The Walking Dead – Episode 5.4 “Slabtown”

As I predicted, as did everyone else I’m sure, Beth has found herself in a seriously fucked up situation. Although “Slabtown” solely focused Beth, I wasn’t disappointed. It’s hard to believe this is the same character who I was almost positive wasn’t going to be around for more than a few episodes. There were so many extra characters during Season 2 at Hershel’s farm, and I was sure Beth was going to be one of the casualties during the finale. Not only did the Beth/Daryl moments during Season 4 completely endear me to Beth, but it also paved the way for a much more interesting arc for the character.

Appropriately, though, the episode’s “previously on …” segment gave us a quick recap on Beth (just in case we forgot who she was), but it also gave us the moment during the Beth/Daryl saga when Beth said to Daryl after effectively identifying zombie-tracks in the woods, “Pretty soon I won’t even need you.” Beth has always been a character audiences don’t immediately recognize as “necessary,” myself included. She’s kind of like Carol before, you know, Carol became Carol. And Beth’s character has always been tasked with proving her presence and substantiating her existence in the world. As Dr. Edwards told Beth on the roof, “We’re not the ones who make it.”

It was a clear reference to the scene-act-agent ratios I discussed last week. The scene is a type of container for our acts, and our actions should coordinate with the scene. Dr. Edwards is right, and audiences would probably agree: people like Beth and Dr. Edwards wouldn’t survive without help from people like Rick or Daryl or Officer Dawn, people who are okay with making the tough choices. It seemed like Beth was always determined to not let the scene influence her actions – she was okay with being the hymn-humming wide-eyed I’m-not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman role. However, this episode, for Beth, was all about transcendence.

When Beth first enters Dr. Edward’s office, he points out his Caravaggio (as if you could miss it), The Denial of Saint Peter, and briefly talks about how art is about being more than animals. To a certain degree, Dr. Edwards is right. Art does separate animals from humans; art – in the literal sense, such as a Caravaggio – contains all of Kenneth Burke’s clauses on the definition of man (the symbol-using animal, the inventor of the negative, separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection). However, Dr. Edwards also says art is about transcendence. Transcendence brings about images of metamorphosis and transformation, and directional movement above and beyond a current position. If we think about transcendence in the Burkean sense it’s also about expanding your vocabulary.

Expanding your vocabulary means more to Burke than simply taking a thesaurus for a spin. For Burke, transcendence was about resolving a dialectical pair, words that appear to be non-negotiable and completely opposite. Communism/Democracy, Believer/Agnostic, Knowing/Not-Knowing. Once we expand our vocabulary to understand arguments beyond oppositional pairs, we transcend to a higher order of understanding. For Beth, I believe her transcendence came through resolving the Slavery/Freedom dialectic.

When Beth woke up in the hospital, she was told she would have to work off the debt of being saved by Officer Dawn and the others. Officer Dawn insisted, several times, this was not an instance of Beth being held against her will, but rather contributing to the greater good of the world. However, it became very clear very quickly Beth was being held against her will. Moreover, Officer Dawn consistently told Beth, as I’m sure she did with Dr. Edwards, Joan, Gorman, Noah, and anyone else she had power over, that “others” were coming to rescue them.

Beth exhibited some quiet resistance to this, but it wasn’t until she was re-captured after a failed escape attempt and brought back to Dawn that Beth’s moment of transcendence occurred. She told Dawn “No one is coming – We’re all going to die and all of [what you’ve done] will have been for nothing.” Beth’s options were not simply “Relinquish Freedom to Dawn or Be Free Outside the Hospital” because freedom does not exist in outside world – not like it did. They are all going to die, maybe by walkers, or maybe not, but it will most definitely be a result of the world they live in now and they are not going to be rescued by some unknown savior. The world is bleak and barren, and Beth finally recognized she is simultaneously free in the world and a slave to it because the scene is a container for action.

Beth acknowledged there was a third option beyond Slavery/Freedom because neither took priority over the other. By the end of the episode, she was ready to prove to Dr. Edwards she was the type of person who could make it. She was prepared to kill him, until she saw Carol being brought in on a gurney.

It wasn’t a perfect episode, but it was a necessary one. We all knew Beth’s location wasn’t going to be sunshine and rainbows, so learning the hospital was full of shady people was predictable. However, it accomplished and explored untreated territory in terms of character work.

As it looks like next week’s episode will be focused on Abraham’s field trip to Washington, this story line is going to be put on hold. I’m assuming the person Daryl introduces to Michonne at the end of last week’s episode is Noah? I also want to know how on Earth Office Dawn and co. managed to pull a fast one on Carol and get her into the hospital. Having a Carol/Beth team-up will be a great episode, if and when it ever gets here.