Season 4 Episode 2 of The Walking Dead was full of major surprises. After a mostly quiet season premier, this new episode yanked viewers right back into the suspense and drama. The most notable event in the premier came right at the end where a younger member of the group named Patrick, fell ill, and collapsed in the shower area of the prison. He had been fine just the day before.
Season 4 Episode 2 Review
Outside of the prison, someone is shown feeding a live rat through the fence. The camera shot does not allow viewers to see who it is. Inside, Karen and Tyreese are seen sitting together and kissing before he sings to her and she acts embarrassed. He eludes to the fact that he wants to sleep with her, as in actual sleeping, but she plays it off by telling him not yet. She then goes into the showers and washes her face, where unbeknownst to her, Patrick is turning into a walker. She hears a noise and looks around a bit, but then her flashlight goes out and she goes back to Cell Block D. Moments later, Patrick stumbles his way into the block and bites his first victim on the neck, tearing out a chunk, making it impossible for him to scream.
Rick and Carl go out to farm, Michonne hops on her horse for her daily adventure, and Rick gives Carl his gun back. They soon hear gunshots inside the prison and Rick rushes to see what happened while Carl lets Michonne back in. A zombie follows her and gets ahold of her, and her leg gets injured while trying to fight off two walkers.
Daryl, Glenn and others fight off a few walkers inside the prison while Carol tends to a man who has been bitten. It appears as though she is getting ready to amputate his arm, before she discovers he has been bitten on the back of the neck too. Carol and the man both realize he is a goner, and he begs Carol to take care of his two daughters, Lizzie and Mika. Meanwhile Daryl shoots Patrick upstairs.
Herschel, Daryl, Rick and Bob find another walker in a cell upstairs and after they kill it, realize that it was not bitten and had no signs of infected wounds. The zombie was bleeding from his nose and other orifices just like Patrick and a couple of the other walkers. They come to the conclusion that he must have been sick with some sort of infectious flu through the pigs (think Swine Flu). Meanwhile Carol tells Lizzie and Mika that she has to kill their father, and Lizzie said she needs to be the one to do it. Carol ends up having to do it for her.
Outside of the prison, Rick tells Carl, Michonne and Maggie to stay away from everyone who might be infected. Inside, Herschel, Carol, Daryl, Sasha and Glenn have an informal meeting to discuss what to do next. They decide that it is imperative to quarantine Cell Block D, and everyone who may be infected. Tyreese and Karen enter the picture with Karen coughing and they are told they must relocate to Cell Block A to avoid further infection. They agree then Karen tells everyone that she heard another man coughing as well.
After a bit, Carol joins Mika and Lizzie outside by the fence and tells them they must be strong before Lizzie walks off in a huff. Daryl digs graves for the fallen and talks to Rick about not having to fight before Maggie alerts them for help. A view of the fence line shows the walker presence getting stronger, with the fence at the threat of being toppled over.
While trying to keep the fence up and fight the walkers off, Sasha looks down and notices the dead rats. Carol goes back inside and finds Carl making crosses to put on the graves. She asks him not to tell his father that she is teaching the other children to kill. She told him it wasn’t lying, she just didn’t want him to say anything. Beth is shown holding the baby, and has to pass her off to a reluctant Michonne so she can clean spit-up off her shirt. Michonne holds the baby at arms-length at first and then pulls her in close to hold her, while weeping.
Rick comes up with a plan to distract the walkers, and he and Daryl drive outside the fence with the probably infected pigs in a trailer. Rick cuts them by their legs and releases them to lure the walkers away from the prison. While doing so, his face gets sprayed with pig blood. Meanwhile, Carol again finds the girls by the fence and mends things with them before handing her knife to Lizzie. The same knife Carol used to kill Lizzie’s father. After a bit, Rick is shown dismantling the pig pen, so as to not allow any more infection to spread. Carl tells Rick about what Carol is doing, and Rick seems to care less. He says he won’t stop her before giving Carl back his gun, and setting the pig pen on fire. He then takes his bloody shirt off and throws that into the flames too.
The last scene shows Tyreese heading to Karen’s cell with flowers, but when he gets there, the cell is empty, and there is a trail of blood leading out of her cell. It looks like marks from someone being drug. He follows the blood and it leads him outside where he finds the body of Karen, and one other, burnt to death. A container of gasoline sits next to the corpses.