Episode 4, Slabtown
Summary:
Slabtown kicks off with Beth opening her eyes in a hospital bed. She jumps out of bed in a panic only to have a police officer and a doctor tell her she was saved from robbers. And Beth doesn’t appear to remember her name. The female cop ominously tells Beth that she would be one of “them” now if they hadn’t saved her – so Beth owes them.
After the doctor takes someone off life support he shows Beth how they dispose of the body by tossing it down an elevator shaft. It looks like the cops run the hospital and force everyone else to work in exchange for their food and protection. There is a clear delineation between the cops and the others, and a bit of anger/anxiety around how the cops run the place.
When the police bring in another patient they want the doc to save the guy, and get angry when the doc tells them he doesn’t have the tools to do it – which gets Beth slapped out of the blue.
Shortly after the cops drag in a woman who was bitten and the doc is forced to cut off her arm to save her, using an amazingly graphic survival rope saw to cut off the arm. Right before the cut is made the woman screams at the bad cop that she “can’t control them”. I think she must be talking about walkers?
After Beth doesn’t get dinner Dawn comes and tells her she needs to eat and needs to work so they can all survive. Dawn says she believes the world will eventually get back to a more normal state.
When Joan wakes up Beth is in the room cleaning up the blood. Joan tells Beth that “she can’t control them” but Beth doesn’t ask WTF she’s saying.
Back in Beth’s room the creepy cop who “found” her (Gorman) has gone through her things and forces her to taste the lolly pop he took from he dresser. It was very creepy to watch. Gorman tells the doc that Beth should have been “his”.
Beth wants to know why the Doc doesn’t leave and he shows Beth that the first floor is covered in walkers and then explains that as evil as Dawn might seem she kept them alive and saw the hospital survivors through some bad times. And as bad as it might seem, Doc believes the way of life in the hospital is better than what is outside the walls.
After that the Doc tells Beth to give a patient on a ventilator a drug and it causes the patient to have a seizure and die. Another “prisoner” takes the rap for Beth but Dawn knows anyway. And it isn’t clear whether the Doc set Beth up by telling her the wrong drug. After Dawn beats the the other prisoner she tells Beth that the “orderlies” job is to keep her officers happy, and that the happier her officers are, the harder they work. She says something super creepy after that about having to make compromises. I think she lets the male officers take some of the prisoners as concubines.
Beth and the beaten orderly are both on the same wavelength and start to plan an escape. The critical thing being a key to the elevator banks. When Beth goes to find it she finds another orderly who has killed herself? And why isn’t Beth afraid the girl will turn? This is when Gorman walks in and finds Beth and he basically tells Beth that he will let it slide if she lets him have his way with her.
Beth lures Gorman in just enough to so the dead girl on the floor can turn and take care of her problem for her.
After Beth gets the key the walkers attack based on what we hear while Beth and the other orderly escape down the elevator shaft. They have a flashlight, and Beth’s friend is wounded, but able to walk. Just when you think they are both zombie food Beth pulls out a pistol and starts blowing the heads off walkers. They get outside and escape through a fence only to find they are surrounded by walkers. At first you think that Beth is going to leave her orderly friend but he runs instead as the officers rescue Beth and take her back into “custody”.
Back in the hospital Dawn is reading Beth the riot act but Beth fights back, telling Dawn that Gorman was going to rape her, just like he did Joan, and that Dawn let it happen. This get’s Beth hit and hard.
In the next scene Doc is stitching Beth up – and we find out what Beth had been looking at in Dawn’s office. It had been the ID from the guy she’d killed. She tells the Doc she knows he had her give the wrong med to the patient to kill him because he didn’t want the other doctor to replace him. (does that make sense?)
Then, at the very end of the episode Beth has a scalpel and was about to go after the Doc when she sees Carol get rolled in.
Now we have to wait until next episode!
Things I loved about this episode…
- Dawn does the evil female thing really well.
- Doc cutting off the arm with the rope saw.
- The first floor of the hospital when Doc hits the bars with a pipe.
- Beth telling Dawn that Gorman and Joan are looking for and she saw them heading to her office.
- Beth – she is just sweet.
Things that I didn’t like about this episode…
- The cops and the orderlies look too clean. How the hell are they keeping all their stuff clean?
- There seems to be too much power at the hospital.
- Joan says “she can’t control them” more than once and Beth doesn’t ask her who can’t control whom? Is it walkers?
- Come on – Joan turns just when Beth needs her to? And not while Beth was standing next to her at the filing cabinet?
- Where did Beth get the gun she used when they climbed out of the elevator shaft? Did I blink and miss this?
Watch Season 1 Instantly:
  |
Watch Season 2 Instantly:
  |
Watch Season 3 Instantly:
  |
Watch Season 4 Instantly:
  |