The Walking Dead: Killer Within **SPOILERS**

**THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW**    

     This should have been the most suspenseful episode of The Walking Dead so far, it had all the elements of horror and suspense that even the best horror films lack,but something about the television structure killed the momentum every time things got really reved up.  It didn't help that this was the first episode I have ever watched live. When you fast forward through all the commercials you lose the effect they have on the flow of the show.  It felt like every time something crazy was about to happen and my heart was beating full throttle they would break to an ad and everything built was lost over the next two to three minutes.  But there were issues beyond the commercials.  Every time they came back from commercial, instead of picking up where they left off, we were brought back to Woodbury and some benign conversation between Andrea and someone else.  Maybe without the commercials this would have seemed less intrusive but it just added another 4 to 5 minutes to the separation from the action that was making the episode so great.
     Having two different groups to follow is not an easy task for the writers.  They have to keep the action moving without you losing interest in one group or the other; they don't want the suspense of one group making you forget about what is happening with the other.  I also realize that the writers took a lot of shots last season for things moving to slow and probably feel the need to keep things at an all out pace this season.  But to tell the story right, they need to build up the suspense in Woodbury, something that can't be done in one episode. In a perfect world, I would keep each group to their own episodes, one week we would be with the jail, the other we would be with Woodbury.  This way the action and suspense of the jail happen over a full episode without being broken up and we would never leave the build up of Woodbury for that long.  Unfortunately, this leaves us with one week of crazy action and one week that would seem slow in comparison, something I think the writers are avoiding.
     There were so many great moments of classic suspense in the episode, it's a shame they were cut by the back and forth.  Rick struggling to find the right key for each gate lock as the zombies came out of nowhere to attack the rest of the crew was brilliant.  Lori going into labor as the zombies surrounded the unlocked room they were hiding in was great as well.
     Luckily, neither the commercials nor Woodbury had any effect on the two major moments of the episode, the loss of two characters.  One wasn't much of a lose, as T-Dog was a character the writers never seemed to know what to do with.  It's obviously a common problem for writers to struggle with what to do with black characters in ensemble casts.  They'll have another chance though, since it looks like even though we lost a black guy, we gained a new one.  The other lose was a bigger deal.  It what I can only guess is further proof that the writers are trying to address criticism to the show so far, they killed off the much hated Lori.  The moment was surprising and emotional, well acted and well written.  It was a fitting send of for the character.  The best moment, maybe of the series so far, was when Maggie came out of the jail cell with the baby in hand.  It was all at once a moment of great hope and great sadness.  Andrew Lincoln as Rick and Chandler Riggs as Carl pulled off the acting turns of the series with pitch perfect responses to the horror.
     All in all, it was a wonderful episode of television with many fantastic moments, it's just that I felt it could have been great.  The thing to remember is that we haven't even scratched the surface of how crazy this season will get if the writers continue to follow The Governor story line.