Another trek into the city, this time with all the survivors in tow...

"Wildfire"

The campers have to clean up after the zombie attack and it is brutal. Amy is undead and Andrea has to shoot her in the head, and Jim is infected. The group is divided on whether to follow Rick to Atlanta to the CDC, but eventually decide to back Sheriff Rick's plan. Jim doesn’t make it, and asks to be left on the side of the road. The last remaining scientist at the CDC accidentally destroys his research and is just about to kill himself when the gang reaches him, and after hesitating (why?) he lets them in.

At the camp, the survivors are cleaning up, pickaxing the zombies and the dead in the head, and burning the bodies. Andrea won't allow anyone near Amy though, as she continues to hold her body and cry. Rick decides to 'tell her how it is' and hilariously gets a gun to the face as Andrea says, "I know how the safety works." He backs away. Hee! Andrea and Dale share a nice moment over Amy's body where they share and learn and hug and grow, then Amy starts to come back to life. And it's unclear (to the audience, and to the campers) whether Andrea realizes she's undead, not alive, up until the very second that she pulls the gun back up and shoots Amy in the head. It is complete emotional turmoil. And Laurie Holden is amazing, again.

During the clean up efforts, Carol, the battered wife, takes over the pickaxe when it's Ed's turn to have his head squished, and it's one of the goriest, bloodiest, spurtiest things I've ever seen, ever. Jacqui realizes that Jim has been infected by a bite and is trying to hide it. The group is divided on how to handle it and Darryl is actually the voice of reason. Bloodthirsty, redneck reason, but reason nevertheless, as he urges them to just kill Jim. Since they can't stay at the campsite anymore, Rick says they should head into Atlanta and try the CDC, in hopes they have a cure for Jim. Shane tells the campers to follow him to Fort Benning in hopes of getting help from the military, in the opposite direction. Rick and Shane each try to convince Lori separately to side with them, but while she has private reservations about the CDC plan, she publicly supports him. (Tammy Wynette would be so proud of you, standing by your man.)

Rick and Shane head into the woods to see if there are any walkers left, and get into an argument about how Shane's decisions would be different if Lori and Carl were his family. Ouch! Shane feels the ouch too, because just seconds later they split up and Shane has Rick in his sights and just barely decides not to shoot him. And Dale sees, and knows exactly what just happened. Dale is totally going to warn Rick that Shane's loyalties are divided. After almost shooting Rick, Shane suddenly comes around to his way of thinking and convinces the campers to head into Atlanta together.  But Jim doesn't make it, and asks that they leave him on the side of the road instead.

"Seriously? Couldn't they have saved one of the smart scientists?"

A scientist named Jenner is recording the progress (or lack thereof) of his experiments to find a cure for the disease, code name "Wildfire." Clever. He falls asleep during an experiment (clever) and burns a hole in his glove with acid (clever) and accidentally sets off decontamination that destroys his only good test samples (Seriously? Couldn't they have saved one of the smart scientists?) Just as he's about to get drunk (hey, me too!) or possibly kill himself, the gang shows up at the CDC and begs to be let in. At first, watching them on the camera, Jenner tells them to go away.  But they can't stay in Atlanta after dark, and they have no food or gas to make it to Fort Benning, and Andrew Lincoln channels Richard Gere in a "we got nowhere else to go" speech at the camera, with just a pinch of "you're killing us!" Jenner opens the door to the CDC to let them in. And like the pilot episode, we get our characters silhouetted in front of a door with a very bright light shining through.

Another amazing episode. The toll of the walker attack on the survivors, especially the Andrea scenes, was beautifully done.  But there were a few things that were annoying. Instead of just abandoning the camp, Sheriff Rick leaves a note on Glenn's red car that says, "Heading to CDC. This site not safe."  Who do you think is more likely to read that? Morgan, the dad from the pilot, or Merle, the crazy, one-handed redneck that just a few hours ago Rick thought was slaughtering the whole camp for revenge? Also, the whole trek in to the CDC to save Jim. If they were too squeamish to shoot him themselves, couldn't they have left him at the campsite with a bullet and let him figure it out? It's pretty clear too, that Jenner at the CDC is either crazy, or a very bad guy. On the other hand, it was great to see Rick make some mistakes - with Andrea, with Jim, and with Shane. His motivations are still perfectly pure, but the occasional slip-up is humanizing, and makes him more likeable.

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