The Walking Dead S04E02 recap and review: Spoiler alert

The Walking Dead S04E02: 'Infected' recap

Welcome back to the zombie apocalypse, to an almost-abandoned landscape where somebody goes around washing all the Hyundais. Here you'll find the recap and review for “The Walking Dead” S04E02, titled “Infected”. My digital cable listing describes S04E02 as follows: “The group faces a new enemy; Rick and the others fight to protect their hard-won livelihood.” So, every episode of “The Walking Dead” ever.  I like to think that the title is a shout-out to “28 Days Later”, a zombie movie that wasn't about zombies.

Obviously S04E02 will pick up after the death and subsequent undeath of Harry Potter, who may or may not have contracted a lethal virus from Violet the Pig.

• The Walking Dead S04E01: Hallelujah, it's rainin' dead

Not for nothin’, but where the hell was Hershel, who once upon a time put “veterinarian” on his tax returns? Fine, let’s not dwell on the past, but instead look to the future. Spoiler alert, of course.

Okay... Story Time!

Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Zombieland

Out at the fence, someone with a flashlight (I bet it's Carl) is feeding a terrified rat to a walker. PETA is gonna freak the f*ck out.

Back in the prison, Tyreese is making out with Teen Wolf's mom before he gets cock-blocked by Zach's ghost. He can't get the now-infamous Zombie Rain incident out of his head. To be fair, it was pretty spectacular. Anyway, Tyreese salvages the moment by singing "I've Got You Under My Skin" to his lady love, thus stepping into legend in my book.

No lie, I actually stood and saluted the screen.

Teen Wolf's mom puts on the brakes, though: she doesn't want to move this new relationship too quickly. Tyreese is cool with that, and they go separate ways.

On the way to the toilets, Teen Wolf's mom's flashlight goes on the blink. That's horror-movie for "something awful is about to happen".

Teen Wolf's mom isn't afraid, since her kid is a werewolf in another series: she's used to the supernatural. She heads back out, walking and not running, because she's... Teen Wolf's mom.

Only after she leaves the bathroom does Harry Potter rise and shamble out into the hallway.

Oh, no, he's following her back to Cell Block D, he likes Melissa Ponzio as much as I do... no, wait, he skips her bunk and creeps into some rando redshirt's cell. Harry Potter then goes to town on the dude's neck.

See, this is why I watch "The Walking Dead". I'm also wondering, though, why the prison residents don't close their cell doors at night. You, know, what with the Zombie Apocalypse and all. The doors wouldn't have to be locked; just so long as you'd need human coordination to open them.

Attack the block

Rick wakes up Carl, who I bet was up late feeding the walkers, for another round of Farmville. Meanwhile, Zombie Harry Potter is chowing down on a dude's guts and nobody's noticed yet. Harry's victim stands up, sans guts, and gets down to business. The business of eating people.

Glenn and Maggie are on duty in the guard tower. Glenn goes to wake up Maggie, but first, since his smartphone would have run out of juice before S01E01, he pulls out a regular camera to snap an embarrassing photo of his fiancee. In case you're wondering the camera is a Holga Diana with a Polaroid back.

This is the sort of sweet moment that makes one fear for their safety. Anyway, as Glenn climbs down, Maggie notices that the walkers are all clustered at one little patch of fence.

Michonne is heading out to Macon, promising to bring back cool stuff for Carl. Father and son get down to some serious farming. If not for the rasping zombies, would they be icked out by the worms? Could the worms have something to do with the sick pigs?

Carl wants to go sort out that walker cluster at the fence; dude just craves closeness to those things.

Rick replies, "I got another plan, involving dirt and cucumbers."

Carl has been trying to demonstrate to his dad that he is not, in fact, a psychopath. This is so he can get his gun back. ಠ_ಠ

Then we hear gunshots, as Harry Potter and the newly-turned walkers chow down on all the redshirts. Rick, Daryl, Glenn, Tyreese, Carol, and every other character who's been name-checked immediately swoop in to whip some walker ass.

Outside the fence, Michonne hears the commotion and heads back. Carl mans the gate, letting her back in. Unfortunately, a few walkers follow her. Michonne gets knocked down while fighting three walkers at once, injuring her ankle in the process. Maggie and Carl sort out two of the walkers, with Carl firing Maggie's rifle.

Maggie notices that the other walkers aren't following them, preferring to cluster up against that one particular patch of fence.

Hell in a cell

Cell Block D is a scene of full-on carnage. Children shrieking, walkers hissing, survivors yelling. The series regulars are getting busy with knives, shotguns, boots, and crossbows as redshirts get busy dying horribly.

Carol brings one of the redshirts into an empty cell and prepares to amputate his bitten arm... until she notices his bitten neck.

Meanwhile, Daryl finally skewers Zombie Harry Potter, who managed to be the last walker walking.

Cleanup crew

The survivors start clearing out the bodies, as well as brain-stabbing the dead who haven't yet turned. It's a dirty job, etc.

Carol is keeping the bitten redshirt company before he dies, and goes to get his kids so they can say goodbye. Because he asks, Carol also promises to look after them once he's gone. Clearly this guy has never heard of Sofia.

Meanwhile, Rick, Hershel, and Daryl quickly figure out that Harry Potter died of the Violet Flu and triggered the slaughter. Doctor S. determines that it's probably a flu-like disease, because, duh, Harry Potter had flu-like symptoms before turning into an eye-bleeding zombie monstrosity. Similar walkers have been spotted along the fence.

Carol brings in Redshirt Daddy's daughters. The little girls are like, "Daddy! Daddy! Carol, get the doctor!" Carol says, "Sorry, hon... your daddy's a redshirt, and this is what happens to redshirts. It's a circle-of-llfe thing."

Carol promptly asks one the little girls to demonstrate those Story Time knife skills by stabbing her own father's brain out. The eldest volunteers.

She just can't do it, though. While the older sister cries like, well, like a little girl, the younger sister tries to calm her down. Repeating "look at the flowers" doesn't help too much. Partly because the flowers aren't much to look at. Meanwhile, Carol skewers Redshirt Daddy's brain. For the record, though, she looks very, very sad about it.

The prison's council meets to talk about the shit-show that they just experienced. The next move is to quarantine anybody that seems sick in Cell Block A. Okay, so Cell Block A happens to be Death Row... but so was Cell Block D.

So anyone who's feeling a bit under the weather will be isolated from the rest of the group.

That includes Teen Wolf's mom, who is now coughing a bit.

Mending fences

Out at the fence, Redshirt Daddy's daughters are staring at the walkers and the little yellow flowers. Carol joins them for a pep talk. But it's a Carol pep talk: "Honey, you're weak."

Between that and her little sis calling her "stupid", big sis is finally getting over her zombies-are-people-too phase.

Meanwhile, we see that Daryl even looks cool when he's digging graves for infected corpses. He take a break to reassure Rick that he's not a useless moron. Which is actually true.

They're interrupted by a yell from the perimeter, where the walkers are starting to reach critical mass at that one patch of fence.

Walkers are starting to push the fence inward, like crazed Black Friday shoppers at Wal-Mart. Time to play whack-a-mole, or, rather, stab-a-skull.

A good question, actually

Beth is wrapping Michonne's ankle as Ass-Kicker plays with red Solo cups. Michonne says that she was total amateur hour back there, and that Carl and Maggie should have just left her to die. Beth is like, "No way! You're the best thing that's ever happened to this show, so quit your whining. If I wanted random drama, I'd just watch 'Revenge'."

Beth asks if any kids were killed in the Great Harry Potter Cell Block Massacre. Michonne's silence counts as a "Yes", and Beth wonders what you call a parent who lost a child. (It's been asked on Yahoo! Answers already, Beth)

Michonne winces as Ass-Kicker cries louder. Beth says that the baby is attuned to people's feelings, but maybe it's just that she's a baby stuck in a prison full of corpses. Or perhaps Solo cups are just crappy toys.

Or maybe she's sick.

Head cheese

Out at the perimeter, Sasha notices the pile of half-eaten rats, just as the outer fence starts to cave under the weight of the ravenous undead. By the way, in case you were wondering what happens to a walker when it's pressed too hard against a chain-link fence...

Rick looks back at the pigpen and gets an idea. Clearly it's the kind of idea that leads to "Walking Dead"-caliber moral pontification. He says, "Daryl, get the truck."

Makes me wish that I could be a dog

Back in the prison, Carl is making wooden grave markers. Each will read, "Random Redshirt: S03E10-S04E02."

Carol comes in and begs him once again not to tell Rick about the whole teaching-kids-to-use-knives thing. Carol is worried that the parents just won't understand. Not sure why they wouldn't. Anyway, Carl promises that he won't tell.

Michonne is doing core exercises as Beth walks by with Ass-Kicker. The song she's singing as a lullaby is "I Don't Wanna Grow Up", by Tom Waits. You might be familiar with the Ramones' cover version, but here's the original.

If the music of Tom Waits survives the Zombie Apocalypse, we may just have a chance as a species. (We've heard from Waits before on "The Walking Dead": "Hold On" was featured last season.)

Ass-Kicker starts crying, so Beth attempts the hand-off. Michonne at first refuses to take the fussy infant before finally relenting. As she cuddles little Ass-Kicker, Michonne breaks down in tears. Did we just learn something about Michonne's backstory? I think we did. :(

Beth notices it, too, and gives them a moment.

The other white meat

Out at the perimeter, Maggie opens the gate as Daryl drives past in a non-Hyundai vehicle. He's towing a trailer full of pigs. Rick grabs the pigs one by one, slashing each one's flank with his Rambo knife before setting it loose. By "setting it loose", I mean "sacrificing it to the horde of walkers, who pounce and devour it almost instantly." Okay, now PETA's gonna freak the f*ck out.

As Rick sets the pigs loose to live the rest of their short-ass lives in agonizing pain, we hear a swelling musical score. That's more than the humans got.

When cut, the third pig sprays blood into Rick's face in a fine, metaphoric mist.

The plan worked, though: the walkers have abandoned the fence. Glenn and Maggie shore up the perimeter fence with logs, but they're going to want to make sure it doesn't slope inward like that.

Meanwhile, we learn that zombies absolutely love pork.

The first day of the rest of your life

Elsewhere along the fence, Carol and Redshirt Daddy's daughters stare at a cluster of noisy walkers. Carol puts flowers in the eldest daughter's hair as she stokes the girl's anti-undead feelings. Wordlessly, the girl takes Carol's knife. No more fussing about Zombie Nick, one presumes.

Back at the soon-to-be-incinerated pigpen, Rick tells Carl that they have to stay away from little baby Ass-Kicker for a while, in case they're carrying Violet Flu. Well, Carl has managed to keep Carol's secret for less than 24 hours. He blabs to Rick, hastily adding that teaching young children to kill with knives is a pretty good idea these days. Rick agrees, and vows not to tell the kids' parents, presuming some of those parents survived the Great Redshirt Purge.

Hell, soon an army of knife-wielding kids will be all that remains of humanity. Rick must be thinking the same thing as he hands Carl a gun. He then straps his own big-ass revolver back on, reminding us to wonder why the hell he took it off in the first place.

(Is that the gun Rick dug up in S04E01? I don't remember Carl having a 1911 earlier in the series. I'd have gimen him something smaller. Bullets for those things are, like, a buck each.)

Rick lights the pigpen aflame to eliminate any contaminants. He then burns his shirt, the same one he's been wearing since S02.

Flowers for... your grave

Tyreese has plucked some tiny yellow flowers for Teen Wolf's mom, and he's delivering them to... oh, to her now-empty cell on Death Row. There's a blood trail leading outside, which Tyreese follows.

He wishes he didn't. Tyreese finds two burnt bodies, one of whom is wearing Teen Wolf's mom's bracelet.

Did she die of the Violet Flu, or did someone decide on a preemptive strike?

Whoever killed Teen Wolf's mom, know this one fact: Now it's personal.

And Tyreese is pretty angry, too.

The Walking Dead S04E02 review

Yeah, this is why we watch "The Walking Dead". And, writing team, I hope you managed to churn out these sorts of scenes for the weeks to come.

"Infected" was an action-packed episode, punctuated with the sort of decision-making that fuels heated water-cooler discussions come Monday morning.

Pigs and quarantine aside, S04E02 was all about Carol as far as I'm concerned. She's come a long way from the frightened rabbit we met in the first season. The death of her husband and daughter could have driven her further into herself, but instead she set about reinventing herself. Also, following Andrea's death at the end of last season, Carol is the sole surviving woman of S01.

As for all the dead redshirts, no, of course we don't care about them. We never even met them. However, thinning the herd of disposable characters puts the ones we do care about closer to real danger. Also saves me the hassle of trying to remember a bunch of new names.

The only thing I still don't get is why teaching the kids to use knives would be such a bad thing. Other than that, we saw our survivors earning their right to live another day.

It hasn't been clarified who was feeding rats to walkers, but it'll either be Carl or Redshirt Daddy's eldest daughter. She's the founder of Equal Rights for Undead Americans (though clearly no longer its leader), but Carl is basically Dexter in training. Holding a rat by its tail and feeding it to a zombie is such a future-serial-killer thing to do, so I'm still voting Carl.

Also, Rick is back to taking a leadership role, and, not coincidentally, back to making choices that lead to bloodshed. It's in his DNA, I guess.

I give "The Walking Dead" S04E02 four frantic but doomed pigs out of a possible five.

What did you think? Would you have sent the pigs on a suicide mission, or would you have just started ramming the walkers with the Jeep? Should the survivors actually start using those cell doors? Did those two bodies at the end remind you of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru from "Star Wars"?

Let me know in the comments, but please avoid spoilers.

Oh, and here's the Ramones' version of "I Don't Wanna Grow Up".