The Walking Dead 3×02 ‘Sick’ review

This episode was certainly solid and interesting, but as gripping as the premiere? Nope, but it almost was and that counts for something!

I was only too excited to see how our group would approach the other survivors, and I shouldn’t have expected anything less than the back and forth of “Who the hell are you?” Warm welcomes all around. One of the newcomers asks what happened to Hershel, and they tell him that he’s been bit. Their dumbfounded “Bit?” repetition tells me that they know nothing of Walkers and the dangers of being bitten by them or anything. Also, upon further inspection of the newcomers, I’m going to refer to them as The Uglies from now on. It’s only fitting. They are clearly a lot less intelligent and handsome than our group, and only one of the guys had a handgun. Already so inferior.

The Uglies remained very assertive, aggressive, combative and completely territorial which made for a lot of tension and the wondering of when exactly Rick and the group were going to have to take care of them. I loved how it escalated over the episode. They grudgingly agreed to Rick’s deal of giving them half of their food (“there’s only a little left,” but come to find out they are stocked!), and taking another part of the cellblock, and keeping away from the rest of our group. You could see each and every one of them struggling with the idea of taking orders from strangers, but the dude with the manly half-up half-down hairdo struggle the most. His mental instability was made apparent when, while they were debating on whether or not to kill Tiny who’d just gotten bitten, he took it upon himself to not only make the decision, but show a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm while doing so. It was scary. He looked like a pro, and it was very clear that they had enlisted a mass murderer into their gang.

A flawless scene involving The Uglies was when Psycho opened both the locked doors containing zombies, directly against Rick’s wishes, and had the nerve to swing right at Rick, completely missing a Walker. This scene was perfect. How effortlessly Rick dodged his hit, the slowing down of the time frame, his expression when he looked at Psycho and Psycho’s expression right back. Also, the backing music? Just perfect. Psycho then throws the Walker on top of Rick, and after Daryl saves him and they get rid of the rest of the Walkers, Rick and Psycho are in a stand-off. Toe to toe, face to face. Psycho doesn’t come clean and admit to his fuckery, instead he only shrugs it off and Rick delivers the best comeback. “I get it…I get it. Shit happens,” he says, only minutes before he chops Pyscho in the head with his sword or whatever. Perfect. It needed to be done, and now Rick does not hesitate to do what needs to be done. He isn’t held back by his conscience anymore, and I love it. I’m just wondering how far he’ll take this new attitude.

I don’t like the focus on Hershel this episode, and the sadness of his maybe-dying. Is it just me, or is the fact that an elderly, malnourished man with a missing limb and limited medical supplies at his advantage not all that surprising or sad? I was already quite resigned to the idea of him dying. Luckily, he didn’t, and that seemed to brighten the group and give them all hope, so that was nice.

I like that Carl seems to be maturing into a bit of a risk-taker, willing to do whatever he can to help the group which is a vast improvement over his previous snotty little shit attitude. I’m growing to like him. He still has a few traces of Little Shit-ness in him, though, evident when he tells Lori to “get off his back” when she expresses concern about him putting his life in danger.

I didn’t like how quickly the issue with The Uglies was kind of resolved. I wanted to see a little more interaction between the two groups, more compromising, but Psycho got killed, the Kevin Hart lookalike was banished into a yard full of Walkers, and the other two were banished to another cell block, filled with the zombie version of their buddies. I almost felt a little sorry for them. They were locked up for so long, they didn’t have any idea what to expect or what was going on in the outside world. But at least our group let them live.

Lori and Rick’s conversation was just unnecessary to me. Let’s put this relationship to bed, please, once and for all, before it gets too boring to sit through anymore. Also, basically she’s a terrible mom and now not only does everyone know it, but she does, too! Three cheers for self-awareness!

All around, this wasn’t as heart-pounding an episode as the premiere, but it was still, as always, captivating to watch and showed things that we all like to see. Except naked zombie wombs. Seriously, was the fake C-section practice necessary? I’m not easily disgusted as an avid watcher of both True Blood and Nip/Tuck, but gross.

The ending certainly did NOT make me excited for next week’s episode, but that’s why there’s promos! Did you see it?! It involved crashing planes, real life humans, Andrea and Michonne and a McMansion! Really exciting stuff, though, seriously. See you all next week!