By Angel Cohn
While we're treated to images of Otis and Shane running through the halls of a high school (and not in a John Mayer kind of way), Rick tells Lori about the time Shane stole a principal's car (excellent skill for a POLICE OFFICER) to take Lori's mind off their dying son. Lori is also force-feeding Rick so he'll stay strong. He's drinking milk, and while I might be able to buy the whole random-orange-tree-for-juice thing, I'm also expected to buy that these people can keep cows? And that the livestock hasn't attracted a horde of walkers to their neck of the woods?
Back at the camper, Andrea practices loading her weapon, while Daryl tries to sleep but can't because Carol won't stop crying. So he and Andrea go out looking for Sophia in the dead of night, and Daryl shares his own personal survival story. And then they find a poor camper who got bit and tried to hang himself, he's just dangling away, and Andrea makes Daryl kill the dude. Carol eventually stops crying long enough to join Dale on the RV roof to keep a lookout for Andrea and Daryl. When the searchers finally get back to the camper, they don't have Sophia with them, so that sets Carol off again. Dale gives Andrea her gun back, by way of apologizing.
Shane and Otis are having some trouble running around high school with walkers when they decide to split up to confuse the zombies. Shane has to jump out of a second story window, and injures his leg so badly that he starts limping a bit like a walker. But the two somehow escape the hundreds and hundreds of walkers at every turn even though neither of them can run and they are carrying backpacks filled with medical equipment.
Glenn and T-Dog arrive at Little Farmhouse on the Prairie. Maggie wants to know if they closed the gate, which I still don't buy would keep zombies away, particularly if they were persistent. And if one little snowstorm can knock out power to half of the East Coast in October, how do these people still have power running? How long do backup generators last? Did the power company employees somehow survive the zombie infestation? T-Dog gets the necessary stitches, while Glenn tries his hand at praying... until he's rudely interrupted by Maggie.
Since it has taken Shane and Otis so long to get back, Doc says that they have to risk doing the surgery without the respirator and go with the small odds, because otherwise Carl's for sure a goner. Lori starts thinking that maybe that's not a bad idea, the kid is really cramping her style and she can't be expected to be a role model and pick a daddy when she has two men who fawn all over her even though there are better options. Hell, even constantly crying Carol at least knows how to visibly show emotions. But that's not really Lori's speech, she just rambles for a while about how Carl shouldn't be subjected to the zombie horror show that is their life and she wonders if Jackie had the right idea getting vaporized in the CDC explosion. Am I just wrong for wishing for a Lori/Andrea double murder-suicide pact?
It's no matter -- Carl suddenly wakes up and starts talking about the damned deer, until he has a massive seizure. Rick and Lori decide to let Dr. Greene do the surgery without the respirator, because there is no time. Just then, Shane returns -- miraculously mostly unscathed by the hundreds and hundreds of zombies -- but Otis didn't fare so well. It's too bad; aside from the kid-shooting he seemed like a decent enough guy. Maggie cries for her friend Otis, and then Glenn asks her to tell him about the other people in the photos on the fridge who have fallen victim to the walkers. After the surgery, Carl's stabilized, but Patricia turns into a wreck when she finds out that Otis was eaten at the high school. Why wouldn't Patricia have run out on to the lawn the second she heard his truck? She seemed concerned about him leaving.
Maggie gives Shane some clothes that used to belong to the recently deceased and Lori asks him to stay. So he goes upstairs, showers and shaves his head over a sink... and he clearly has no intention of cleaning it up. But that's not really the point, the point is that we see (in flashback) that Shane is missing a clump of hair... because that's where Otis ripped it out of his skull. See Shane, who has suddenly become interesting (an asshole, but an interesting one at least), decided to shoot Otis in the leg, leaving him for the zombies to eviscerate quite nicely, while he grabbed the supplies and returned back to the house a hero.
We open on a scene of Shane shaving his head at what looks to be the Greene family farm. He's making quite the mess and leaves the water running. I know that this farmhouse seems to have endless resources, but you'd think maybe a little conservation might be in order here. Shane looks exhausted, and we presume that he's just wiped out by his exhausting trip to the high school.
But before that happens, we see Shane all in military mode, running through hallways with hordes of angry zombies (again, kudos to the makeup department here -- these ones look particularly gnarly). While he's running, Rick is telling Lori about how Shane was a juvenile delinquent in high school, he stole the principals car and defaced it. Charming. Lori doesn't seem all that interested in the story (and neither am I), but I can forgive her a bit since she's sitting staring at her dying son. Rick reassures her that Shane will find his way back since he's a stubborn SOB, and Lori just makes Rick eat the milk and sandwich that have been provided... so he can be a human blood bank.
In the camper on the highway, Carol is lying in the bedroom just audibly sobbing, while Andrea tries to assemble and reassemble Daryl's gun. Neither of them seems particularly courteous about the fact that Daryl is trying to sleep. So a restless Daryl decides to go out into the woods, and Andrea insists upon tagging along. Dale thinks this is an ill-advised plan. Why Dale? Walking in the middle of the night with flashlights to draw attention to you where walkers can sneak up on you even more easily? That seems like a solid plan. Then again, if I had to pick between Carol's crying and the zombie infested woods, I'd be taking a moonlight hike as well.
In the high school, Shane and Otis are cornered on the top of the bleachers (because apparently these zombies can't climb?) Shane suggests that they squeeze out the tiny auditorium windows (which look small even for him) and Otis basically laughs in his face. Otis instead offers to jump down into the middle of the zombies and distract them and then run into the locker room, squeeze out some bigger windows and meet around the other side. But when Otis jumps down, he lands on his knee wrong and falls hard. Walkers pounce on him, but Shane does some target practice and keeps the flesh-eaters away until Otis makes it close to the locker room, in his still-limping state. Shane then heads off for the teeny tiny window opening, taking out a couple walkers along the way, and momentarily pauses at the two story fall he's about to take. But a walker comes along and grabs him, so Shane shoots the walker in the face with a handgun. This movement causes Shane to fall, landing on his knee wrong. Hope that Doc has some decent ace bandages back at the house for all these zombie-sustained injuries.
T-Dog and Glennn arrive at Little Farmhouse on the Prairie and Maggie stares them down skeptically. Perhaps it is because of the gaping wound that has been hastily bandaged on T-Dog's arm. But once he says it was an accident and explains the whole infection thing, she hops into medical mode.
The boys are taken to see Rick, Lori and Carl, and things are looking quite grim. The parents mostly spend this episode with their hands over their faces, which actually blocks the lack of facial expression range they have, so that kind of works. Doc tells them that if Shane and Otis don't return soon, Carl's going to have to have surgery without the respirator or die. While the odds of this working are slim, they are better than none, and Rick and Lori walk off to ponder the fate of their kid.
On their stroll through the woods, Andrea and Daryl talk about the chances of Sophia still being alive. Daryl says that when he was her age he got lost for nine days, and, aside from some uncomfortable problems with poison oak, he survived unscathed. Well, aside from the disturbing fact that his father never noticed that he was missing and Merle was locked up in juvie. So Daryl could have been lost in the woods forever without anyone caring. That won't emotionally wreck a kid or anything. Andrea finds this story hysterical -- I guess because of his itchy poison oak butt -- and starts laughing at him. Daryl thinks that since Sophia's got people looking for her, she's got better odds. He's forgetting that Sophia is not exactly the resourceful child that he once was.
And now we get to the worst scene of the night! And that's saying something. Lori's having a crisis of faith, and thinks her kid is better off dying than eventually becoming a zombie, or seeing his parents turned into zombies. Rick reminds Lori about her whole speech at the CDC about wanting to survive as long as they possibly can. She thinks Jackie's lucky because she didn't have to see Sophia go missing or Carl get shot. To her credit, she's actually trying to emote here, but its not really working. Her stare looks vaguely like her horny face mixed with her scared face, but when she's shot from the back, she's shaking and that's pretty convincing. Although, then we get to see Rick's one angry face, so that's not much better, really. These two are like Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head from Toy Story. Can someone give them their sad eyes? Or do those cost extra? Sad that Pixar characters who are supposed to be plastic have more range.
Shane and Otis are still running/limping away from the zombies.
Carl wakes up and is seriously disoriented and in pain. But he starts wistfully talking about the deer. He's got this ethereal look on his face, before he freezes and then starts having a seizing fit. Good going, Carl; you're the only member of the family to deliver a convincing performance this week and most of the time all you were required to do was lie still in bed with your eyes closed. Hershel says that the kid needs more blood, and advises Rick against it, chances of cardiac arrest and all.
Otis and Shane seem to have found a quiet, zombie free spot, but then they lean on a fence and the walkers find them. So the duo hobble off in a weird three-legged race formation.
Carol's momentarily stopped her crying, and is now watching the woods with Dale, hoping that Andrea and Daryl will bring back her kid. Is now a good time to tell Carol that Daryl just wanted to get the hell away from her and doesn't really expect to find her kid?
Andrea and Daryl find a campsite in the woods, with a walker dangling from a noose in the tree. Andrea starts puking, while Daryl marvels at the stupidity of the man (who wrote a ridiculous rhyming suicide note and nailed it to a tree) who didn't think to shoot himself in the head and is now stuck perpetually dangling from a tree. The guy (who Daryl calls a big piñata) is missing flesh from his legs, because of Walker cannibalism. Andrea thinks that Daryl should humanely kill him, but Daryl says it was his own stupid choice. Daryl wonders if Andrea's compassion has to do with the fact that she wants to live now, and she agrees to answer him if he kills the hanging zombie. She half-answers him, with her musings about just surviving and whatnot, and he reluctantly puts an arrow in the dude's head. Waste of an arrow... and about five minutes of screentime!
Dale is on his perch, and Carol thinks he's nervous about Andrea. He doesn't want to talk about it, so he storms off. Carol really knows how to bring a conversation down, and chase people off. Let's work on those social skills, lady.
Back at the farmhouse, Patricia is stitching up T-Dog, saying that Merle's VD was a lucky break for T-Dog. T-Dog doesn't take kindly to the fact that Merle is the one that inadvertently saved his life. I just miss Merle. Also, Maggie is making some googly eyes at Glennn. I don't approve. She follows Glennn out to the porch and rudely interrupts his prayer session. He has never prayed before, and she went and ruined it. The two have a conversation about the existence of a higher power and whatnot, and she still doesn't take the hint that he wants privacy, and lectures him about making this world OK in his own mind, before she finally tells him it is OK to believe in God (like he needed your permission, lady) and leaves the porch.
Dale stares out into the woods. This amounts to absolutely nothing.
Rick and Lori are back by Carl's bedside and Rick is rambling about how the fact that Carl talking about the deer is a sign that he wants to live because he can see beauty in this terrible world. This goes on FOREVER.
Shane and Otis are practically crawling, as they are chased by a giant herd of zombies. Shane says he'll take the equipment and Otis should make a run for it, but Otis refuses to break up the team. They pick themselves up, and count their remaining rounds, before making a run/stumble for the truck.
At the farmhouse, Hershel is forcing Rick and Lori's hand. The doc says if they don't operate stat, that Carl's chances of survival are nil. So Lori decides to believe again (yeah, as if this show would ever condone a mother letting her kid die) and the doc gets to work with Patricia by his side. Doc is just about to cut into Carl's stomach, when Shane (sans Otis) returns in the truck. Patricia is told to stay by Carl's side, but I'd think a wife would be concerned about her husband and might say peek out the window, but Hershel doesn't want Patricia distracted. Like she's not at all suspicious when he doesn't come in and reassure her that he's alive? Or carry the equipment into the house himself? The words "How's Otis?" don't cross her mind? Even if she is trying to save a kid? Those doctors on Grey's Anatomy talk all the time about nonsense during surgery, and certainly the fate of a loved one might come up in conversation. No?
Outside Shane's telling Rick about the high school and how it is just overrun with Walkers, and says that when they got swarmed, Otis told Shane to go on ahead with the supplies and save Carl. He now can't get the image of an eviscerated Otis out of his head. And I'm sad we didn't get to see that attack.
Andrea and Daryl come back and when Carol sees that Sophia isn't with them, she runs back inside for another crying jag. Dale goes down to the ground and gives Andrea her gun, and gets all lectury about not committing suicide with it and asks for forgiveness. She says she's trying, but Dale just looks heartbroken.
Maggie is a mess and is crying about Otis, understandably. But she's pretty loud about it -- did Patricia not overhear this? Farmhouse walls aren't exactly super thick. Glennn wants to know about all of her other friends and family who died, so they look at pictures on the fridge and reminisce about those who have been lost.
Rick and Lori sit on the porch awaiting news, Doc says that their boy is stable. Lori's got her happy face on, but then Hershel makes them feel guilty saying that he's now got to tell Patricia the bad news. Somehow this is Rick's problem to deliver the news? Instead of going to his son? Was Maggie not available? Or Shane who was with him when he died? It seems like an odd choice.
Lori starts crying with her hand over her mouth, when she sees her son. Shane comes in and stares at them. She just tells Shane that he should stay and he half-nods and walks out of the room. He looks like he's pondering life, when Maggie gives him a pile of clothes and tells him he can shower upstairs. She also tells him that the clothes won't fit him because they belonged to Otis... which seems rude, since we saw pictures of at least a couple other dead people who looked more along Shane's build. Also, Patricia might object to her husband's clothes being handed off mere minutes after he died.
But I'm quibbling, because here's where things actually get awesome. Shane stares at himself in the mirror with the water running. He's checking out the abrasions from the fall and tar he ran into that night, but when he spots one on the top of his head, he gets the most evil glint in his eye. Flashback to the zombie attack. You know, the one where Shane claimed that Otis told him to save himself? The two are hustling towards their truck, with the numerous zombies behind them, and shooting backwards into the crowd with their handful of remaining bullets. This is intercut with footage of Shane staring in the mirror and seeming to have a breakdown in the bathroom as he starts tearing the room up looking for something.
Why? Oh, as we see from the flashback, when they got down to their last bullet, Shane apologized to Otis, and then shot him in the knee. Then he wrestled him to the ground (Otis did some kicking and screaming) and tore the backpack off of him. In the present, we see that Shane's found the hair clippers (convenient!) and is shaving his head. That abrasion on his head was from Otis ripping a giant clump of hair right out of Shane's noggin (and rightly so). I'm going to give Otis a ton of credit for not going down without a fight. But though the zombies looked right on their tail and moving fast, they seem to have slowed down to let this fight to the death play out. And as Shane staggers off towards the trucks, the hordes descended on Otis and we hear his screams and see the guts and gore that I wanted. Even though it's a little sad. Once Shane has finished shaving his head, he just stares intensely at the steamed up mirror, and while I was complaining about the running water, this does make for an amazingly disturbing image. Possibly one of the best I've ever seen on this show. And it involved Shane. I'm shocked on so many levels here. And hopeful about this new development as I hope he goes full on nutjob, Merle Dixon style.
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