On Sunday, February 9, 2014
Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 9 Online Free Download Streaming S04E09
The Walking Dead tells the story of the months and years that follow after a zombie apocalypse. It follows a group of survivors, led by police officer
Rick Grimes, who travel in search of a safe and secure home.
The comic goes on to explore the challenges of life in a world overrun by zombies who take a toll on the survivors, and sometimes the interpersonal
conflicts present a greater danger to their continuing survival than the zombies that roam the country. Over time, the characters are changed by the
constant exposure to death and some grow willing to do anything to survive.
AfterS04 E0910th Feb '14
It’s amazing the kind of positive feeling The Walking Dead is able to elicit from watching its characters walk (or run) away from a location they were
undoubtedly hoping would turn into something safe, secure, and permanent. But unfortunately for Rick, Carl, and the rest of the ever-dwindling survivors
in their company, the needs of the story continue to outweigh what little comfort these perpetually unlucky people are ever able to achieve.
In that sense, the season 4 mid-season finale, ‘Too Far Gone,’ had many of the same elements that gave ‘Beside the Dying Fire‘ its feeling of welcome
change in environment and circumstance for the characters. But the episode also served as a nice parallel to that story by the way it portrayed Rick’s
handling of adversity, challenge, and someone trying to usurp what was ostensibly his.
So, on some level, the Governor and Shane wound up having a lot more in common (narratively speaking, of course) than anyone likely first thought. And
while Philip/Brian and Shane probably had a whole slew of psychological issues that were at least partially to blame for their continual fixation on
former Sheriff Grimes, it just makes you wonder: What is it about what Rick has that makes everybody (including the writers) want to take it away from
him?
For the last two episodes, the show has been riding along with the Governor and his special brand of crazy just to show the audience how deeply affected
he was by the fall of Woodbury, and the lengths to which he would go for a little vengeance. Despite all the problems with the character’s charmless and
rather binary approach to good and evil in season 3, there was at least some effort made to show the Governor as some sort of parallel to Rick, and to
demonstrate the kind of darkness that can manifest in someone with so much weight on his shoulders.
While that parallel managed to be clear, it wasn’t exactly layered with much meaning regarding either character. But here, credited writer Seth Hoffman
manages to use that same parallel to show (and explicitly talk about) how time and a little therapeutic farming have turned Rick into a different man,
while Philip retreated back into the comfort of the same.
'The Walking Dead' midseason premiere review: 'After' | PopWatch | EW.com
I like The Walking Dead, I guess? What is The Walking Dead, really? I’m not trying to be flip or abstract. For a show built on the fairly
straightforward thrill of constant prosthetic headbashing, AMC’s undead melodrama has been weirdly difficult to pin down, both for the viewers and for
the rotating band of producers. It began way back in 2010 as a horror-flavored neo-western, with a six-episode season that buffered very occasional
zombie attacks with long stretches of explicit existential yammering. The second season premiere featured not one but two scenes where characters talked
to God via crucifix. The same episode featured an appearance by a deer that served as a clear metaphor for life or whatever, which was confirmed a
couple episodes later when lead character Rick tried to explain to his wife that the deer was a metaphor for life or whatever.
That version of The Walking Dead faded away in the second half of the season, when a showrunner shake-up replaced Frank Darabont with Glen Mazzara.
We’ll never quite know what happened; it doesn’t seem like the break-up was amicable for anybody. There’s one read on the Darabont era, the Kurt Sutter
theory, that he was suffering from budgetary constraints. There’s the counter-read that lots of shows have low budgets and none of them have come up
with anything as boring as The Search for Sophia.
All we viewers really know is that Glen Mazzara invigorated the show with meat-and-potatoes thrills, killing off extraneous main characters and burning
that goddamn farm to the ground. The Mazzara Era at its best was less a western than a war movie — as if The Wild Bunch transformed into Saving Private
Ryan. The zombie body count expanded, aggressively. Annoying characters died hard. The wheels were spinning — but was the show really going anywhere?
The third season finale built up to a showdown that never happened; AMC and Mazzara parted ways.
So what is The Walking Dead? Is it a show about quiet meditation or a show that kills zombies good? It’s clear now that new showrunner Scott M. Gimple
came into this season attempting to thread the needle between those wild extremes. A writer since season 2, Gimple worked on “18 Miles Out” and “Clear,”
two episodes that send a reduced cast on a road trip adventure. Those episodes almost feel like Walking Dead short stories, right down to their
respective nihilist-bookend visuals. (In “18 Miles Out,” it’s the lonely walker in the field shambling undead towards nowhere; in “Clear,” it’s the
lonely backpacker, and then just a lonely backpack.)
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If there is a defining aspect of the Gimple era, it’s that willingness to narrow the focus. The season started with Rick’s dreamlike interlude with the
chick from Rome; a few episodes later came the Carol kiss-off road trip episode. That was just a prelude for a full-blown mini-miniseries about the
Governor, a great-in-theory deviation that wound up playing like a summer-camp remake of the Richard Gere scenes from I’m Not There. The midseason
finale was basically a do-over of the previous finale, this time bigger and bloodier. (RIP, Herschel.)
This week’s midseason premiere, “After,” picks up in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the prison. That battle left the show’s sprawling
cast running in every direction, and the premiere focuses on the travails of Rick and Carl, with a B-plot that follows lone-wolf Michonne; presumably
the next few episodes will pick up with more of our scattered characters.
The laser-focus provides a showcase for the best and worst aspects of The Walking Dead. The Best: Very few shows on television have such confident
visual storytelling. The opening sequence of “After” is dialogue-free: It’s composed entirely of background noise, Greg Nicotero’s zombie make-up, and
the face of Danai Gurira, who can accomplish a lot with a grimace (and unfortunately has to accomplish a lot with a grimace.)
Rick is still battered and bloody from his showdown with the Governor, and Andrew Lincoln wears “battered and bloody” very well. Lincoln will never get
the accolades of his AMC lead-protagonist brethren. But Lincoln has gotten better in the role as Rick’s life has gotten steadily worse. Look back at
Season 1 Rick — clean-shaven, straight-haired, wearing a look of raw determination. Season 4 Rick exudes post-traumatic devastation — he’s like a human
hangover — and Lincoln plays that devastation to the hilt. His Southern accent is still ridiculous. (“Carl” always sounds like “CAH-H’RULL.”) But that
actually works well for a character who makes every word, every breath feel like a tortured triumph of the human spirit.
If The Walking Dead is great at visual storytelling, it is decidedly less than great at actual storytelling. The leisurely pace can feel listless,
boring. Worse, the show has a tin ear for dialogue. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except that it speaks to a deeper problem with the series: The Walking
Dead seems to really love its characters without quite understanding its characters. There’s a sequence in the midseason premiere which should nominally
tell us more about Michonne but which instead confirms that there might not be much more to Michonne. The episode forces Carl to act petulant and
dismissive, which feels a bit reductive in the context of the apocalyptic events he just experienced.
Fans of the Walking Dead comic book will recognize Carl’s story arc from this episode. But even though The Walking Dead shares plot points and
characters with the comic — and even though Dead overlord Robert Kirkman seems ever-more-essential to the show’s day-to-day operations — the TV Dead has
never felt less like its inspiration. The comic book can be slow, but it’s tougher and funnier. Darker, too: There’s no analogue on the page for Daryl
Dixon, the badass with a heart of gold who is totally guileless and sensitive and loves babies and appears to never even think about having sex with
anyone. TV-Rick tries to do the right thing; Comic-Rick has long since given up on the idea of “right.”
The show’s new schedule releases in eight-episode batches, which are half good vivid action and half stultifying aimless chatt. In an ideal world where
nobody cared about money, Walking Dead would release eight episodes per year, dialogue-free and zombie-heavy. Right now, the fun-but-frustrating series
is something of a rarity: It walks the walk, but it can’t talk the talk. Episode Grade: B
