The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1, episode 4 recap – “The Wrong End of a Telescope”

By Jonathon Wilson
Published: October 24, 2020 (Last updated: January 26, 2024)
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The Walking Dead: World Beyond Season 1 Recap
The Walking Dead: World Beyond Courtesy of AMC
1.5

Summary

“The Wrong End of a Telescope” sees World Beyond arguably getting worse in another tedious, remarkably stupid installment.

This recap of The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1, episode 4, “The Wrong End of a Telescope”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.


Well, blimey, this is getting tedious, isn’t it folks? “The Wrong End of a Telescope” finds The Walking Dead: World Beyond on the wrong side of a good drama, or a good zombie show, or a good anything, really, as the Scooby-gang of kids and their reluctant handlers make their way slowly and drily to towards their ultimate destination and the death-by-boredom of a dwindling audience.

There’s a bit of a juxtaposition between the kids and adults since the former are all excited believing themselves to be on a mythic quest and the latter are worried they might all dehydrate before they get there, but stupidity is shared equally among them. This week’s setting is in large part a high school – it’s a teen drama, you see – populated with zombies that the production designers are trying ever so hard to make interesting, but the living characters have so little to say for themselves that it’ll almost be a mercy when one of them inevitably pays the price for their ineptitude with a good chomping.

Until then, Hope and Iris are having some problems with their relationship, so a good chunk of “The Wrong End of a Telescope” is devoted to flashbacks involving Leopold that reiterate their longstanding sisterly relationship, how inseparable they once were, and how things between them will inevitably be fine, none of which seem like conclusions we couldn’t have arrived at ourselves.

The high school setting isn’t as important as the show thinks. It’s fitting that these atypical teenagers get to ponder what a real high-school life might have been like for them, but as far as The Walking Dead universe is concerned, they’ve lived pretty normal lives anyway. Sure, those lives have been within a compound surrounded by the undead, but they’ve been kept safely away from the horrors of it all, hence why they’re so useless now. Little “firsts”, like Iris drinking soda from a can, are indescribably boring.

I blush even to discuss the horrific dance sequence between Iris and Silas, and while the zombies-in-lockers gimmick is interesting, that’s mostly because it makes no sense whatsoever. The threat of wolves in the air vents is, again, intriguing, but does The Walking Dead: World Beyond episode 4 do anything with the idea? Do you really need me to answer that question for you?

Surely we’re not supposed to actually care about Silas’s tortured backstory and propensity for violence, are we? That was mostly dealt with last week, but we see his urge to clatter people catch up with him here as he brutalizes a zombie with his bare hands, having dropped his weapon to do so, for no reason other than to make a rather obvious point about his uncontrollable rage. But surely it’s a liability to be that inefficient in taking out one zombie? Felix and Huck have their work cut out, to say the least.

Flush with supplies, with everyone having survived their near-death experiences, the group take a nice photo to remember this experience, though surely they – and the audience – would be better off forgetting it.


Thanks for reading our recap of The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1, episode 4, “The Wrong End of a Telescope”. 

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