While bikes make sense from a realism POV, from the TV show POV it’s more problematic. Often, when they’re walking or in a car together the characters can interact and talk to each other. On bikes we wouldn’t have those opportunities for interaction, planning, exposition etc like we do while they’re walking or driving together.
While bikes are better than walking, they offer absolutely no defense from a pack of walkers.
Does Darryl currently have the chopper?
As much as everyone loves Daryl, his awesomeness comes from mooching around silently, regularly saving the day by being completely awesome, then mooching around silently some more. An entire episode of him and Carol talking about their feelings? Do the writers not understand their own characters?
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I assumed that the skywalk campers were killed in their sleep by someone, a group member(s) who no longer wanted to share whatever stores the group had, or a stranger(s) who wanted their goods.
Even in the ZA, ya gotta look both ways before crossing the street. 
The writers needed a way to get Carol into the hospital. She could have faked an injury but would that have fooled any doctors? She could have just asked for help or protection but there’s no drama in that. Getting whacked by a car? I don’t think anyone saw that coming. Bang! OW! WTH?
In addition, this ep highlighted the difference in the abilities of the two actors. Melissa McBride was able to convey conflicting or complicated emotional experiences, to use gaze and glances effectively, and to work well with wooden writing.
Norman Reedus, when he is trying to convey an emotion, looks constipated. He literally rubbed his chin at one point in order to convey to us that something was supposed to be going on internally.
I’m thinking that the car probably aimed at her. It would be rare enough to encounter survivors at that point, that anyone you meet can take care of themselves well enough that you can’t just hang around waiting for them to get hurt. If they are going to need your help and earn their ticket to indentured servitude, you might have to hurry things along a bit.
Also if you are showing up to a building where you heard survivors firing guns, bumping into one with the car means you don’t have to try to make introductions with a rifle pointed in your face.
They could have easily had the same thing happen to Carol as did Beth. The guards saved her from a zombie attack.
It would have made more sense, given her wounded shoulder/diminished strength, to have her get separated from Daryl and set upon by a small horde. This would have also spared us the dubious bit about Daryl being so easily convinced to let them take Carol.
I was impressed by that shot as well. Since the shot started with the camera floating in the air off the side of the bridge, my guess is green screen. But when the camera moves around the van, you’re right that the shot is huge. That kind of took me out of the show for a second as well, as I tipped my proverbial cap to say “nice shot!”
Yeh, it was a composite shot, using a digital matte(s).
So, either shoot the actors against a small green screen that captures their movement, or manually rotoscope around them, keying out the green color or creating a garbage-matte respectively. This allows you to then put anything you wish behind them.
As for the camera motion, that’s called match-moving and there are several software packages out there that analyze incredibly minute changes in movement and parallax of pixels, and generate a virtual camera artists can then use to create a VFX shot like that (e.g. SynthEyes).
Anyone else notice the famous tank in the street from the Pilot episode?
“Hey, you in the tank…you comfortable?”
Yup - my husband pointed it out to me (I didn’t see it, though).
Some good camera work, but some bad CGI work - when we get a close-up of Daryl macheteing a zombie in the face towards the end of the episode, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a faker-looking special effect on the show, including the infamous spongy zombie heads.
Yeah, my husband enjoyed that call back.
Any thoughts on Daryl’s motivation for initially walking away from Noah when he’s trapped under the bookcase? I first thought it was payback for taking their weapons (and threatening Carol), but now I’m wondering if it was calculated to make Carol care again. She had her little existential crisis - "I don’t think we get to save people anymore” - and even tried to shoot Noah. Whether intended or not, Daryl forced her to get her head back in the game.
I can think of a few negatives. Zombie hordes…Can everybody KEEP UP peddling bikes for miles and miles all day, every day?..How about simply transporting stuff - guns, food, bedding, whatever - in search of the next ‘sanctuary’? They must be carrying a lot of scavenged goods with them, what are they supposed to do, put it in saddlebags, or backpacks?..How far could they get by bike in one day, and where do they sleep at the end of a trip, to be safe? They can sleep in cars and trucks, but bicycles offer no protection from zombie hordes.
Thank you. 
I knew that actor looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
Yeah, they’d be a crap primary means of transportation, but with as many car problems as they have, I’d like to keep a bike rack on the back of every vehicle they drive. Keep a full water bottle on it, a backup stabby weapon taped to it, and maybe a days worth of jerky or a can of pork & beans. Car dies, as it inevitably does, and you have yourself an emergency getaway vehicle that can keep you alive for a day while you get someplace safe(r) and find other supplies.
Of course, with their propensity to crash their cars, chances are the bikes will be a twisted mess when they need them.
I should have liked this episode more because it featured two characters I like but the problem is we already knew the ending before we even started. When you do that you have to provide an interesting journey. This was just okay I guess.
I noticed the tank but assumed it was a different tank.
That’s what I thought as well. Presumably the National Guard would have had more than one tank in Atlanta.
That was good enough episode. The dialogue could have been a little meatier. Who had the “Surviving Childhood Abuse” book in their backpack?
Take that, nitpickers! She took the poncho off. And wiped her face.
Raining zombies!
Missed the tank, I’ll have to look again.
I always notice the fake looking CGI when they splatter zombie heads. It gives it that “B” movie feel.
I feel the same. I also didn’t feel that we had any real character development, because we pretty much know everything about Carol and Darryl anyway. They could have cut half of this episode out and let Noah and Darryl get back to the church and at least get started on the rescue. No tension and too boring. I like these characters, but I like them doing things. There were some nice touches, but overall, I felt like this episode could have been from last season. This season, overall, has been more action and movement and I prefer that.
I thought Darryl’s strategy was more about Noah than Carol. He wanted Noah to know that they saved him, but that they could have just walked away. Noah needed to be a little bit afraid and indebted to them if they were going to let him join them. I thought Darryl wanted Noah to know that he needed them to help him survive. But the bit about Carol didn’t occur to me, so I don’t know.
The book was Darryl’s.