What happened?
Rick’s group learn about the walkers in the barn. Whilst Rick tries to appeal to Hershel to change his mind about letting his group stay, the majority of the group, and in particular Shane, seem convinced they are to stay and that to do so they must remove the threat in the barn.
Enraged when he sees Rick with Hershel wrangling walkers for captivity, Shane hands guns out to everyone and advances on the barn. It is opened and every walker that emerges – the friends and family of Hershel and his people – are shot and put down. And then, at the last, Sophia emerges from the barn; she is a walker. As everyone near-collapses in shocked despair, Rick steps up and shoots her in the head.
Thoughts
I had been accidentally spoiled before I watched this episode, having caught a line on some Twitter feed about Sophia being in the barn. I didn’t read anymore but, I figured, if Sophia was in the barn then she certainly wasn’t going to be ‘alive’. Thus the dramatic and shocking ending was somewhat diminished for me and I can’t ever really know just exactly how much of an impact not-knowing would have had on my viewing experience. I’d like to think it would have been effective and I’m a bit pissed I was deprived of that.
We have to assume that Hershel and his people discovered Sophia, rounded her up and stuck her in the barn shortly before Rick and the rest arrived. Sophia had bites on her neck, so it figures a zombie got to her but she wriggled free and perhaps roamed the woods for a while (maybe stayed the night in the house cupboard that Daryl found) before she eventually ‘turned’.
This certainly blows quite the hole in Rick and Hershel’s group relations!
On the one hand Hershel had to endure watching his friends and family shot and killed by Shane and the rest. If the scene had ended there then you can only imagine Hershel never being able to forgive or live with them. However, Rick’s group now have justification to round on Hershel and demand explanation about how he let them go off searching for Sophia when he knew she was almost certainly the little girl he had found and contained in his barn.
He’ll claim he couldn’t say anything because he was keeping the whole barn secret but, really, that’s not going to sit very well with anyone. And the issue still stands that it seems impossible that he would allow them all to live side by side. Yet, with an enraged Shane and the group carrying all the guns, and Rick desperate to stay to keep pregnant Lori and his son safe, it seems to me that if Hershel demands they leave then they’re going to feel they have no option but to take Hershel’s farm by force and claim it for themselves. And if that means killing Hershel then so be it. Shane would certainly see it that way – his survival attitude that Dale remarked he was made for definitely possesses the wherewithal to commit such an act.
Although Shane’s bluster and self-righteousness took quite the dent in the eyes of the group when he was unable to kill Sophia – so maybe a lot of his claims for leadership will evaporate.
There’s slim chance of a reconciliation, but it has to be Hershel that concedes. At least Shane did pump bullets into a walker’s vital organs to show him that it was ‘dead’ before he put it down. Hershel has, apparently, been oblivious to the true nature of these things (I struggle to properly comprehend that, I really do) but how can he deny what he saw with his own eyes? He’s been played as a bullish, old-fashioned man but not one without a sense of reason.
On saying that, however, I have to figure that The Walking Dead as a show needs to get back on the road and start moving things on. Put bluntly: the show can’t just stay at the farm indefinitely otherwise it’ll lose dramatic inertia and turn viewers off. They’ve finally laid the hunt for Sophia to rest now, and it’s in the best interests of entertainment that they get moving, so unless there’s a mass walker infestation descending on Hershel’s farm I’m intrigued how the show handles the need to provide dramatic excitement with plot logistics.
Plot logistics dictate they’d stay at the farm. Dramatic excitement demands they get moving.
Daryl and Carol took some small steps towards developing a relationship, though partly I think their conversations about hope were partly to fuel audience belief that Sophia would be found so the surprise at the end was all the more brutal. There’s no doubt it’s a bold step; having a small girl shot in the head as a zombie is a harsher occurrence than I figured The Walking Dead had the capacity to be. I’m pleased it did, mind. So long as it continues to have the audacity to do the unthinkable on television it remains vital – if the show ever goes soft it’ll be pointless.
Shane’s rapid disintegration has been brewing, and there’s no doubt that the catalyst for his rage was learning that Lori was pregnant and then have her tell him the child would never be his. I’m surprised that Rick didn’t at least address that he also knew about Lori and Shane when he delivered the news; the little look back indicated he knew there was more to be said, and he could expect more reaction from Shane, but it felt remiss that he wouldn’t have brought it out in the open.
I thought Dale was going to fare badly when Shane caught up with him in the woods, particularly when he pulled a gun on him! It turned out that Shane didn’t even see him as enough of a threat to bother killing, which is perhaps the most undignified insult Shane could have delivered. I did like Dale’s response; confounded by a man like Shane and how he could flourish under such terrible conditions. There’s a little piece of me that thinks Shane’s character has been too swiftly morphed into this ‘wild survival persona’, content to throw out logic and humanity to do what needs to be done, but as stated the catalyst and his pronounced emotional turmoil can be traced back to the news of Lori’s pregnancy so it just about scrapes past.
Lori isn’t being portrayed particularly sympathetically, really, and it’s almost as though the writers don’t want us to like her. She can be silly and unrealistic and then shrewish and fierce – she can display such range and never once does it feel like it’s the appropriate response. Indeed, I have read some critiques that suggest the treatment of women in general on the show hasn’t been great – from Lori’s difficult spikiness, to Andrea’s over-reactionary victim, to even Maggie’s flip-flopping romance with Glenn. I’d suggest if there’s a flaw in their portrayal it’s that the women have been too defined by how they react to the men rather than being defined in their own right. Personally I’m not up in arms about it, but it would help them from being generally irritating and more admirable if they were adeptly and in-depthly depicted.
Nit-picking aside it was a good episode, and presented a devastating and powerful emotional and visceral climax. Where do they go from here? That’s the question all good drama asks, and The Walking Dead has asked it under the most extreme circumstances you can think of.
What was the best part?
Easily the final scene at the barn, which it’s perhaps is fair to say has been the season’s most gruelling and powerful scene. From the look on Hershel’s face to the sense of release as the group got to fire upon the ‘walkers’ and vent some of their own demons to that final, cruel reveal of Sophia. I’m glad, in a strange sense, that Rick was the only one that had the courage to step up and do what had to be done. For all Shane’s angry bluster, Rick has more steel running through him.
What do I think will happen next?
Ain’t that the question! Well, I believe the show has to move on from the farm now. There’s a long shot that the group will feel so ruined by what they’ve done to Hershel, and having found out that Sophia is dead, they’ll want to go. Failing that circumstances will dictate that they have to leave – whether that be because the farm becomes an impossible place to stay at (zombie invasion!) or they get wind of a different destination; maybe they hear a radio broadcast or something. I appreciate the show needs them to move on, I just want the reason for that on-screen to work logically.
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