But seriously! I wrote that and then I was like, "Whoa. That sucks."
On to the Walking Dead? Good. We probably should be on our way by now anyway, seeing as it originally aired four nights ago already. Chill. I've been sick, okay?
The Walking Dead put out a really good episode this week. It was a great rebound from last week's mediocre "Guts", which I didn't even find interesting enough to write about. This episode was pretty cool because it focused, as I hoped the whole show would, on the human drama aspect of the zombie invasion. There were barely any zombies actually shown in this whole episode, but it was still thrilling. It started with an absolutely heart-wrenching scene of Merrill Dixon, who we remember had been handcuffed to the roof of the department store last episode and seems to have become utterly mad and depraved since then, struggling to break free of his bondage as the zombies come closer to breaking through the chained door separating them from his flesh. We are then left to wonder what happened to him as we get back to our main group of survivors.
Rick has rescued the group, aside from Dixon, who had been living in the store, and they are ready to rejoin the main group of survivors, which, unbeknownst to Rick, includes his wife, Lori, and son, Carl, in the country. And how's that for a run-on sentence? So of course when Rick's gang comes back to the main outpost, there's a big teary reunion between Rick and Lori and Carl. Of course, lately, since Lori thought that Rick was dead, she's been sleeping with Shane, Rick's former partner and another survivor. So of course there's some awkwardness there, especially since Shane told Lori that Rick was dead. Now when we find out this little piece of information, I guess it's supposed to be a total bombshell, but I didn't find it that shocking or meaningful. I mean, wouldn't you expect him to be dead with everything that's been going on? The hospital he woke up in at the beginning of the first episode certainly seemed pretty ravaged. Lori's response to Shane's supposed deception actually seems pretty harsh to me. She obviously ends the sexual relationship, which I'd expect and would hope that she did. But she also tells him to entirely stay away from her and Carl, with whom he'd built up a good relationship. Again, this move is based on the fact that Shane supposedly lying to Lori about Rick's fate is so bad! But Shane is pretty torn up by this, and this is all part of the drama that will ensue at the camp later.
I should return to the main plot for a bit. Rick is feeling guilty about leaving Dixon in the city to die, and a not-too-warm greeting from Merrill's equally trashy brother Darryl doesn't help, so Rick gets some guys together to go back into the city and save Dixon, as well as Rick's bag of guns that he left behind. So they all go down there and find him gone, with only a hand left. This is definitely a big cliffhanger, and I'm eager to find out what happened to this guy, but it wasn't the most interesting part of the episode and I won't dwell on it much more.
At the camp, tensions are rising. Some of the women are upset about the division of labour, while they stand by the river doing laundry and the men are standing around doing nothing. Also, this one fellow named Ed seems to enjoy beating his wife. Shane is watching all this happen, and the great injustice of it all coupled with his indignation at his treatment by Lori makes his rash, and he leaps upon Ed and beats the living daylights out of him. I tend to think that Shane was justified in this, and Ed was a complete asshole, but it's clear that Shane went too far, and he might be a character to watch in terms of being on the edge.
So anyway, I stink at writing conclusions but this was a great episode. I hope the show continues in a direction that this episode took because, as high as the production value is for the zombies on this show, the lifestyle of the survivors is an interesting angle rarely looked at in the zombie genre.
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