The Walking Dead Season One Recap: Episode 2

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Season One: Episode 2 – Guts

The one thing that I have noticed in the introduction scenes of each episode so far is that the people are placed in situations where they are more likely to act against standard societal norms. In the first episode, Rick is looking for gas and finds the little girl zombie and shoots her after a moment’s hesitation. Shane and Lori, at the beginning of episode 2, definitely have a physical relationship, so it seems they both believe Rick to be dead. While they may have done something like this before the world changed, the ferocity in their faces is something more.

This episode, “Guts”, is really about how far people will go to survive in this new world. We are introduced to several new characters as Rick finds his way out of the tank and into a semi-safe place with more survivors. We are introduced to Glenn, a young Asian man who helps Rick get out of the tank and into a department store. Of course, his run to safety included firing his gun about 15 times, attracting every walker for blocks around.

Once inside the relative safety of the department store, Rick is introduced to more of the group. Andrea attacks him screaming that he is the reason they are all gong to die now, because of his shooting. T-Dog, Morales, and Jaqui are introduced in this scene as well. The characters hear more gunshots and head to the roof of the building where we are introduced to Merle Dixon, a redneck racist male chauvinist guy that we are all supposed to immediately dislike. The rest of the team tells him to stop wasting ammo and attracting more walkers and T-Dog tries to stop him, but Merle attacks him, knocking him to the ground and shoving a pistol in his face. Merle tries to get himself “elected” leader of the group, but Rick steps up, smashes Merle in the face with his own rifle butt, and handcuffs him to a nearby pipe. At this point, Rick schools Merle about the state of the world, saying race doesn’t really matter anymore, there is “dark meat and white meat”.

After this, the team is very focused on getting out of Atlanta alive. In the department store, the survivors can see the walkers attacking the front doors, trying to get in, even showing a walker having a rock in their hands, which insinuates a bit of intelligence in their deteriorated brains. On the roof, T-Dog finally gets through to the camp they are affiliated with, which just happens to be the one outside of town where Shane, Lori, and Carl are, and tells them they are trapped.

Andrea talks about her sister who loves unicorns, dragons, but especially mermaids, and takes a necklace for her. When T-Dog calls back to camp, we are introduced to Amy, Andrea’s sister. We also meet Dale and Jim, working on the RV.

Rick asks some questions that give us a quick lesson in walker etiquette. They hear us or smell us, they chase us. They catch us, they eat us. This gives Rick a very morbid idea for their survival. They proceed to drag in one of the “geeks” they killed when Rick entered the first time. Rick gets the fire axe from the glass case in the back room and prepares to hack up the walker. Before hacking him up, Rick takes the wallet out of the walker’s pocket and we are introduced to Wayne Dunlop, resident of Georgia and organ donor, in addition to being the namesake of this episode.

Covering their bodies with the chopped up guts of the walker, Glenn and Rick head out into the street to retrieve a truck for all of them to escape in. As they shamble like walkers, they seem to have clear sailing to the truck when it suddenly starts raining, washing off the smell of the dead. Rick and Glenn take off running, hacking and smacking the walkers out of the way and barely making it to the truck. Rick takes Glenn to a Dodge Challenger with the car alarm blaring to attract the walkers away from the front doors.

Glenn tears through the streets of Atlanta sirens screaming. Rick pulls up to the roll up doors of the department store and everyone jumps in the truck barely escaping. Everyone, that is, except for Merle Dixon, who was still on the roof because T-Dog ran back up to release him and dropped the handcuff keys down a drain, by accident. Not that many of us are sad to see him left, but still, there will probably be some repercussions from this, since he was established as a major-type character from the start. The last scene we see is Glenn racing down the highway out of town whooping and hollering.

Thanks for reading my review of The Walking Dead Season One Episode Two. Stay tuned for more reviews over the coming weeks as I run down every episode of this great show in preparation for the first episode of Season Five in October. Thanks for being Comic Booked.