Sorry, these recaps have been getting later and later for some reason. Should the demand be there for reviews for season two then I’ll make sure that I’m a lot quicker in getting these up (although as nobody seems to have much of an idea of when season two is going to start it seems a bit premature to be talking of such things now).
Anyway, season finale… It’s a shame that just as the series started getting good it finished. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with episodes 2-4 but only the last two episodes have lived up to the standard set by the pilot, in my opinion.
Essentially TS-19 was the episode where everybody got drunk and cheered up a bit, only to have all their hopes dashed at the end. Consequently there was once again not much in the way of zombies, but what there was pretty good, running from tense (the opening flashback of Shane reluctantly leaving Rick in the hospital) to thrilling (a closing shoot-out as the remnants of the group escaped the CDC facility) and even, in the case of the eponymous TS-19, oddly moving. It turns out that the sample that Dr Jenner was so distraught about losing last week belonged to Test Subject 19 – his wife who was, apparently, the real brains of the facility. The oddly moving stuff came in with the computer simulation he showed the survivors of the progress of the zombie infection through her brain, killing it off before reanimating only the areas that controlled the most basic, animal functions. Of course the fake science behind it wasn’t at all convincing – an incubation time that varies wildly from 3 minutes to 8 hours for example, I think the writing staff are just trying to cover themselves for plot manoeuvrability later on.
Frankly, that’s pretty much the majority of the episode covered – elsewhere, as I’ve already mentioned, the survivors all got to enjoy the luxuries they thought they’d never get to experience again, like getting drunk, and overindulged somewhat. In another misanthropic moment of pushing the plot forward, Shane got drunk enough to attempt to rape Lori, which although well done, did seem a bit unnecessary really.
Hangovers were quickly forgotten however when the group found out why Dr Jenner had been so reluctant to let me in – as the facility contained samples of numerous deadly bacteria, as soon as it ran out of fuel it would be sealed off and ‘decontaminated’ (which, as we learnt in last week’s episode, involved a lot of fire). Coincidentally this was going to happen in less than an hour, and as the building had already been shut down there was no hope of getting out – until at the last minute Carol dug out the grenade Rick had grabbed in episode two. Not that this didn’t stop the show shaving down its cast-list still further (by the end of the next season there’s going to be nobody left at all at this rate) as Dr Jenner’s speech about waiting for a quick death by fire rather than going back out into the world won over Jacqui and Andrea. I couldn’t help but feel bad for Jacqui as when she announced her decision to stay, the rest of the group didn’t argue too much with her, yet when Andrea declared the same Dale then decided to put his own life at risk by staying in order to get her to leave. Jacqui did seem to be a lot more rational than Andrea, which I guess is why they pretty much left her to it, but still you think Dale could have at least made a similar sort of gesture towards her, just so that Jacqui didn’t die feeling unwanted.
Anyway, I’m going to leave it at that as I’m interested in hearing what you all thought of the episode and the season as a whole. Oh, one more thing – there was the mysterious part just before the group left the CDC where Dr Jenner whispered something to Rick (very Lost in Translation). What are your ideas about what he said? I was going to suggest that it was about the state of the rest of the world, but then Jenner has probably caused the group to suspect the worst anyway as he mentioned the virus spreading worldwide (well, France at least), so why the whispering? Hopefully it won’t be too long before we find out.
