"Tell It to the Frogs" is the third episode of Season 1 of The Walking Dead.
Plot Synopsis
A handcuffed and delirious Marcelino mumbles to himself on the roof of the department store, as though he's talking to someone sitting right in front of him. Hot sun beats down on his burnt scalp. When walkers clamor at the stairwell door, he comes out of his daze and pleads to God for help, crying weakly, and spots the hacksaw from the overturned tool box.
With the sun setting on the road driving back to the camp, Leandra advises Daniel not to dwell on Marcelino's abandonment. "He's been like that since his younger brother died in the zombie attack, when we where still with the military".
Mariana gives a haircut to a little girl called Ana Margarida. The quiet is interrupted by the approach of Gonçalo's Challenger. The car's alarm still blaring as he drives into camp. Johanne and Illyana rush Gonçalo, demanding to know if Illyana's mother, Zita and Johanne's best friend, Sophia, are okay. Paquete tells Gonçalo to turn off the car alarm but Gonçalo responds, "I don't know how!"
Tiago, son of a former mechanic, disconnects the alarm while the girls continue to ask questions about their friends and family. "Is she okay? Why isn't she with you?"
"She's okay!" Gonçalo shouts over them. "Everybody is. Well, Marcelino not so much." Paquete looks worried about Marcelino, but he just chastises Gonçalo for drawing attention to their location. "We also brought a little surprise" Gonçalo tells them.
The cube van arrives. Johanne and Sofia tearfully reunite, as does Zita with her 3 children: Illyana, Ana Maragarida and John Miguel. Leandra also tearfully reunites with Cassandra, even though Carina is also a friend of Cassandra, Cassandra didn't look so worried with her, only telling her "I'm glad your ok" and briefly embraces her. Daniel gets out of the van, looking arround for his friends and brother while everyone looks at him, surprised by seeing him. Daniel spots Mariana and Cristiana and they run into each others arms. Bruno gets out of a tent and looks at Daniel and runs to him in open arms.
Later, around a campfire, Daniel explains what he did in the day the walkers appeared in the school. He asked if they knew anything about his former classmates. "We were evacuated by the military" Johanne says "I entered the truck where this guys where and the rest of our classmates went in another truck, haven't seen them since the day the military abandoned us." A tear falls from Daniel's right eye but he quickly cleans it and asks who was in charge of the group. "I am!" Paquetes tells him and Daniel seems to get a bit angry.
Paquete asks what happened to Marcelino. Sophia reasons that Marcelino was out of control, and the only person to blame for getting left behind was himself. Carina, still wracked with guilt for dropping the key, tells the group that she stopped to chain the stairwell door before he ran for the van. "Marcelino's alive, and he's still up there," Carina says. "That's on us."
The next morning, Daniel wakes to find a fresh pair of clothes laid out for him inside the tent. He can hear children playing outside. He gets up, bidding the other survivors good morning as he steps outside. He finds Cristiana ironing his freshly laundered clothes, Daniel thanks her for her kindness.
Later, while he heads in Gonçalo's direction, Cassandra, Leandra and Carina are seen hanging laundry.
Nearby, Gonçalo mourns as Tiago, Paquete, and Kiko strip the Challenger down for parts, taking gas for the camp's generators. "Maybe we'll get to steal another one someday," Daniel consoles him.
Paquete arrives back at camp with more water, and Daniel tells Mariana he plans to return to Atlanta. Mariana and Cristiana are shocked, but their discussion is interrupted by screams. Caramelo, Ruth, and Johanne, who had been out walking, are heard screaming from the woods.The men grab various weapons from the campsite.
Caramelo, Ruth, and Johanne were unscathed as they watched a walker devouring a deer, but Johanne grabs an axe and kills the walker. "This is the first one we've had up here. They never come this far up the mountain," Fábio remarks.
"They're running out of food in the city, that's what," Kiko offers.
"I'm going back," Daniel pledges. Gonçalo asks him to go along since Daniel doesn't know how to drive. Kiko and Paquete tell him that they are going too, because they might need some help "after what you did to Marcelino, he won't be happy, I'll help you" says Paquete, and KIko adds that "I'm a better driver".
"You're putting every single one of us at risk," Zita tells Daniel, arguing they need everybody to protect the camp in case more walkers show up. Paquete tells her to shut up, "what if it was you, or one of your kids?" Paquete asks Zita.
Mariana and Cristiana beg Daniel not to risk his life for a guy like Marcelino, "We just got you back" says Cristiana "He's not worth it". Bruno doesn't want him to go either.
While Daniel loads his gun, the other three start grabbing weapons from his bag. "Hey, what do you think you're doing?" Daniel asks. Paquete tells him that they need to fend for themselves, but since none of them know how to use a gun Daniel denies to give them to them. "You'ld just kill yourselves".
Kiko drives the van into Atlanta, parking along a fenced in, abandoned railway.
Later on back at camp, Caramelo is seen talking with a tall teenager called Fábio, and Illyana, Johanne, Sophia and Ruth do laundry nearby, discussing the division of labor. "How did we get stuck doing all the Hattie McDaniel work?" Illyana mumbles, and Johanne replies, "The world ended. Didn't you get the memo?" The discussion turns to talk of the modern luxuries they miss, like Ruth's mp3 player, Sophia's laptop, and Johanne's cell phone. "I miss my vibrator," Illyana admits. The women break into laughter.
In Atlanta, Paquete, Daniel, Gonçalo, and Kiko return to the department store, and Gonçalo kills a walker with a Hatchet. They cut through the chain on the stairwell door and emerge onto the roof. On the ground, a hacksaw sits beside a severed hand. Bloodied handcuffs hang from the pipe above. The guys look at the hand, stunned.
Deaths
- None
Trivia
- First appearence of Bruno.
- First appearance of Ruth.
- First appearance of Fábio.
- First appearance of Ana Margarida.
- First appearance of John Miguel.
- This episode's cover shows the walker that Johanne killed.