So whatever happened to Al?

This.

We see the other side of the last few weeks now as the focus shifts to Al (Maggie Grace) and where she’s been. It turns out she was kidnapped by a soldier from the same group as the Roamer she killed. The soldier, Isabelle, originally planned to kill Al and take the tape she’d made to keep her community secret.

Isabelle has clearly never met a journalist before.

Al refuses to die. Al refuses to tell her where the tape is. Isabelle needs fuel. ROAD TRIP!

Director Michael E. Satrazemis is a veteran on these shows and this episode neatly shows us why. He excels at the showy stuff, and there’s an Al/Isabelle versus a Roamer up a cliff fight which is just immense fun. But the character moments are what really fly here. Grace relishes playing a character with this much pepper and Sydney Lemmon’s Isabelle is every part her equal. Better still, the two represent the two conflicting ideologies in these shows; focus on the people, or focus on the bigger picture.

For Al, it’s all about the people. Her Domesday Book of video cassettes has already saved their lives once and she’s slowly building a tapestry of the people left alive and how they interact. This week though, we get the dark side to that. Al has lost everything in pursuit of story so now that’s all she has. Or all she thinks she has.

Isabelle plays things closer to her chest but we still find out a lot. The Roamer Al killed was her partner, Beckett. Beckett lost it when he saw the radiation damage to the Walkers and she had no choice but to kill him. But he was carrying the maps and so Isabelle risked everything to keep her home safe. Given that’s where Rick almost certainly is, hopefully he’s proud.

One desperate to connect with people. One desperate to protect the cornerstone of society. The two women bounce off each other constantly in an enthralling discussion of why they are like they are. It leads too to a beautifully judged romantic moment which hopefully means we’ll be seeing more of Isabelle in the future. She and Al certainly swap sins, her taking the video memorial of Al’s brother in return for Al lying about meeting her. The consequences of that will be drastic I’m sure. But here they’re quiet, polite and hopeful. The world is out there waiting for these characters. And this week, Al got a good look at it.

Verdict: Writers Andrew Chambliss & Ian Goldberg pull the curtain back a little here and it’s fascinating stuff. Hopefully next time, we’ll get a much closer look. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart