Nerd Mentality

RECAP/REVIEW — The Walking Dead S2E7

Posted November 28th 2011 by J Edison Thomas.

"Previously on The Walking Dead..." These wrap-up intros every week remind me of something I might have mentioned before starting this Walking Dead blog: I do not really like television.

Specifically, I don't like serial entertainment.  Between actual advancement of the plot, there's so much minutia dropped in that may prove to be crucial, may prove to be padding, and may even require viewers to forget it to avoid contradictions with what happens later. I'm sure many viewers of this season of The Walking Dead can relate to the feeling that getting one story in seven episodes feels like buying a Transformer one robotic limb at a time.  I sometimes wonder why people put up with this narrative style, or why it seems to flourish on cable television when it requires so much patience from its viewers.  The reason, I have learned, is The Big Payoff.  The slow boil.  Just when you think nothing is going to happen... something happens! And it hits with the full weight of all that continuity. This is how it plays out in "Pretty Much Dead Already," the mid-season finale that has locked me in for the show's return in February. Just before broadcast, Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick (@nerdist) tweeted out this:

omgomgomgomg...just saw tonight's @WalkingDead_AMC...so amazing...Srsly, not just cuz I work for it...but DAMN. Watch it!

I was tempted to call bullshit (for the exact reason he cited) but no, he pretty well summed it up.  Spoilers ahead.

Killing off a child shows balls, but the magnitude of Sophia's death takes something approaching sadism.  After six episodes of looking for this girl, trying viewers' patience by slowing the show to a crawl, devoting scene after scene to her rescue, and ratcheting up the tension between the cast on her very plot point... she comes back in a way that retroactively makes her death a foregone conclusion.  What's more, as suggested in the episode (and confirmed by the preview for Episode 8, as well as Talking Dead chatter) the whole reason she was overlooked is that Otis was the one who had found her and he was killed before he knew anyone was looking for a little girl.  Which means, if you do the math, that she has been dead since before Carl got shot in the season premiere. How's that for twisting the knife?

Beyond all the nerd calculations, it's still just a powerful scene.  Even before Sophia shows her disgusting little face, the gunfight plays out more like a massacre of war survivors than a clearing of weeds.  Although last season's stop at the CDC went to painstaking details to prove scientifically that the walkers are not people, are nothing like the people they were in life, the show has had remnants of doubt on that matter that make killing a walker something less than slaying a dragon.  From Rick's eulogy of the organ donor in season one to Herschel's comparisons to various levels of human dysfunction, there is an element of humanity to the walkers that makes the scene kind of tragic.  When Sophia finally walks out, the blood-crazed Shane can't even look at her.  It's just such a defeat.

Whether Zombie Sophia makes the half-season journey worthwhile, the rest of the episode was excellent as well.  It starts off with an agenda, as Glenn immediately tells the group about the barn full of walkers.  This initial thrust of course fractures immediately into the familiar "three minutes with each conversation pairing" format, but unlike the rest of this season, nearly all of it contributes to the ultimate conclusion of the episode.  More than anything else, this is what makes the episode so satisfying. 

Rick and Shane once again command the attention, though Shane dominates the action. Lori's pregnancy turns out to be a major catalyst for the two men, each of whom assume fatherhood and thus responsibility for the group's safety.  Rick redoubles his efforts with Herschel, and Shane mentally and physically seizes upon the firearms as the means to safety.  This is maybe the clearest divide between them so far, and it draws a tight focus on the central conflict of the show: Rick's heart versus Shane's brawn.  It's a classic setup—the man "willing to get his hands dirty" versus the morally-driven hero—but the writing doesn't give Rick a clear victory here.  Viewers might find themselves divided over who they side with.

As with every episode this season, Shane is fascinating to watch—is he a good man descending into darkness, or a monster merely stepping into the light?  He appears to be something more complex entirely: a desperate man who is slowly but surely becoming confident in his ability to shape a fledgling society.  The question he poses to Lori might as well be directed at the viewer as well: which man has done more for her (and by extension, the group)?  Rick has been bowing under the weight of the crown all season.  His personal stake in Sophia's rescue, his literal draining during Carl's operation, and his commitment to honoring Herschel's sovereignty have kept him from accomplishing nearly anything tangible.  Meanwhile, Shane brought Carl life-saving equipment, cleared the barn of walkers, and (technically) completed the search for Sophia.  He has immediate, decisive, violent answers for the problems the group faces, which is all the more disturbing when he gets the right results.

Rick, by contrast, achieves almost all of his victories with his brain: escaping Atlanta by smothering himself with guts, recovering Glenn from the Vatos gang without firing a shot, and most importantly, convincing Jenner to release the group from the CDC (when Shane's shotgun and rage proved absolutely useless).  This is what makes him such a good hero.  He isn't just the designated lead, but he continually makes the real hard decisions rather than the quick and dirty ones. To secure the group indefinite shelter at Herschel's farm, he swallowed his pride and personal convictions and cowtowed to Herschel's ridiculous "catch and release" strategy for rogue walkers. He visibly struggles not just with the physical strain of the walker on his leash, but also with the humiliation of doing something so stupid, all for the sake of reconciling his values with his family's safety.

But it's just as easy to notice that of the three times that Rick has placed the group in danger to complete a personal moral errand—to rescue Merle, Glenn, and Sophia—he has only gotten his man once.  Even the trip to the CDC was a failed attempt to get medical aid for Jim's zombie bite.  His solutions require patience and understanding, whereas Shane's only require getting out of his way.  It will be interesting to see how things pan out, as it seems fairly clear that Shane will soon push for a more or less informal vote on leadership.

The rest of the cast pulled through, if by "rest of the cast" we mean the guys, since the female characters get mercifully little spotlight.  Are the gender/racial dynamics still worth mentioning or is it all white noise (heh) now?  OKAY REALLY QUICKLY: The initial dust-up once the group learns about the barn is handled exclusively by the white men, who probably-not-coincidentally count for 4/5 of the characters we like: Rick, Shane, Daryl and Dale (Glenn, the obvious fifth, breaks the racial barrier later on).  Lori gets a few scenes but not much come out of any of them, and Andrea is—praise Christ!—barely even noticeable.  Carol gets more screentime than she probably deserves, but it makes sense to give her a hope moment right before crushing her life.  Throughout the entire episode, stoic little Carl gets about as many lines throughout the episode as any of the women, and T-Dog, hilariously, barely registers.

Despite the unfortunate implications, these are positive directorial choices (though I actually like T-Dog a little, and dislike Carl a little). Okay, moving on.

Dale's confrontation with Shane in the swamp is as tense as any scene involving walkers this season, and more importantly, it works to underline the harsh reality of Shane's new working philosophy.  When Dale tells Shane "At least I can say that when the world went to shit, I didn't let it take me down with it," Shane offers the perfect response: "Fair enough." Like an amicable trade, Dale gets to have the final word and Shane gets to have the tangible results.  The only difference is that the guns meant something to Dale, but the words meant nothing to Shane.  He has become the first survivor to truly realize that when the world ended, the court of public opinion shrinked to about 12 people.

Glenn and Maggie move their romance forward with Glenn sacking up, which is some of the only character development we've seen outside of Shane.  Hopefully Maggie can step back from the ledge and be cool from here on out, as the show desperately needs a lady who isn't, in Daryl's words, a "stupid bitch." Glenn's monologue is out of place, but it's possible he has been saving his words up and could afford one by now.

Otherwise, the acting is very solid, even when Maggie delivers an extremely expositional speech to her father.  Why would you tell your father what you were doing at 14?  He was there.  Anyway, the show's acting is always serviceable as long as horribly tragic events are avoided, which they are not in this episode.  I can't imagine what a woman sounds like when she sees her daughter lumbering around as a sentient corpse, but I imagine it would be too ugly for television.  Nobody is terribly good at reacting realistically to the horrific carnage that surrounds them, but they are all pretty excellent at being stern or shouting.

Most of the actors have some familiar cues by now—Dale's bug eyes, Rick's squint—but John Bernthal (Shane) shines with the abundance of spotlight on him this episode.  How many actors can convey "your best friend just told you that you're going to be a father, but he thinks it's his kid and you don't know he's aware you slept with his wife?"  It's possible that Bernthal alone is what's keeping Shane from becoming a cookie-cutter villain, and he deserves a lot of credit for walking that tightrope so well.  He seems to have found a solid chemistry of varying levels of antagonism with each member of the cast.  Throughout the hour, he runs the gamut of fatherly towards Carl, intimate towards Lori, two-faced towards Rick, mildly perturbed towards Glenn, outwardly hostile towards Dale and aggressively dominant towards Herschel.  He nails every single scene.

We have until February to figure out whether this episode was a brilliant spike before the show returns to its usual pace, or if the seams have been pulled out of the Little House on the Prairie season for good and it's Hell on Earth from here on out.  Shane is the linchpin, which oddly enough puts Dale as the counterforce, with Rick closer to the middle.  With a few wide open plot threads, the one that lingers in my mind the most is Dale's accusation towards Shane.  He suspected before that something foul went down at the school, but in the swamp he flat out accuses Shane of shooting Otis.  Not leaving him behind, not tripping him, but specifically shooting him.  Is there some forensic evidence he's stumbled upon?  Or was he just bullshitting to get a reaction?  Or is the root of Dale's general omniscience the big reveal next season?  I have my suspicions...

The eyebrows gave it away.  This is going to be HUGE.

Tags: tv, amc, nerdist, walking dead

Posted in: Reviews, Entertainment

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