twdmusicboxmystery · 8 years ago
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2017 Rewatch: Season 1
Good morning! As I said on Saturday, I really enjoyed re-watching S1. I hadn’t watched the entire thing in quite some time. Remember that in S1, Beth wasn’t on the horizon at all. None of the things I mention here came about because Beth was being planned for. In fact, I’m pretty sure Gimple didn’t even start working on the show until S2. But we have a lot of evidence that Gimple goes back through previous seasons and builds on what’s already been done. It’s a smart story telling technique bc it makes the story and characters arcs feel more cohesive. So I’ll just be pointing out things that Gimple may have gone back, seen, and used to build Beth’s arc.
1x01: Days Gone Bye
Remember that the first thing we see is Rick approaching the defunct gas station, where he sees the little, blond zombie girl. After that it goes back to the beginning. This part really surprised me. Check out some of these first images we see:
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First there’s the gas station, which Gimple made good use of in 4a, just as Beth’s arc was kicking off. There’s the blond girl entangled with rick, this doll (reminded me of Sophia’s doll), then a bike/trike, and a tiger. Again, no idea if this is a thing, but could that truly have been looking forward to Shiva? I’m gonna say yes, it’s a possibility. They had no idea in S1 if the show would go that long, but Shiva is a big part of the CBs. And here, in S1, is a tiger.
(Oh, and I know this pic is blurry—the camera is moving too much to get it clearer—but I’m pretty sure around the tiger are poker cards. Where else did we see those? Around the “green” walker in Still. Just saying.)
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When Rick is in his coma, Shane says, “We’re all still here.” Guys, that’s huge. The I’m here/not here/still here dialogue is very prevalent in S5. Carol says it to Mary at Terminus. Beth says it to Carol in Crossed (while Carol is in a coma in a hospital, no less). Massive, massive MASSIVE parallels between S5 and ep 1x01.
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I’ve also always wondered about the flowers Rick sees. If Gimple meant to use this, it’s an anti-parallel. In S4, “look at the flowers” came to mean the person was about to die. Here, Rick wakes up. He’s alive. And the flowers are dead. Gimple may have used that to build the Carol/Lizzie/Mica arc in S4.
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I won’t go into too much detail about this, but of course there are all the parallels between Slabtown and Rick waking up at the hospital. From the general situation to the clocks, the lighting, the fact that he goes outside. Lots and lots of parallels.
The fact that the first person Rick meets after waking up is Morgan lends credence to the Beth/Morgan entanglement theories. Of course there are lots of bikes in this episode, which Gimple may have also built on.
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This is random but at one point, Rick tells Duane jokingly that he’s “deadly as Dillinger.” In a way, that foreshadows all of Rick’s leadership and the fact that he’ll do questionable things in the future. It also reminded me of this truck in S7 that we saw of outlaws robbing a stage coach. 
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Not sure that’s a thing. Just reminded me of it.
1x02: Guts
When Rick first meets Glenn and is rescued by him (I miss Glenn! ☹) they climb a ladder. It reminded me of all the ladder stuff around Maggie in S6. At one point, Glenn asks, “So you the new sheriff, riding in to clean up the town?” Again, exact same wording as the flashback in 4x16 when Rick calls Beth the “new sheriff in town.” At one point, we see walkers eating rats in the sewer. Just reminded me of the rats Lizzie fed to the walkers in S4. So again, Gimple could have built on this idea. We saw a lot of broken glass in this episode. Glenn drives the red car, which is the first “red object” we see. I’ll do a post on that later in the week (hopefully).
And of course Merle is left behind in this episode. Not much happens here except the actual leaving, but there will be a lot of parallels to Beth later.
1x03: Tell it to the Frogs
The first thing that stood out to me is that it’s Merle’s right hand that is severed so he can escape. Beth’s right arm was the one in the cast, and Rick in S4 constantly had a bandage on his right hand, which I’ve always thought foreshadowed Beth’s.
In the camp, they put cans on strings as an alarm against walkers. We definitely see that later on. They don’t do it at the prison bc they have fences. We specifically see it in Still and then again in 6x04, Here’s Not Here. Probably a few other places too.
Of course, this is where Rick reunites with his family. (Rick is shot, in a comma, wakes up alone, has to go find his family, eventually does and reunites with them. The same will be true of Beth.) 
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It occurred to me how strongly this show is built on reunions (particularly sibling with Andrea/Amy and romantic with Rick/Lori). In a season where they weren’t sure if they would stay on the air and only had six episodes to work with, they very heavily stressed family, reunions, and the importance of keeping a group together. I can’t imagine Gimple wouldn’t have built on that. We’ve seen him do it in other places (Terminus, Alexandria, Hilltop this season, etc.) No way he wouldn’t give Beth and Daryl some kind of reunion. ESPECIALLY if Beth was going to die, they should have had one. The fact that they didn't… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rick tells Lori and the others around the fire of his experience saying he’d awakened disoriented, as though in a coma dream. He’d been unsure if he’d ever wake up. I just wonder how much of this will apply to Beth.
There’s a deer, which is super interesting to me. Now, no one dies directly because of or around this deer, as happens in S4, S5. But we have an early symbolism here. And one episode later, the camp is attacked and many people die, including Amy (blond girl and younger of two close sisters). Another thing Gimple could have built on.
Carl says to Lori about Rick, “Everything that’s happened so far…nothing’s killed him.” Again, just jumps out at me as something that could apply to Beth.
Finally, the title. First, the frog is a major transformation symbol. Remember that we saw dead frogs in 5x10, right before the music box woke up. In this episode, when Lori tells Shane to “tell it to the frogs,” she’s basically telling him to stop bullshitting her. Tell it to the frogs. As in, tell someone who cares and will listen, because I don’t believe you anymore. Specifically, she was yelling at him for lying to her about Rick dying. Think about that. “Tell it to the frogs” in the context of the episode specifically meant she didn’t believe him because he’d lied about Rick being dead. Rick had still been alive. And then we saw dead frogs in 5x10.
Okay, I’m sure I’ll get eye-rolls for this. It’s cool. Roll away. When they run up the stairwell at the end to rescue Merle, I noticed a number in the background. I knew I had to look at what it was. Drum roll, please. It was an 8.
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Okay, I seriously doubt this went into Gimple’s planning. Maybe, but he wouldn’t choose a specific season to bring her back in JUST because of this random number. I don’t think. (I think it’s more likely that he went with S8 because of the rule of threes. And 8 just so happens to be three seasons after she disappeared.) But it got me all excited and I wanted to mention it. (Oh, the coincidences!) Besides, this is when Merle disappeared, not when he reappeared, so it doesn’t work particularly well anyway.
1x04: Vatos
They talked a lot about how little blood Merle lost. In his case, it was because he used a tourniquet, but still. Daryl makes several remarks about how there should have been more blood, but there wasn’t. Also notice Merle uses fire to cauterize his wound. (Oh the symbolism! ;D)
This was another huge one for me, guys. Daryl says repeatedly that Merle is “tough.” Come ON. That’s exactly the same thing he says about. Beth. And what do you know? Merle should have died, was presumed dead, disappeared for two seasons, then reappeared and reunited with Dary. (“No one can kill Merle but Merle.”) Hmm. 🤔
1x05: Wildfire
The big thing that stood out to me here was Glenn saying that they didn’t burn their dead. They buried them. 
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Daryl actually wasn’t too keen on this idea at first. He was spooked about not burning the dead because of the virus. But this is where the whole pattern of burying members of TF began. It was emphasized even more in S5 because Beth, like Glenn, was big on burying those they love. It’s further emphasized every time any character (especially minor ones) get a full blown burial.
1x06: TS-19
Whew. This episode. I often forget how powerful it is. I must have seen it 20+ times by now, but when we get to end and the clock is ticking down, I can’t ever pull my eyes away.
So we start with a flashback showing Shane leaving Rick in the hospital. First of all, precedent of flashbacks to scenes where members of TF were left behind.
But we also see Shane check for Rick’s heartbeat before leaving him. He later tells Lori that he couldn’t hear one. 
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Now, knowing Shane, I’m not sure we can assume he was telling the truth here. He’s really good at lying, especially to Lori, and especially to cover his own butt. He may have heard a heartbeat and left Rick anyway. But we can’t know for sure and he IS very emphatic with Lori that he truly thought Rick was dead. Like I said, I never liked or trusted Shane, but perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt here. 
I can totally see them paralleling this with Beth, especially given all the other Rick/hospital parallels there are. Maybe they check her vitals, and truly can’t feel anything, which is why they all assume, perfectly understandably, that she’s dead. Either she really is dead for a time when they check, or because her body has gone into shock/hibernation, they just can’t feel anything. Either way, they assume it, and she gets left behind.
Okay, when Jenner shows them the scan of his wife’s brain as she dies (Test Subject 19) he says something else that very well may be a coincidence, but kinda made my jaw drop. 
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“The resurrection times vary wildly. We’ve had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of is eight hours.” So the resurrection time is anywhere between 3 minutes and 8 hours.“ Are you kidding me? I truly don’t think the 8 in stairwell in ep 3 is a thing. But this? I have a hard time turning away from this. And I don’t think Gimple would sacrifice story just to hit a number parallel, but if it just so happened to line up anyway… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I mean, we have the word resurrection, a 3 (rule of threes) and then there’s that 8 again, all in the same sentence. Just saying.
I noticed a time theme in this season. When Amy died, Andrea talked to her corpse before she turned. She apologized for never making it home for Amy’s birthday saying, "I always thought there would be more time.”
I didn’t pick it up as a theme until ep 6 when Jenner, looking at a picture of his wife, said, “I’ve done the best I could with the time I had…We always think there’ll be more time.” And it’s really a show-wide theme, as they’re constantly losing people, homes, alliances, etc. But wanted to point it out. Sad, sweet, and interesting.
Finally, we had Andrea’s attempted suicide here. 
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Even if you’re not TD, it’s safe to say that Beth’s suicide was patterned after Andrea’s. How can we be sure? Because Andrea played a part in Beth’s suicide arc. After realizing that she hadn’t really wanted to die after all (if she had, she, like Jackie, wouldn’t have let anyone, even Dale, talk her out of it) she wanted to do the same thing for Beth: give her a chance at it so she’d realize it wasn’t really what she wanted. Even in the plot, they connected the two things in an obvious way. So we have the origins of the suicide arc and the constant reminders since of a blond girl that tried to cut her wrists.
That’s it for S1. Loved it! Now on to S2. (Woot, woot!)
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