What happened?
Rick and Shane transport their prisoner to a remote location to leave him there, but he reveals that he knows Maggie. Rick and Shane fight over what is to be done but before a decision can be made walkers attack them. The trio eventually escape, with no clear decision reached about what to do with the prisoner.
At the farmhouse, Maggie and Lori tend to Maggie's suicidal sister but feel that Andrea’s intervention almost ruins their efforts.
Thoughts
Heavy symbolism heralded the head to head between Rick and Shane. The episode began with them driving to a crossroads and there Rick confronted Shane directly. A crossroads meeting point for this crucial tipping point in their relationship. The symbolism certainly wasn't subtle!
Well, actually, the episode really opened with a 'flashforward' teaser of full-on zombie mayhem. It's become a bit of a tired trope for me, for shows to lead in with a teaser of an exciting event that will then be got to later on. It’s like sticking a promotional advert at the start! I’m already watching – there’s no need to dangle the promise of excitement to keep me there! (I realise the same is not true for all television audiences and, naturally, it is those potential floating, casual watchers they are trying to ensnare.) The Walking Dead did eventually live up to the prospect of zombie mayhem, of course, which was just as well!
But back to Rick and Shane, in the crossroads discussion that saw them air everything and yet really resolve nothing. By the close of the episode there was the sense that, rather than becoming clearer and united, they had forged an impasse between them. Shane, in particular, was just flat out unwilling to back down in his head to anything Rick was saying. He can’t. He just cannot get past the idea that Rick is the man making wrong decisions and, furthermore, that Lori and he had something special and the child she is carrying is his. In a sense, Shane’s attitude towards Rick’s leadership is his most easily fixable problem, and he ought to recognise that whatever there was with Lori disappeared the moment Rick returned. Telling Shane outright to forget the notion that the child she is carrying isn’t his, though, that’s a much harder thing to ask of him. If he deep down suspect it’s his then he’s never going to get over that.
If zombies hadn’t turned up when they did then it’s hard to say how the fight between Rick and Shane would have been resolved. Most likely inevitable outcome appeared to be that one of them would have been killed – only the thing is Rick, being Rick, would have had to be pushed right up to that point to go through with it. Shane, being Shane, would have probably killed Rick more readily. And even after the zombies had attacked – if their roles had been reversed and Rick had been in the bus and Shane was getting away in the car – I don’t believe that Shane would have returned to save Rick the way Rick saved Shane.
Will the act of saving his life be enough to force a change in Shane? I don’t see it. I just don’t see there being anything that will stop Shane in the long run other than him completely parting from the group or being killed. The way things are going, there’s a good chance that Shane and Andrea may find themselves exiled and choose to depart together.
The farmhouse subplot didn’t quite work for me, this episode. Andrea and Lori were being paralleled as the female equivalent of Rick and Shane, but this felt forced. Andrea simply had to be more uncompassionate and single-mindedly bent on Maggie’s sister in a way that didn’t feel natural. Andrea’s most natural reaction would have been apathy not direct intervention. Yet it transpired that she managed to ‘prove’ the girl wanted to live after all, but the net result was that she was no longer welcome in the house, same as if the girl had killed herself!
For all the unsubtle symbolism of the crossroads scene, I was confused by the seemingly important shots of Shane staring out of the car window at the walker in the field. The episode even ended on this view so it had to be meaningful but I didn’t quite get the point being inferred. Was it futility? Was it to highlight the isolation? Was the fact that Shane kept quiet about it somehow suggesting that there was a clear and present threat he wasn’t willing to share? I don’t know. It felt profound but I couldn’t get the measure of why.
The episode also ended undecided about what to do with the kidnapped kid. He was presented as a likable innocent, although there was a certain zealous quality about his killing of the walker as he repeatedly stabbed it to death. I liked that. Painting him as a complete innocent, caught up with the wrong crowd, would allow us to side with Rick’s view that he might be worth allowing to live and join them. Let’s not forget that he was on a roof taking shots at them with a rifle. Shane’s view that killing him to make sure there was no risk to the safety of the group does have a grim logic backing it up.
Final point to end on was another small, almost innocuous moment that might prove to be extremely significant. I refer to the moment where Shane found the two walker bodies and noticed that they didn’t have any bite marks. He didn’t conduct a massively thorough search of the bodies, but his observations were noted by me all the same. Fact is, why would The Walking Dead highlight this if it were irrelevant? Answer is they wouldn’t. And, furthermore, Rick’s reaction felt just a tad like he was brushing it over quickly so it didn’t linger.
My conclusion is that this ties into what Jenner, the CDC man, whispered into his ear. Up until now I really had no firm kind of idea what Jenner may have said. Now I believe that Jenner told Rick a rather terrible prospect: that the virus which makes the dead walk has either become airborne or is, somehow, already present in everyone.
The airborne one feels too ghastly to contemplate. (Our heroes can all become zombies just by breathing the wrong air!?) So I am plunging more on the idea that Rick has learned that everyone, most likely, has the virus in them, laying dormant, and that when they die, no matter what, they will become a zombie. I do believe that Rick shot dead the two people in the bar, and shot them in the head. If he hadn’t done that would they have eventually reanimated as walking corpses? As far as I can remember we have never seen anyone die of anything other than a zombie attack so this principle has never been shown on screen to be disproved.
If true then it presents a dire situation indeed. It means that, unless a cure is found, no matter what Rick does to lead his people to safety they will all die eventually and, as such, become walkers. If humanity survives, walker’s survive with them. Unless, as in Lori’s unborn child, perhaps those born into this world will somehow have escaped the contamination. . .
What was the best part?
As ever with The Walking Dead the most exciting parts are often to do with the walkers. As much as the character drama really, and rightly, drives the show (and special mention has to go to the crossroads scene and the fight itself between Rick and Shane) the moment those zombies poured through the broken window the entertainment level went up several notches. This episode’s unique zombie killing moment came when Rick found himself pinned down by a couple of slain walkers whilst a third walker that he couldn’t get a clear shot of tried to take a big bite out of him. Solution: shoot the attacking zombie through the mouth of one of the dead ones. Works every time!
What do I think will happen next?
Aside from my hunch that humans are already walkers-in-waiting, the crunch decision concerns Rick and Shane and the kidnapped boy. Unless there’s some convenient escape clause (like the boy escapes, or Rick and Shane kill him when he makes an attack) I expect Rick is going to have to make a straight call on it. And whilst it’s been totally in keeping with his character to imagine he will try and make him a new member of the group I am actually going to predict Rick will kill him, perhaps also to gain more of Shane’s loyalty. I doubt Shane will be pacified for very long no matter what.
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