‘The Walking Dead Mid-Season Finale’: ‘Coda’ [Recap & Review]

The Walking Dead episode tonight, Coda, marked the mid-season finale point, and there was a lot of suspense, blood, violence, and walkers to tide fans over to when the season resumes in February. Sheriff Rick Grimes, Sasha, Tyreese, Noah and Daryl went on a rescue mission to save Beth Greene and Carol Peletier from Grady Memorial Hospital, but they face armed opposition in the form of a policewoman, Dawn, and her group of fellow cops.

The police, led by Dawn, have an enclave at the hospital, and the “patients” who are brought in have to work off a debt they owe to the police and the hospital staff before they get to leave. In other words, the patients become, basically, slaves.

At the beginning of The Walking Dead: Coda, we see running feet with boots on them, and “Bob” the policeman, who escaped, is trying to get free of his plastic wrist restraints. Walkers appear, and Sheriff Rick Grimes follows “Bob” in a police car, telling him to “Stop” over an intercom.

“Bob” will not stop, so Rick hit him and sent “Bob” flying. “Bob,” asks him for help, saying he had broken his back, and then he asked to be taken back to the hospital, but Rick has something else in mind.

“You can’t go back, Bob,” Rick told him. Rick shot him in the head then, silencing “Bob’s” protests. Then, The Walking Dead went to its first commercial break of the episode. With “Bob” dead, it is one less person that Rick and company will have to take out at the hospital.

The Walking Dead came back from the break, and a horde of walkers looked out a door trying to get to Father Gabriel, who was outside. Gabriel picked up bits of paper, and a Bible, with the name of “Mary” written in it. He then must run, as the walkers break through the glass door and try to get him. Father Gabriel runs back to the church, and begs to be let into it, though he had “escaped” it last episode through the floor. He has brought a ton of walkers with him.

Michonne broke the front doors open, and Carl shot some of the walkers, while Michonne hacked others with her machete. They have to retreat to another room, with baby Judith, and they barricaded themselves in. It was Father Gabriel’s room, where he had removed the floorboards. The walkers broke into the room, but Michonne, Carl, Judith, and Father Gabriel left through the floor and ran to the front of the church.

Outside of the church, Michonne shut the front doors and hammered them and locked them shut. The hands of walkers reached out, trying to grab hold of whoever they could get a hold of. Then, The Walking Dead went to a commercial break.

Back on The Walking Dead, Rick tells the others “He wouldn’t stop,” and Daryl said it might change things. The female cop said “He was a good man. He was attacked by marauders, that’s the story.” She claims that she will help Rick and the others out. There was another male officer there they caught.

At the hospital, Dawn was on a recumbent bike, trying to call the other cops; but, they were not responding. Beth was there with her, and asked “Is something wrong?”

Dawn said “Sometimes they don’t respond.”

Beth asked her about somebody in a photo, and Dawn said “He was my mentor, my friend.”

“What happened to him?” Beth asked.

“In this job, you don’t need to have their love. But, you have to have their respect.” She said that the guy in the photo “lost his way — that’s what happened.”

Carl asked Father Gabriel “Why’d you go?”

Father Gabriel responded that he had to know what happened at the school. Then, Sergeant Abraham Ford and the people with him drove their fire truck up and onto the church’s porch.

Michonne told Maggie that “Beth is alive, in a hospital in Atlanta.” They decided to head to Atlanta, also.

At the hospital, a male cop asked Beth “What about you? Are you good with a needle and thread?” Then, The Walking Dead went to another commercial break.

When The Walking Dead returned from the commercial break, Beth was in a room with Dawn, sitting in the entrance to the elevator shaft. “Percy’s okay. Are you going to jump?” Dawn asked her. “You know, you’re not going anywhere,” she added.

“Neither are you. You keep telling yourself that you’re going to keep doing what you’re doing until it’s all over. It won’t be over,” Dawn said. She told Beth that “I protected you. You’re a cop killer.”

The lights flickered and a male officer asked Dawn “What are you going to do? Are you going to tell her, or will I?”

Dawn pointed her gun at the male officer, O’Donnell, and told Beth to “Get out of the way.”

“We were rookies together. You were with me smoking cigars in the parking lot waiting for my child to be born,” O’Donnell told her.

On The Walking Dead, O’Donnell told her “You’ve changed,” and knocked her gun out of her hand. Then, O’Donnell picked Dawn up by the neck, choking her. Beth helped Dawn, and kicked the male officer, O’Donnell, down the elevator shaft to his doom.

“Thank you,” Dawn told her.

At the hospital, Dawn told Beth “It’s okay to cry.’

Beth said “I don’t cry anymore.”

Dawn said “I do.”

Beth said “Those other cops were problems for you, but now, they’re not. Everyone uses people to get what they want.”

Beth told her Noah’s “going home.”

Dawn said “I was like you when I was younger. No one could tell me anything. You knew her, and somehow you both wound up here. This is important, maybe the most important thing you’ve ever done in your life. Those other policeman deserved to die. They hurt people. I will remember.”

On a rooftop on The Walking Dead, Sasha and Tyreese are ready with their guns Sahsa is mad at herself for having let “Bob” trick her. Tyreese told her that he had the chance to kill a guy back at Terminus, but he did not, and he said he probably should have done it. Daryl and Sasha have their guns trained below, where Rick was, in front of the hospital. Rick put his hands up and approached a cop car. He said he was there to “make a proposal.”

“Lay your weapon on the ground,” one of the policemen told Rick.

Rick said “Alright,” and laid his weapon down. “You have two of my people I have two of yours.” Rick suggested an even trade.

“Noah is with you?”

“Yes, he is,” Rick said.

“Where are your people?” one cop asked. Someone on the rooftop fired and killed a nearby walker.

“The’re close,” Rick said. He said for them to contact their boss, adding “I’ll wait.” Then, The Walking Dead headed to yet another commercial break.

The Walking Dead came back and Rick and his group, with their hostages, headed into the hospital. Beth slipped a knife into her cast on her hand. She rolled Carol down the hallway, in a wheelchair, with the doctor behind them. Dawn and a bunch of cops were on the other side of a door. “Holster your weapons,” Dawn told the cops, and they did.

“They haven’t been harmed,” Rick told her.

“One of yours for one of mine,” Dawn told Rick.

“Alright,” Daryl said. Dawn lead Beth halfway to Rick and company, and Rick led the female officer to that point. Dawn said “Now all I need is Noah.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Rick said.

“I’ll need him now that I’m not going to have her,” she said, paraphrased.

Noah said that “It’s okay.”

Beth said she knew how it was now, and walked up to Dawn, stabbing her. Dawn shot her in the head. Daryl then shot Dawn in the head.

The female cop who Rick released said “Stand down,” and said that the problem had been with her, Dawn. Rick told them he would take back with him anybody who wanted to go.

Glenn, Maggie, Tara and the rest approached the hospital as Rick and company came out, with Daryl carrying the dead body of Beth. Maggie broke down and began crying.

Meanwhile on The Walking Dead, back at the church, Morgan showed up. He killed a walker, and then left some things on the altar, like a note and a bullet. He saw the note that Sergeant Abraham had left for Rick, about going to Washington, D.C. That was where the mid-season finale, Coda, ended. Is Morgan now okay? Is he possibly a madman?

Even though it had been rumored that Beth and/or Carol would die during this episode of The Walking Dead, it was still a shock to see Beth get killed, shot in the head by Dawn. It will be interesting to see what happens when the season resumes in February, how Eugene is doing, how Daryl, Carol, Maggie and the others will cope with Beth’s death, and if Rick and his group will decide to set up another encampment somewhere, or maybe go someplace else, like Washington, D.C.

Written By Douglas Cobb

Sources:
The Walking Dead AMC Official Site
wn.com