Original Air Date: November 20, 2011
The Story: Everyone has secrets and it turns out that “can’t-live-with-’em-can’t-live-without-’em” saying about women is true.
Five Things:
1. Man, Lori. – What an unlikable character she’s becoming! This really does mirror the comic where every time Rick had something important to do, there was Lori harping at him. Yelling at Glen about her secret. Yelling at Glen about her supplies. Yelling at Rick about how he’s handling things with Herschel. Yelling at Rick about Carl getting to have a gun. Can’t decide whether to have her baby or not. I’d be really curious to hear the opinion of women towards Lori’s character. Maybe they identify with her, but every time she opens her mouth I enjoy the show 10X less. I feel like we have plenty of TV options of angry women and I’d rather this TV show was about people getting their shit together.
2. Andrea is turned on by guns. – I was really happy to see “sharpshooter Andrea” emerge from that whiny mess she’s been all season. Not sure about the way she made the transition though. It seemed like the incident last week where she almost killed Darryl was the writers tearing her all the way down before they could build her back up. And that’s a good plan, but they needed to let her wallow at the bottom for another episode because her rebirth felt WAY too quick. The whole gun-training thing was so poorly done… You don’t train people in groups because you want to watch newbies like a hawk lest they hurt themselves in the first 15 minutes. You don’t train newbies by getting them to unlock their inner rage like Shane was doing by yelling at Andrea. And newbies don’t develop prowess that quickly even if “the girl has a talent” and certainly not with a pistol. Hit me up on Twitter and we’ll complain about this together. Anyhow, I like the new Andrea, but her transition should have happened off screen if it were to be so poorly done. And I like the Shane-Andrea relationship. Basically, this TV show is like an elseworld’s or What If? version of the comic book: What would have happened if Shane had lived?
3. Maggie… Kinda hysterical. – Not even Maggie was immune from the insanity affecting the XX chromosome set in this episode. Yelling, screaming, can’t make up her mind, can’t choose between Daddy and being a big girl with her new boyfriend… All pretty cliché stuff and not very well done. Of course, the worst was the moment in the drug store when Maggie gets attacked by the zombie. Where was that zombie last time? Is it a pervert zombie that just likes to listen to people having sex? And, the way it went down had such a clear message of, “And that’s why we don’t keep zombies as pets in the barn. Zombies are dangerous!” It’s just the writers retreating back into beating us over the head with stuff. I do like the actress playing Maggie though. Spunky!
4. Inventive zombie scenes. Even though the Andrea/Shane scene in the neighborhood WAS kinda dumb for the aforementioned gun training issues and the fact that if a little girl found dead zombies in a house, she’d probably move on and try somewhere else. But…once the action got rolling, it was very nicely done. The Directors on this series have always shot the zombie action scenes very well. Ditto for the scene of Glen taking down the zombie in the drug store. I can almost imagine someone will make a YouTube compilation of all the zombie kills kinda like one of those Lost videos of Sawyer saying “Sonnuva bitch..”
5. What if Shane had lived? – Hate to spoil that little tidbit for you folks who haven’t read the comics, but I’m putting it under my new “fair to talk about because it happened more than 3 years ago” rule (skim down to #1 on this link). But, for the most part, the only thing that is really different in the TV show this season is that Shane is alive. And, that’s really enough. Shane’s death in the comic was random…..you just need things to happen slightly differently and Shane is still part of the group. Now we’ve got all the familiar scenarios, but they can unfold a little differently because Shane is around. It’s like an alternate universe. Shane’s having sex with Andrea…..Dale doesn’t like that. Shane killed Otis…..Dale also suspects that. Shane’s going to be a living, breathing reminder of Lori’s sleeping with him…..How will Rick react to that? Who knows how things will go down at The Barn or when Herschel tries to put the group off the property, but you can bet it’ll be mostly familiar stuff with the addition of Shane to the mix. [I recognize that Darryl and T-Dog are new to the TV show, but neither of them has really changed “history” at this point.]
Conclusion: Okay episode. I liked the zombie scenes and mostly didn’t like the human-to-human scenes. Maybe this show should just embrace what it is and go to full on zombie mode. And please….let Lori make a heroic sacrifice for the group. 🙂
Grade: C+
-Dean Stell
Follow Dean on Twitter.
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