As the fifth of a six-episode arc (and falling between last week's frenetic conclusion and next week's season finale), "Wildfire" figured to be a transitional episode. And sure enough, tonight's installment of The Walking Dead was all about cleaning up, and moving on.
In the aftermath of the bloody zombie attack, the remaining camp members tend to the dead, burning the toppled "geeks" and burying their murdered loved ones. Andrea, meanwhile, keeps vigil over her slain sister Amy, whose eventual resurrection as a zombie furnishes perhaps the series' most poignant scene to date. Bitten on the stomach during the attack on the camp, Jim makes his own slow, feverish transition towards geekdom. His fate is just another reminder that the zombies of this post-apocalyptic world are not alien monsters but rather humans who have slid along a continuum between life and death (and afterlife), between civility and mindless savagery.
With the camp at the quarry obviously no longer a safe haven, the group has no choice but to pack up and head out. The dilemma, though, involves the direction they should take. Rick suggests the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, while Shane proposes they trek to a military base 100 miles away. After much debate, the group decides to try for the closer destination. And it's apropos that this transitional episode ends with the image of the survivors standing at a threshold--of the opened doorway of the CDC (although the coming attractions for the season finale intimate that the compound won't provide the sanctuary everyone had hoped for).
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