. So Noah’s been living here for a year, paying off his debt, but with every meal he consumes or pill he pops, his bill just gets bigger and bigger. In other words, there’s really no way to escape this place.

So he’s planning how he’s going to get out on his own and he’s happy to take Beth with him. She jumps at the chance, but for now they have to bide their time while Dawn continues to rule this place with an iron fist.

Dawn attempts to show a soft touch when she sits Beth down and shares some food with her (probably charged her for it). She explains that the way the world is now, everyone has to pitch in and it’s all going to count for something. Dawn’s convinced that somebody is out there saving the world right now and when everything goes back to normal, she will have helped to keep just a little piece of things going in the mean time. Of course Dawn is as disillusioned as the people who stand out in the middle of New Mexico and hope aliens take them away, but that’s neither here nor there.

The problem is Beth gets a reality check from the newly one-armed Joan, who wants the newest member of the hospital society to understand what’s really behind Dawn’s motivation. She’s a coward so she shows strength instead of fear. She’s kind of like Billy Bob Thornton in ‘Tombstone’ — rough, gruff exterior, but it appears if someone really pushed her to the limit, she’d just stand there and bleed. As a matter of fact, a few people are convinced that Dawn will eventually be overrun by Gorman or some of her other officers and the shift of power will continue.

It only gets creepier for Beth when she goes looking for a lollipop left as a treat by her new friend Noah, only to find out that Gorman was skulking around her room earlier and found it hidden under her bed. He then proceeds to lick it, and insist Beth taste test it for him. I’ll never look at lollipops the same again.

Thankfully, Dr. Edwards arrives and saves Beth from what would have inevitably been something bad. She’s got a friend — except she doesn’t!

Even Dr. Edwards is an asshole! He tells Beth to inject another patient with a certain drug and when she does, he goes into seizure and dies. Noah takes the rap for Beth so Dawn and her thugs (deputies) beat the living shit out of him. Dr. Edwards insists he told her one drug and she accidentally injected him with another. Beth wasn’t born yesterday and clearly knows there’s more to this story than meets the eye.

Time to Go

There’s no actual notation when it comes to time passing on The Walking Dead so it’s impossible to know how long Beth has been living in the hospital when we reach our crescendo this week. Following Noah’s beat down and another death, Beth is ready to get the hell out of this place for good. Noah tells her the escape plan, which of course requires Beth to go into Dawn’s office to get a key so they can unlock a downstairs door to get outside.

When Beth gets inside she starts rummaging through the file cabinets to find a key, but no such luck. She does find Joan — dead and bleeding out on the floor — after leaving her room and using a pair of scissors to slit her own wrists. Maybe the one wise thing Dawn said this episode is that some people are meant to live in this world and some aren’t. Her only hope was that the people who weren’t supposed to survive doesn’t hinder those who are thriving. She looks right at Beth’s scarred up wrist where she tried to do the same thing Joan is doing when living back on the farm.

While Beth was able to live and regain her sense of worth, Joan just didn’t want to be here any longer and she made sure of that. Beth climbs over her dead body to find the drawer where the key is and as soon as she grabs it somebody bursts in the door (because I saw this coming from about 10 miles away). And of course the person that busts Beth is creepy ass Gorman.

He tells Beth she can keep the key and her dirty little secret about breaking into Dawn’s office so long as they can do the horizontal shuffle right there on the desk. Beth complies but just long enough to distract him and smash a jar full of suckers over his head. When Gorman falls to the ground, Joan wakes up and has a bite to eat.

Beth uses the distraction as a way to get out the door and she grabs Noah and they are off. Down an elevator shaft and onto a pile of dead bodies with a smell that just had to be wonderful. They run out of the doors and Noah’s limping, but thankfully he’s got old eagle eyed Beth using Gorman’s gun to knock down walker after rotter after biter. The numbers are mounting and as Noah gets through the fence, Beth is trapped with nowhere to go.

The deputies get out there in time to grab her as Noah shuffles away from the hospital, free at last. Unfortunately, Beth wasn’t quite so lucky although she smiles at Noah as he runs away.

An Unexpected Visitor

Captured and back in the hospital, Beth seems like all hope is lost. She tries to get out but they pulled her back in. Inside she also learns the awful truth about her friend Dr. Edwards. Beth finds out that the man she (accidentally) killed was a doctor and she remembers the name of the drug specifically that Edwards told her to give him. He finally comes clean that the man brought in was a doctor and the only way he could secure his own future was to ensure he would always be needed.

Beth’s seen enough of this awful place. She’s been nearly raped on at least two occasions. She got slapped when Dawn was upset that Dr. Edwards started being rational about wasting supplies on a person who would not likely survive the night. She tried to escape but now she’s going to be watched 24 hours a day, seven days a week and there’s not much chance she’ll get to join Noah on the outside.

So the only option Beth has is to make the group in need again. Given Dr. Edwards confession, she decides he’s the one that has to go. She grabs a scalpel and heads towards Dr. Edwards with the intention of slicing his jugular. Before Beth gets there, Dawn and the other deputies arrive with another injured person who they’ve brought back for “help”. Beth is shocked when she looks down and sees none other than Carol laying on the gurney. She’s unconscious but alive and now Beth has to stay for the chance to save her friend.

Overall this was definitely the weakest of the four episodes that have aired so far of The Walking Dead, but still not a bad effort. It put together a succinct explanation of what happened to Beth and why she hasn’t ventured out anywhere to find her people. It didn’t explain who was with Daryl and certainly only added questions when Carol showed up injured at the end. I have a feeling that it’s Noah with Daryl when he arrives back at camp and hopefully he sheds some light on his former home and what the survivors are going to be dealing with when they go back there to get their people.

They will go get their people, right?

It also appears next week The Walking Dead shifts gears to the group headed for Washington D.C. as Abraham leads Eugene and the rest of his party north until they can find a prober lab to allow their resident scientist the space to do what he has to do to save the world. No mention of Daryl, Beth or Carol not to mention Rick, Michone or Tyreese. One of the weak spots of season 4 was when they started chopping the story into huge segments, character studies if you will, and lost out on other plots for weaks at a time while each episode played out. This season has been my favorite thus far of The Walking Dead.

Let’s hope the sins of the past will remind the show of the present how to do and not to do things the right way.

One more note for those looking for the music from tonight’s episode. The song that opened tonight’s episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ the track is titled “Be Gone Dull Cage” by Kiev, which you can hear below.

The other track that played at the close of the episode was by Blind Willie Johnson titled “It’s Nobody’s Fault but Mine”

Tune into the next episode of The Walking Dead on Sunday at 9pm ET when Abraham and his team head towards Washington D.C. and get one step closer to the cure.