The Walking Dead took its midseason bow this week with some strong ratings and heartbreaking reveal. Sadly this season has devolved into hours and hours of banality that left me shuffling and drooling like one of the zombies. There have been a few moments of pure brilliance which is what keeps me watching.
Most of “Pretty Much Dead Already” was spent with Rick (Andrew Lincoln) jumping between trying to convince Herschel to let them stay on the farm and trying to convince Shane (Jon Bernthal) that they SHOULD stay on the farm. Rick goes so far as to help Herschel round up two wayward droolers stuck in the mud to show that he respects the fact that they are guests on his farm. When Shane sees this he loses a gasket and goes postal on them, forcing Herschel to face facts. He opens the barn doors and they slaughter the walkers inside. And then one last walker appears and stops them dead.
I’d like to lie and say that I knew Sophia was in the barn with the other walkers, but while I suspected a few episodes ago that she would turn up shuffling and drooling the idea that she was one of the barn walkers didn’t occur to me until the first few minutes of this episode when Shane started hollering about taking care of the situation in there. It didn’t make the reveal any less heartbreaking though, but I was surprised that Shane hesitated at all to kill her after his “fuck this” and “fuck that” speech. I suppose it had to be Rick to do it since he had spent the earlier part of the hour trying to convince Herschel that walkers were not people. It also served as a reminder to Shane that Rick can make the hard decisions when he needs to.
Maggie (Lauren Cohan) made peace with Glenn after he owned up to why he wouldn’t keep her secret and it looks like it’s all roses and rainbows for them…for a little while at least. She certainly doesn’t seem too keen on keeping her affection for “that Asian boy” a secret any longer. Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) seemed to finally let go of Andrea this week as well which leaves the group a little divided. I’m left wondering if the end of season two will result in the Atlanta survivors splitting up.
The Walking Dead returns in February and I’m thankful for the break. These first eight moved at a snails pace and I’m glad that the major problem keeping everyone from moving on has been resolved. It looked like the incident at the barn nearly broke Herschel so it will be interesting to see how he deals with it. And what will happen when the truth about poor Otis comes out.
