The Walking Dead: 7 Things That "A" Did Right (And 3 It Didn't)

The Good:

7. Scary

For a show featuring zombies and at the end of its fourth season, fans of The Walking Dead are getting harder and harder to scare; even the human element has lost some of its zing. We'd already seen an elderly man decapitated by a psychopath with a sword. How much scarier could it get? Enter Joe and the Claimers. The group of bandits sneaks up on Rick and Michonne in the darkness while Carl sleeps in an abandoned car. The men prepare to kill both adults, but Daryl steps in out of nowhere to save the day. Unfortunately, his efforts to intercede backfire, and Daryl is dragged off to be beaten to death. Carl is wrestled from the car at knifepoint. Rick desperately tries to convince Joe to spare the other three, arguing that he had been the one to kill the member of Joe's group. "First, we're gonna beat Daryl to death," says Joe. "Then we'll have the girl. Then the boy. Then, we shoot you." Meanwhile, Carl has been shoved to the ground and flipped onto his stomach by a hefty redneck who has seen Deliverance a few dozen times too many. The attack on Carl is enough to send Rick into a rage, and he headbutts Joe before ripping his throat out with his teeth. The Claimers are momentarily stunned at the unexpected development, and Michonne snags a gun to dispatch two of them while Daryl curb stomps another. Rick strides forward, grabs Carl's attacker, and guts him from navel to throat. It's pretty awful. The nail-biting terror level somewhat lessens when Rick and Co. reach Terminus, and even the discarded pens of human remains would have been more unsettling than terrifying...in a different episode. The fact that "A" was a season finale coupled with the brutality of the earlier assault made everything subsequent all the scarier. For the first time, the threat of death for one of the power four €“ Rick, Carl, Daryl, and Michonne €“ felt dreadfully real, and Carl's slow walk toward the train car was almost painful to watch.