Good and Bad: 'The Walking Dead' (3/9/14)

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Season 4, episode 13: Alone

Plot: The episode opens with something I never thought we’d see: a musical montage starring Bob and his backstory. And what a backstory: Bob wanders alone in the woods, getting drunk off of what I can only assume is cough syrup and basically courts death until Glenn and Daryl find him.

                Back in the present day, Daryl and Beth take shelter in the funeral home. Inside the place is spotless and well-supplied with food – if that’s an accurate term for pig’s feet. There are also a nice collection of walkers wearing suits, all laid out nice and pretty as if for a funeral service. But no living humans can be found, raising plenty of questions. Who lived it and kept it so well-stocked and spotless? More importantly: Where did they go?

Daryl sleeps in a coffin, Beth sings and plays the piano because how could that possibly go wrong? There’s a brief run-in with an adorable one-eyed dog. Eventually the funeral home is swarmed by zombies – who presumably don’t like piano music. Daryl tells Beth to run outside while he leads the zombies on a merry chase through the house. But as he leaves the house, he sees Beth’s backpack on the ground and a car pulling away. No actual Beth, though.

Because he’s awesome Daryl spends the rest of the episode running after the car that has long since left him in the dust. He collapses and is found by the psychotic gang that we know tormented Rick a few weeks back. Daryl doesn’t know that, so he joins up with them.

While all of this is going on Maggie abandons Bob and Sasha because she doesn’t want to get them killed if Terminus turns out to be another Woodbury.

Bob is insistent on keeping the band a three-piece so he drags Sasha along after Maggie.

Maggie kills walkers and uses their blood to write messages she hopes will lead Glenn to Terminus.

Bob and Sasha do lots of talking and even kiss, but that’s not enough to keep them together. At the first sign of a building, Sasha announces she’s staying put and once again is on his own. Just so happens the building Sasha takes residence in has a window overlooking where Maggie has decided to nap. A zombie fight ensues and the pair strike off after Bob.

They find him, there’s a happy reunion and so it goes.

Good: Bob gets a backstory. It’s a nice little sequence that finally showed Bob as a person instead of drunkard black dude. Knowing the way this show tends to handle its minority characters, it seems all the more likely that Tyreese isn’t long for this world.  

Good: Daryl teaching Beth how to track. Forget whatever else you had planned, producers of this show. Daryl showing Beth outdoorsy stuff is the perfect spinoff. I’d take or leave the zombies. It could just be a Daryl and Beth vs. Wild kind of thing.    

Good: Maggie, Bob and Sasha vs. fog. One of the scariest moments of this season: Three characters trapped in a fog bank with the sounds of unseen walkers all around. Many shivers. Very scary.

Bad: Daryl laying in a coffin. My worst fear for this show realized. Hopefully that’s as close to a coffin or death as Daryl gets for the rest of “Walking Dead”’s run as well as the future run of “Daryl and Beth vs. Wild.”

Bad: Most of Bob and Sasha’s time on screen alone. It’s nice to focus on some new characters for a change, but budding romance be damned, these two still aren’t all that interesting.

Bad: A Maggie episode with no Maggie. No fair.

Bad: Sasha: Zombie survival strategist. Just pick a building. Any building. Pick the first one you see and live there all alone forever … or until you break a window and alert every zombie in the area to your presence, which usually takes about five seconds.

Good: Daryl and Beth: Dog Whispers. Another great spin-off idea. The thought of those two raising a one-eyed dog in a zombie apocalypse just made me so happy. I really hope it was the dog that was driving that car that sped away from the funeral home. I want that pooch to be a regular character in the worst way.

Bad: Daryl and Beth are forcibly broken up. This is the worst thing to happen to this show since Dale refused to let Andrea blow herself up in the CDC. The absolute worst thing.

Good: Daryl running after that car forever and ever. This is why Daryl is the best. This sequence is exact opposite of Dale not letting Andrea blow herself up in the CDC. The polar opposite.

Bad: Daryl joining up with the crazy gang. Unless he brings them down from the inside with nothing more than the three crossbow bolts or so that he has left, in which case: Best.