What happened?
Daryl’s solo hunt for Sophia turned into a fight for survival when his horse threw him into a ravine. Terrorised by both walkers and visions of his brother, Merle, he cuts a shambling figure that the group initially mistake for a walker and nearly kill. His plight comes into direct conflict with an argument between Rick and Shane about whether the hunt for Sophia is justified – the search for one girl against the greater good of the group.
Friction between Rick and Hershal’s factions quietly mounts, with a peace-offering dinner merely a tense affair. Despite her father’s request, Maggie persists in seeing Glenn, but his suggestion of hooking up at the haybarn prompts him to discover that Hershal has been keeping at least a dozen walkers locked in there for reasons unknown.
Thoughts
I knew there was something in that barn! The moment Maggie read Glenn’s note it was a terrific sense of surprise waiting to be sprung. And I had predicted that the most likely thing to be kept in the barn were ‘walkers’, though I still don’t know precisely what Hershal was doing with them. My previous guess from last week, that they are friends and relatives waiting to be cured, still holds. Yet it has occurred to me that they might be held there for more practical reasons.
What is the lifespan of a walker? It’s an important point. Perhaps Hershal has herded them all in there and keeps them, unfed, just to see how long they last. Once they all die off he can perhaps figure that the rest of them ought to be suffering a similar fate. It seems like a good plan, right? Or maybe I’m thinking too much like how I would be. Hershal, with his strict manner and religious leanings, may have an altogether more far out reason for keeping zombies in his barn!
Hershal certainly isn’t the host with the most. That dinner scene was so tense, so awkward, I couldn’t help but laugh at how awful it was. The group eating in stilted silence. And that only got worse when Glenn tried to diffuse things with the suggestion of playing the guitar, asking if anyone knew how. Of course, Otis could play brilliantly!
(On this Hershal was being something of a dick. Let’s not forget that Otis was the one that shot Carl with a hunting rifle. He was the one that brought them there in the first place. No one knows that Shane made the hard call and killed Otis to save the boy so, from their view, Hershal's group drew first blood.)
Shane’s survivalist mentality does walk the line between common sense and inhumane. For now Rick will not cross that line and give up hope, or at least give up trying. Given that they do have leads – like the child’s bed and Sophia’s doll – I think I side with Rick’s view that they need to keep looking. I mean, it’s not just about abandoning one girl – it’s also about living with her mother and expecting her to just take that. Carol is quietly shaping up as a worthy character in her own right, and perhaps she’s just there to do the non-glamourous chores of cooking and cleaning, but that sill makes her a vital part of the group.
I really liked that she went to pay Daryl a visit and remarked that he was every bit as good as either Rick or Shane. He didn’t betray much emotion but I hope he did take some comfort from that, especially after the day he had. This was very much Daryl’s episode and if he hadn’t already earned his place as a fan favourite I think this instalment should have cemented it. Only question mark is whether his loyalty and decency are being eroded by his conscience and, perhaps, sanity.
His hallucinations of Merle were fascinating scenes, managing to deliver some insight into the kind of upbringing he had as well as reveal his state of mind. It’s important to remember that everything Merle said really came from Daryl’s mind, albeit projected onto Merle’s foul and objectionable manner. So Merle’s criticism for abandoning him betray those feelings of guilt Daryl possesses.
And Merle chiding him for following Rick exposes Daryl's nagging sense of selling himself out to a man that doesn’t deserve it. (If anything, Carol’s compliments about him being as good as Rick might actually throw fuel on his fire in that respect and make him resent following Rick’s leadership.)
I thought it was curious that Daryl established for himself that this Merle was not the real Merle (teased as long as possible for the audience by not revealing both hands for quite some time) and seemed rather comfortable with it. Are we to infer this might not be the first time he has had such visions? Like Merle remarks about the titular chupacabra he claimed to see, it’s every bit as likely to have been another figment of his imagination. . . As I said, maybe there’s a question being raised over Daryl’s sanity.
For what it’s worth I sincerely hope I’m wrong. I like Daryl as the capable, but dependable, outsider of the group. For as long as he can deliver sequences like how he saw off the two zombies here – smash the head in of one then rip out the crossbow arrow from inside himself, arm it and fire it at the other – he is the man!
Lastly, Andrea is establishing herself as a rather unsympathetic character this season. When she’s not wanting to kill herself she’s wanting to establish herself as one of the men, and she nearly killed Daryl in the process. Irritating woman, but mostly understandable. Dale, on the other hand, was a little too easy-going on her for my liking. Passing off her stupid actions with a quip about how they’d all like to shoot Daryl sometimes to try and win back her friendship was like crawling on his belly through dirt – an intended indignity, I am sure. Dale is the kind of man that, under Shane’s survivalist laws, wouldn’t last too long and he knows it.
What was the best part?
Without question the captivating ‘appearance’ of Merle and the exchange between him and Daryl, then bluntly proceeded by the zombie attack. Although Daryl coming round to discover a zombie eating his shoe made me think that it was the dumbest zombie ever it still didn’t stop the scare being effective and Daryl’s actions to see them both off nothing short of gory and cool.
What do I think will happen next?
Dependent on just how weird Hershal’s barn full of walkers turns out to be will depend on how tolerable it is for Rick’s group to accept it. If it’s purely as a measure of waiting for an antidote to cure them, or to see how long they last, it will be just about surmountable. However, there’s every reason to believe Maggie will convince Glenn to keep his mouth shut (and if he wants to use any more of those condoms he has he’ll keep it shut, too!) so the rest of them may remain unaware of the dark secret locked away. . .
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