‘The Walking Dead’ Recap: Beth Tries To Escape Grady Memorial Hospital
For the first time since she was abducted in season 4, Beth returns on ‘The Walking Dead’ when she wakes up in an unfamiliar place. But is she finally safe from harm?
On the Nov. 2 episode of The Walking Dead, we finally get to see what happened to Beth (Emily Kinney) after she went missing during season four. Unfortunately, it seems like Beth is in more trouble inside the safety of a hospital rather than out in the woods with her survivor friends and family. Plus, which one of them joins Beth inside the hospital before the episode ends?
‘The Walking Dead’: Beth’s Location & Abductors Revealed
Alright, folks, let’s find out where the heck Beth is.
In the first scene of the episode, Beth wakes up in a very unfamiliar place — a hospital room. She’s in a gown and attached to a saline drip, and she’s immediately freaked out. Can’t say I blame her.
‘The Walking Dead’: Will Carol Be The One To Finally Save Beth?
When she gets up from the bed she looks out the window to see a grim version of Atlanta, which looks far worse than it did the last time we watched Rick leave it behind in his dust.
Moments later Beth tries the door, and it’s locked. It doesn’t take long for not one but two people to come and introduce themselves to her: Dr. Edwards and Officer Lerner (Christine Woods) — also known as Dawn. They tell her she is at Grady Memorial Hospital, and they both seem nice. Well, that is until Officer Dawn tells Beth that she “owes” them for saving her life.
Take Our PollUm, okay.
They take her on what I guess can be described as a tour of the hospital, which is when Dr. Edwards takes another survivor off of life support in front of her. She’s baffled, but there’s nothing she can do about.
What’s more disturbing is how the doctor decides to get rid of his body. Instead of burning the body, or burying it, he wraps it up and dumps it down a chute to the basement — where you can audibly hear walkers devour it. It’s a horrifying sound.
Beth seems to become friendly with the doctor, and even eats dinner with him later that day. That’s when he tells her that he’s bored, and she’s astounded that he could be that bold.
“If you feel safe enough to be bored, you’re lucky,” she tells him. It’s insightful post-apocalyptic wisdom which says a lot more about her than him. After all, we’ve seen what Beth has been through since she was forced to leave her farm behind.
Things get weird again when Officer Dawn brings in another survivor and begs the doctor to save the man. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The man fell off of a building, and he’s got so much internal bleeding happening that his abdomen is bruising.
When Officer Dawn gets the bad news she decides to take it out on Beth by slapping her across the face, causing her scabbed-over open wound to bleed.
It’s unclear why she decides that was appropriate, but no one says anything even after the officer storms out of the room.
Beth Figures Out That Something Weird Is Going On
Later, Beth assists a female patient, Joan, who appears to be on her way out. Even though Joan seems to have her wits about her, she’s missing a hand and she doesn’t seem to be much help around the hospital.
Apparently if you’re useless to the hospital, you’re also dead to them.
Beth asks Joan what happened to her, but she tells her it doesn’t matter. Then, she says something about having made a deal with the devil that seems like major foreshadowing. Yikes. What is Beth up against in this place?
We see Beth cleaning in her room when she decides to look for something under the mattress on her bed. Whatever it is she’s looking for she can’t find, and that’s when creepy Officer Gorman comes into the room. We first met him briefly in the hospital cafeteria earlier in the episode where he tells Beth he’s the one who saved her.
He pulls a lollipop out of his pocket and asks Beth if that’s what she’s looking for — and it clearly is. It’s a lollipop that was given to her by another ward, Noah. Officer Gorman takes the lollipop out of it’s packaging and tastes it, then zeroes in on Beth until she barely has room to move away from him.
As if he couldn’t get any more gross or perverse, he forces Beth to put the lollipop in her mouth. Thankfully, the doctor comes in and stops him. It makes you hope that the doctor really, truly has good intentions unlike everyone else he is working with.
This makes Beth question why the doctor stays with these people, and rightfully so. They are terrible. He uses the walkers as an excuse and tries to show Beth the bright side of them being trapped there, but it’s lost on her.
Beth & Noah Team Up Inside The Hospital
Just before it’s time for Beth to be done “helping” for the day the doctor tells her to stop in on a patient and give him some drug. She does so, but once it’s administered the patient starts to seize until he dies. This happens in front of Noah, who decides to use the opportunity to prove his loyalty to Beth.
Psycho officer Dawn comes in to stab him in the head, and when she looks to Beth for answers. However, Noah refuses to let Beth take the heat for this one and comes up with some lame story about accidentally knocking the patient’s ventilator out. Dawn grabs Noah and drags him out of the room, and moments later you can hear him being beat up — presumably by Dawn and creepy Officer Gorman.
The next day, Dawn comes to visit Beth to tell her that she knows Noah was lying. Then she gives her some weird, crazy speech about “the greater good” and how that’s the work the hospital is doing. Dawn tells Beth that she’s too weak, and Beth tells her she’s wrong. Dawn is the one hiding inside of a hospital, while Beth was once (or twice) on the run from walkers all over Georgia. Could Dawn survive something like that?
Beth meets up with Noah, probably the only person she can trust in that hospital besides the doctor, and they plan to escape. Noah tells Beth the fastest way out is the basement, but they have to worry about the walkers.
When Beth sneaks into Dawn’s office to find a spare key they can use in their escape, she discovers Joan, the female she was assisting earlier in the episode, has killed herself underneath Dawn’s desk using a pair of scissors.
Just as she finds the key she needs and is about to leave, creepy Gorman comes into the office. He doesn’t know about the patient under the desk, and he immediately tries to take advantage of Beth in the dark office. The woman comes back as a walker just in time, and Beth knocks Gorman over so that as soon as he hits the floor he comes the walker’s first meal. Ah, karma!
Beth Gets A Surprise Visitor At The Hospital
Beth escapes the carnage and even sends Dawn towards it by telling her that Gorman and Joan were looking for her. This becomes the perfect opportunity for Noah and Beth to escape, and somehow they figure out the perfect escape route down the elevator shaft and into the basement. It’s risky, especially with all of those walkers, but they figure it out.
Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse once the two of them get into the parking lot.
Beth has a gun so she has an advantage, but Noah is good at ducking — so he makes it to the gate before she does. Suddenly, and almost out of nowhere, Beth is tackled to the ground by a police officer. Even though she’s been caught, she smiles as she sees that Noah has escaped.
After her foiled escape, Dawn scolds Beth for letting this happen. Behind them you can see that not only are Gorman and Joan dead in the office, but so is another officer.
Beth tells Dawn no one is coming to help them, that she’s letting officers attack women in the hospital for no reason, and basically shames her for being a horrible human being. Dawn doesn’t like this, and Beth gets a beat down because of it.
It’s the doctor who takes care of Beth’s bumps and bruises, but this is where things get interesting. Beth confronts the doctor for telling her to give the male patient we mentioned previously the wrong medicine. Why did he do it? Because the man was a doctor, and if Dawn had another doctor in the hospital she wouldn’t need him anymore. Yikes.
Just as the episode comes to an end, Beth approaches the doctor with a sharp object. Is she going to kill him?
Well, if she was, she definitely isn’t going to anymore — because Carol (Melissa McBride) was just wheeled in on a gurney. This stops Beth in her tracks, and also made my heart fall out of my chest.
How did this happen? What happened to Carol? Is she alive? Where is Daryl? What is going on? What is life?
What did YOU think of this episode, HollywoodLifers? Do you think Beth and Carol will be able to escape together? Do you think Noah is now with Daryl outside of the hospital? Comment below!
— Lauren Cox
Follow @Iaurencox