The Walking Dead: Guts (#1.2)

Ok so another weeks gone by… which means another episode of The Walking Dead has aired! Yippie. The same as before, I’m not going to do an extensive write up of this episode, rather I’m just going to put pen to paper and note down a few key events for the storyline.

This is an episode called “Guts”, and halfway through it becomes bloody obvious (pun ) why it has that name. So we left the first episode with Rick seeming to be in a no win situation, stuck inside a tank surrounded by countless undead:

• The voice on the tank radio is Glenn, one of the survivors in a nearby building who witnessed Rick getting into the tank after he rides into town and goes “Clint Eastwood” on all the zombies. Glenn talks Rick through a way out of the tank, taking him to a small group of barricaded survivors in the nearby mall (A tip of the hat to Romero perhaps?)
• Once inside with the survivors we find that Rick has drawn all the zombies to the mall exterior (by firing his guns in the street). This cuts the group off from an escape. They have a CB radio but are unable to contact ‘the others’, the group we later find out that includes Ricks wife et al.
• Merle, one of the mall group starts going mental with a sniper rifle, drawing more Z’s to the mall, and using up their valuable bullets. He’s the drug-taking red-neck type with a serious racial problem with T-Dog, starting a survivor-on-survivor fight on the roof. Rick solves the problem by handcuffing Merle to some piping on the roof.
• The group tells Rick that the refugee centre is just a pipe-dream. Crushing Rick’s hope of finding his family
• With the zombies slowly making their way into the mall by bashing through the security doors, the group look for an escape. Glenn and Morales check out the sewers, but its blocked AND filled with some infected. Dead end!
• Learning that the undead smell the survivors out, Rick and the mall survivors conduct the pretty gruesome scene that episode 2 has become semi-famous for (at least on Twitter). Crudely chopping up a zombie, Rick and Glenn cover themselves in blood, guts and organs… hoping to mask their ‘alive’ odour, they crawl out from under some barricades into the packed open streets. With the classic shuffling gait and a few occasional zombie moans from Glenn, they start their nerve destroying walk over to some nearby trucks. Bumping into the undead, and being constantly sniffed at, they make good (slow) progress.
• Disaster! Heavy rain starts falling, washing off the blood that is masking Glenn and Ricks odur from the zombies. They’re not completely through the undead hoardes when they smell becomes too obvious for the Z’s to miss. They breakout into a axe-wielding run and finally scale a fence to gain access to the trucks. The road between them and the mall still littered with undead, they flee in the truck in the other direction. The barricaded survivors still in the mall think they’ve been double crossed!
• When safely away from the mass of zombies, Rick and Glenn hotwire a sports car (with its alarm blairing away) in an attempt to draw the undead away from the mall with loud noises. The mall survivors are told to get to the delivery entrance and await Rick in the truck. Merle however is still handcuffed to the pipes on the roof and only T-Dog has the key (Why Rick gave T-Dog the key when it was Merle and T-Dog who had the hate-relationship is beyond me… silly Officer Rick).
• Glenn slowly drives past all the zombies, with his loud sports car and sirens wailing. They begin to clear away from the delivery entrance.
• Even though T-Dog clearly hates Merle, he returns to free him from his handcuff prison on the roof. However only a few feet away from Merle, T-Dog genuinely trips and loses the key; leaving Merle stuck chained to the pipes. As a last act of hope, T-Dog chains the roof access door closed, hoping it’ll stop Merle from being attacked if and when the zombies break into the mall.
• The survivors manage to get into Ricks truck and speed away from the mall. Glenn is still in his sports car.
• The episode ends with Glenn fleeing down the open highway, assumingly towards the forest-survivors. We also see zombies breaking into the mall.
• Important to note, we don’t see Rick and the other survivors driving clear of the city, plus Merle is still handcuffed to the roof and no-one believes T-Dog accidentally dropped the key. They all silently assume his hatred got the better of him and he left him up there to die.

So another great episode, but a few cliff hangers for next episode to play on: will Rick and the rest be reunited with the forest gang, will Merle manage to survive on the roof and will Glenn survive now he’s been seperated from everyone else.
Only a few more days and we can see episode 3! Wahoo

This continues into episode three of The Walking Dead.