Yay, The Walking Dead is back! Let's get started with the first episode of Season 4...
The prison has been turned into a relative oasis of farmland, a canteen, and a cheery crowd of people we know (the original gang + Hershel's farm gang, which now feels like the original gang), some Woodburyites, and then some other randoms I suppose we'll have to start caring about.
But of course things can't go well for long. Daryl and Sasha lead a mission to Big Spot to loot the store. Or, as they do on this show, go for a leisurely shopping trip taking the bare minimum and pondering each "purchase". Haven't these guys ever watched Supermarket Sweep? In and out, people! But as Glenn looks at cameras (inspired by, yawn, a poster about capturing your baby's precious moments), Bob (a new guy, who apparently is an alcoholic) ponders taking a bottle of wine. Wine? If you don't have much room, why don't you pack something with a bigger punch? I'd be going straight vodka. Clearly I wouldn't last long in the zombie apocalypse.
Anyway, Bob decides not to take the wine (if they sell it at Big Spot, it couldn't have been that good anyway) but in setting it down on a shelf, he causes a chain reaction of disastrous proportions. The bottle hits the shelf, the shelf falls down, an inexplicable number of zombies on the roof migrates toward the noise, causing the roof to cave in (aided by the weight of a crashed helicopter and leaking gas) and it starts raining zombies ("Hallelujah!"). Instead of dying on impact the zombies survive the fall and attack our good guys. Bob gets pinned under aforementioned shelf yet our guys manage to break him free and it's Zach (new guy, Beth's boyfriend, don't get too attached) who bites it instead. Michonne doesn't have as many lines as I'd like, but she katanas a monster cardboard cut-out so I'm happy.
Meanwhile, back at the prison, Farmer Rick ventures outside the fence to retrieve his trappin's from his traps. But he comes across, Clara, a human being who is as close to looking like a zombie as humanly possible and follows her back to her impeccably clean campsite to meet her "husband", who is actually just a zombie head in a potato sack. Sadly, Rick has seen stranger things. But not today. Clara tries to kill him to feed him to her husband, but Ranger Rick is back and is having none of it. He pushes her away and she does a 180 (emotionally, that is) and instead of killing another human to feed to her husband, she kills herself to be with him. Her last wish is for Rick to let her zombify so she can "live" forever with her husband. Not sure that would be my last wish (sorry, hubby) but then again I don't think I'd keep my husband's zombified head in a bag. Then again, this show proposes all sorts of scenarios normal people have never had to think about.
Back inside the prison, some creepy kids are hanging out near the zombies at the fence before heading off to story time at the prison library. Except story time is just a cover for Knife Klub, taught by Carol. The first rule of Knife Club - nobody talks about Knife Klub. So when Carl stumbles across it, Carol begs him not to tell currently-pacifist Rick. That should go over well.
And to set up yet another plot line for the season, we've got some sick and dead animals both inside and outside the prison. Maybe some sort of plague? Wouldn't surprise me, considering how many dead zombies are polluting the water table. I guess we'll find out next week!
But to leave us on the super edge of our seats, one of the new kids, Patrick, isn't feeling well. He walks in a sweaty bloody mess to the showers, tries to cool off (ruh-roh, we know what that means), bleeds out of every orifice, dies, then reanimates. Double ruh-roh!