Still

"Still" is the twelfth episode of Season 4 of AMC's The Walking Dead. It aired on March 2, 2014 at 9/8c on AMC, and on March 3, 2014 at 9pm on Fox.

Plot Synopsis
In the middle of the night, Daryl and Beth find an abandoned car on the side of the road. They climb into the trunk and spend the night inside it as numerous walkers pass. The next morning, they climb out of the car and scavenge it for supplies before moving out.

Later, Daryl is hunting for food while Beth makes a fire at a camp that they have set up. After failing to catch a squirrel, Daryl manages to kill a large snake. He brings it back to the camp, where he and Beth cook and eat it. After she is finished, Beth tells Daryl she wants a drink. He gives her a bottle of water, but she tells him that she wants alcohol, explaining that Hershel had never let her have any. When Daryl doesn't respond, she angrily takes her knife and leaves.

As she is walking, walkers appear and she is forced to hide. She successfully tricks the walkers by tossing a stone into some nearby brush, distracting them. Daryl then arrives and leads her back to the camp much to her anger.

After yelling at Daryl, telling him she can take care of herself and flicking him off, Beth and Daryl leave the camp. They stumble onto a golf course as a group of walkers emerge from the woods and Beth decides to go to the country club at the edge of the golf course believing that it will have alcohol. Once inside, they find three walkers hanging from the ceiling by their necks while bodies of people with gunshots in the head are scattered on the floor. As Beth looks for alcohol, Daryl begins collecting money that had been scattered across the floor. The walkers from the golf course attempt to enter the room and force Daryl and Beth to seek refuge deeper inside the club.

As they work their way deeper into the building, Beth manages to find an unopened bottle of alcohol, however, a walker attacks her from the shadows and she is forced to smash the bottle to try to use it as a makeshift weapon. When this doesn't work, she manages to get her knife and use it to kill the walker. She sees Daryl watching and sarcastically thanks him for his help. Daryl simply replies by reminding her that she had said she could take care of herself. Beth notices writing on the wall saying "Welcome to the dogtrot" and more bodies of people that committed mass suicide.

They find a shop further inside the building. Daryl attempts to loot the cash register and begins taking anything that might have had monetary value before the plague before noticing half of a female corpse with an opened shirt and a sign reading "rich bitch" pinned over mannequin legs. Beth, meanwhile, finds clean shirts and puts one on. As they continue searching, a grandfather clock that they had passed earlier begins to chime attracting all of the walkers left in the club house. Daryl and Beth attempt to run, and when faced with a dead end, Daryl begins dispatching the walkers using his crossbow before using a golf club and his knife to dispose of them and finally savagely beating the last one with the golf club and ruining Beth's shirt in the process.

They then find the club house's bar and Beth proceeds to search it for alcohol while Daryl continues collecting things. Beth finds a half-empty bottle of alcohol and asks Daryl, who is now playing darts with the photos of what appears to be the club's presidents, if the brand is any good to which he replies "no". Unable to find a clean glass, Beth begins to break down in tears before Daryl angrily walks to where she is sitting and smashes the bottle on the floor saying that her first drink will be from something better.

He then takes her to a rundown shack that he claimed to have found with Michonne. He enters the house with Beth, retrieves crates of moonshine from it, and pours her a glass. Beth drinks the moonshine then offers Daryl a drink, but he refuses saying that someone needs to have their wits about them.

Beth then convinces Daryl to play the "I Never" game, during which Daryl becomes intoxicated. Beth then says that she has never been to jail, implying that Daryl had. He then becomes furious and begins urinating on one of the walls. He then forcefully takes Beth outside to where a walker has been attracted to the house to teach her how to use his crossbow. He shoots the walker in the chest, pinning it to a tree, and tries to force Beth to kill it with his crossbow. She refuses and instead stabs it in the head with her knife. They then begin arguing, during which Daryl yells at Beth for being lost on the road and only wanting to have a drink like a "dumb college girl", and Beth accuses Daryl of not caring about anyone.

Daryl then breaks down and reveals that he felt directly responsible for Hershel's death. He tells her how he had had a shot at the Governor, but didn't take it, and that if only he kept looking for the Governor with Michonne maybe then they could have saved Hershel's life. Beth then embraces him as he continues to cry.

Later in the night, Daryl and Beth share stories of their respective families during which Beth tells Daryl that he would ultimately be the last person standing after everything was over. Daryl then says that before the apocalypse he would follow his brother, Merle, and do as he said. Beth then suggests that they burn down the house they found the moonshine in. Daryl smiles and tells her they will need more alcohol.

They empty all of the moonshine all over the house and prepare to light it. Daryl offers Beth the matches and she lights the money that Daryl had collected earlier, throwing it into the house. The house begins to burn and Beth and Daryl both flip off the house while watching it burn before turning and leaving.

Uncredited

 * Coleman Youmans as a Walker

Deaths

 * None

Ratings
Upon airing, the episode was watched by 12.61 million American viewers, receiving an 18–49 rating of 6.4. This presented a slight decrease in ratings from the previous episode, but still presented strong ratings. The show placed first overall in cable television viewing.

Critical Response
Roth Cornet of IGN gave the episode a positive review, mainly praising the character development of Daryl and Beth, and gave the episode a score of 8.5 out of 10. She commented that the episode featured "some of the most grounded and engaging character moments of the season" and praised the horror elements, particularly the opening sequence, calling it "evocative" and "very satisfyingly, creepy."

Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club rated the episode a "B". He noted the episode's slower pace, with no advancement of plot, but enjoyed the character development. He positively commented on the opening sequence, as well as the concluding scene. Overall, he wrote, the episode "has its moments, but the lack of forward progress, and the failure to turn authorly ambition into effective results, keeps it from being a success."

Trivia

 * The title of this episode is referring to Daryl and Beth’s drunken moonshine confessions, as well as the discovery of the moonshine still.
 * In the Talking Dead it was revealed that the hanging walkers in the club were killed by the staff of the club during a class struggle.
 * As revealed in Talking Dead. John Sanders, the prop master, was one of the faces that Daryl was throwing the darts at.
 * The song that plays during the ending scene is "Up The Wolves" by The Mountain Goats.
 * This episode features the fewest number of actors thus far.
 * This episode also features the fewest living characters.
 * This is also the first episode to feature no guest actors.
 * This is the first episode to feature only two main cast members, the other being "The Grove".
 * This is the first episode to feature no characters with comic counterparts, having Daryl and Beth as the only characters to appear.
 * Emily Kinney and Norman Reedus confirmed that the snake they were eating during shooting was actually Eel.
 * Norman had cut off the rattle from the snake during shooting and gave it to Andrew Lincoln.
 * At the Country Club, Beth picks up a spoon with Washington, D.C. decorated on it, hinting at the group's future journey to the location.
 * This episode is a posthumous dedication to Sarah Elizabeth Jones, a camera operator killed in an accident during the filming of Midnight Rider in 2014.
 * According to Denise Huth, the photos of the country club's presidents are staff that work on the show.

Promo(s)
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