The Walking Dead 4.1, "30 Days Without An Accident" Review

Review: In media res

"30 Days Without an Accident" was a pretty great episode. It wasn't the most intense, but the changes in the structure of the show--as dictated by the end of the third season--demanded a premiere that would ease us back into the plot. The introduction of the Woodbury inhabitants (as well as all of the stragglers that Daryl seems to pick up whenever he goes out) into the prison was a big decision that required careful presentation for viewers to accept. After all, we fell in love with a cast of characters who had been with the show since either the very beginning or early in Season 2. A hefty percentage of non-comic reading fans didn't even come to accept Michonne until the third season was almost over, and she was only one character. The premise had become as much "us against the world" as it was "us against the Walkers." The premiere had a lot of issues that it needed to address.

For the most part, it did. One of the great things about The Walking Dead is that it has almost always embraced the concept of showing rather than telling. In an episode that required a great deal of new exposition in order to catch the audience up with where the characters were at this point of the story, much of the new information was given via immersion and implication. One of the very best moments of the episode came in the beginning, when Rick emerges from the prison to work on the new garden, listening to music (somehow) to drown out the snarling and groaning of nearby Walkers. The last thing that we needed was another pilot, and "30 Days Without an Accident" changed the premise of the show without changing its foundation.

The episode is not without its flaws. Rick's storyline dragged, and it jarred that he didn't seem to realize that following this very strange and clearly unbalanced woman through the woods without telling anybody was actually a pretty bad idea. The incorporation of new characters could have been handled more smoothly, but if somebody had to die in this episode, better that it be a newcomer than one of our regulars. (Now that Lori and Andrea are dead, at least.) Still, it was hard to care very much when Zach died. He had enough of a relationship with Daryl that Daryl's' gloom at the end was understandable, but Beth is not sufficiently full-fleshed as a character for her attachment (such as it was) to particularly resonate with viewers. Honestly, I don't know how many viewers would be overly upset if something happened to Beth at this point. Far more affecting was what befell poor Patrick, whose death was both entirely unjust and frightening in a way that the Walkers no longer are. The mystery is back, and it is a mystery far more compelling than anything that came out of Woodbury last season. We don't know the illness that killed Patrick, we don't know how it is transmitted, we don't know if it is contagious, and we don't know if it can be stopped. And that is fantastic.

Overall, the episode had much more good than bad. Daryl's storyline (as well as Daryl himself) was the highlight, giving us some fun new zombie kills as well as the lingering image of a Walker suspended from a roof by his own intestines. Maggie is thankfully not pregnant. Carl's adventures gave a good establishing look act what life is now like in the prison. While not exactly idyllic, we see just what it is that these people can (and undoubtedly will) lose. Violet's death (which I found at least as upsetting as Zach's) was made foreboding in light of Patrick's, and we have plenty to go on for the rest of the fourth season.