by Violet
Violet recaps Season 4 Episode 11 of The Walking Dead, titled Claimed, where Carl and Michonne bond, trouble finds Rick, and Glenn and Tara don’t quite see eye to eye with Abraham. Following the recap, Violet shares her thoughts on the episode.
Episode Recap of The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 11: Claimed
- Abraham stops the truck, warns Tara not to shoot the three approaching walkers, and kills them with a crowbar and the butt of Tara’s gun. Michonne and Carl sit down to breakfast and joke around, until Carl accidentally brings up Judith and storms off. Rick thanks Michonne for making Carl laugh.
- Michonne makes Rick stay home and rest while she and Carl go out for supplies. Rick gives Carl his gun, then lays in bed upstairs. Michonne tries to cheer Carl up with Crazy Cheese, to no avail. Carl learns that Michonne had a 3-yr old son. She agrees to answer a question for each room that they clear.
- Rick is woken up by the sound of people downstairs. He quickly removes all evidence in the room that someone is there, and hides under the bed. A man with a gun takes a look around the bedroom, then plops down on the bed.
- Michonne confides in Carl about her son, Andre. As Carl clears another room, Michonne unwraps a creepily defaced painting and investigates the door it was blocking. She finds a children’s room with the dead bodies of an entire family that committed suicide. Michonne lies and tells Carl a dead dog is in the room. They start to head back.
- Another man enters the bedroom while Rick is still hiding under the bed. The two men fight over the bed. One man is thrown to the floor and sees Rick, but the other guy chokes him before he can say anything.
- Glenn wakes up in the back of the truck. When Tara informs him that they passed the bus 3 hours ago, Glenn demands that Abraham stop the truck. Glenn grabs his stuff and begins to walk off. Abraham tries to stop him, telling him that they’re on a mission to get Eugene to Washington, D.C., because he’s a scientist and knows what started everything.
- Glenn refuses Abraham’s request to help them. Abraham tries to convince Glenn that Maggie is gone, and Glenn responds by punching Abraham. While they fight, and the girls try to pull the guys apart, Eugene notices walkers approaching and fails at trying to get the others’ attention, so he begins to shoot at the walkers, but has trouble controlling the gun. The others join in shooting. Once the walkers are dead, they realize the truck’s fuel tank was shot and is leaking heavily.
- While the other men in the bedroom are asleep, Rick slips out and sneaks into another room. He can’t get the window open, so goes into another room – where a man is sitting on the toilet. They fight, but Rick is able to choke him into unconsciousness, and takes his gun, then escapes out the 2nd story window. He sneaks to the front and hides behind the wall below the front porch when he hears someone above.
- Abraham determines that the truck cannot be repaired. Glenn walks back toward the prison, and the others follow. Rick sees Carl and Michonne approaching, and is about to attack the man on the porch, when there is commotion inside and the man goes to investigate. Rick, Carl, and Michonne run away unnoticed.
- Tara questions Abraham as to why he agreed to drive Eugene to Washington, D.C., but she can tell he is lying. Rick, Carl, and Michonne walk along the railroad tracks and find a different sign saying, “Sanctuary for All. Community for All. Those who Arrive Survive,” and continue to follow the tracks.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 4 Episode 11 of The Walking Dead: Claimed
This was a much better episode than last week. Apparently this half of the season is going to slowly but surely get better with each episode. The scenes with Rick hiding under the bed were pretty tense, and kept me guessing as to what was going to happen. I wasn’t sure if Rick was going to be forced to face the intruders, even in his weakened condition, and how things would go if he was able to recover one of their guns and it came down to a showdown, or what they would do to him if they caught him unarmed. These were obviously bad guys who you wouldn’t want to mess with, judging by how they got into that much of a fight merely over who was going to sleep in a certain bed, so if I were Rick I’d try to avoid them too. In Rick’s position, I’m not sure that I would have thought so quickly about hiding evidence of my being there, so good thing he was able to do so. Although, if you paid attention to what the guys were saying, they found Michonne’s recently washed shirt, and knew a woman had been there, and were waiting for her to return so they could have their way with her. I kind of would have liked to see them try, so they could get their butts kicked by Michonne! Especially since her storyline with Carl this episode was a bit anti-climactic. I kept expecting walkers, but nope. Just an entire family that committed suicide. At least they did it right so that they wouldn’t come back as walkers. It was a good relationship building episode between Michonne and Carl though, and we got to learn a little bit about Michonne’s son. I’m thinking as time goes on, Carl will get some more backstory out of her.
What the Rick/Carl/Michonne storyline lacked in walkers, the Glenn/Tara/Abraham storyline made up for with the Children of the Corn walkers. I’m not sure what to think of Abraham’s mission to get to Washington, D.C., but I am sure of the fact that Glenn made the right decision to look for Maggie rather than join them. While Abraham was trying to convince Glenn that saving the world was more important than trying to find someone that was probably dead, I think it was an easy choice. What’s the point of saving the world if you’re not with the person you love most in the world? Besides, they were doing just fine with only the three of them before they picked up Glenn and Tara, so it’s not like it was hurting them for Glenn to decide to leave. Interestingly, Tara immediately sides with Glenn and automatically leaves when he starts to leave, even though she barely spent any time with Glenn. At this point, I think Tara’s spent more time talking to Abraham than she has to Glenn. Anyway, it seems kind of pointless for them to want to go to Washington, D.C. now. Abraham said himself that they had lost contact with D.C. a couple weeks ago. Probably because they got overrun, and there’s no one there anymore to do anything about Eugene’s information even if they did make it to D.C. No offense, but did Eugene seem a bit autistic to anyone else? It kind of felt like he wasn’t really all there mentally. When Tara asks why Abraham agreed to drive Eugene to D.C., she doesn’t accept his answers of being a good person, or wanting to save the world. So what could it be? Is Eugene his brother? Does Eugene really know what caused everything, or is Abraham just playing along for Eugene’s sake? Again, not really sure what’s going on there.
The way things end with this episode, it seems like Rick, Carl, and Michonne will meet up with Tyreese, Carol, Lizzie, Mika, and Judith at the Terminus place, while Glenn and the others will meet up with Maggie, Sasha, and Bob. However, it looks like we won’t get to see either of those meet ups come to fruition until after the next episode, as it looks like we’ll only be focusing on Beth and Daryl in the next episode, since those are the only people we see in the preview. Indeed, the guests on the next Talking Dead episode are Emily Kinney (Beth) and Norman Reedus (Daryl), so that further confirms that they’ll be the only two in the episode. Just a hunch, but I predict that the ratings for Talking Dead will be higher than normal, especially in the 18-49 female demographic!
Scenes from The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 12: Still
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Walking Dead, titled Still:
I like the relationship they are developing between Michonne and Carl. A lot of Carl’s characters problem, and why I think his character gets flack from fans, is that he is stuck in a weird limbo between childhood and maturity. Carl is still young but through the outbreak and having to kill Lori, he was forced into a maturity he wasnt ready for and one without a mother figure. Through Michonnes friendship, she has been able to give him a strong female figure in his life while still having a bit of childlike playfulness in their interactions that he has had to prematurely leave behind through his trials.
I just want to know what the painting was all about. They better explain that, because it was just weird and had no purpose whatsoever. Otherwise solid episode. Seeing Michonne try to cheer up Carl was great.
Not sure what to think of the new group. Eugene’s got something wrong with him, but I think he’s just got asperger’s. Their motivation for wanting to go to DC is something I”m not sure of though.