By M. Giant
While Rick and Shane are driving Randall off the farm, Rick confronts Shane over...well, everything, from what went down with Otis to the whole mess with Lori. Rick gives Shane an ultimatum, which Shane responds to with a sincere-seeming story -- although he keeps mum about a Walker he spots along the way. They proceed to an army post to drop Randall off and scrounge supplies.
Beth's coming out of her malaise, and her first words to Lori are judgmental ones about her pregnancy. Lori probably liked her better when she was catatonic. Still, Lori finds herself recruiting Maggie for Beth's suicide intervention.
Dropping off Randall hits a snag when, while begging for his life, he reveals that he went to school with Maggie -- which means he knows where the farm is. That changes everything, and leads to the nine hundredth conflict between Shane's and Rick's worldview, which this time comes to blows, awakening a swarm of Walkers when Shane tries to literally kill Rick. At which point Randall gets free and proves himself rather a dickweed after all.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Lori and Andrea end up having a less physically violent but much uglier argument in which both come off looking even more like complete assholes than usual. Andrea's point is that Beth should be left alone to make her own decisions -- and after promising Maggie she'll look out for her, she does just that, and Beth slits her wrists. But not fatally, which allows Andrea to congratulate herself on a job well done.
Shane ends up trapped inside a school bus with ten Walkers trying to claw their way in. And with Randall in tow, that's exactly how Rick decides to leave him. But then he comes back, rescues Shane, stuffs Randall back in the trunk, and confesses to Shane that he'll probably have to kill Randall, but only after sleeping on it. And then Rick gives Shane another chance. And a gun to go with it. Sure enough, when Shane spots that same Walker on the way back, we see that nothing has changed.
The scene is some kind of compound, with nondescript buildings and guard booths and abandoned school buses all surrounded by a chain link fence. Oh, and Walkers. Noisy, hungry, numerous Walkers. Shane flees them, threading between the parked vehicles. Elsewhere on the grounds, a big Herman Munster-looking motherfucker of a zombie comes charging through a broken window right behind Rick and dives for him, undeterred by its belly flop onto the ground. One notices that both Rick and Shane look a little battered already. And Randall, with his hands tied behind his back, wriggles across the ground to where a bloody knife has been dropped. Shane ducks inside a school bus, barely able to wedge the door shut behind him while the Walkers grunt and claw outside. No, you didn't miss anything, but I assume we'll be seeing How We Got Here.
Okay, I'm glad to see there's no "Two Hours Earlier" subtitle on the screen before a car pulls up to a crossroads. Rick and Shane get out, even though they haven't gone the agreed-upon eighteen miles, because Rick wants to talk. Oh and apparently it's been a week since the events of the last episode, which is this show's equivalent of leaping forward a year like Battlestar Galactica. Shane says he now gets why they're dropping Randall off alive, but Rick's got heavier things on his mind: "I heard what really happened at the school," he says. Yes, third-hand, following a chain of "evidence" that leads back to Dale's shaky suspicions. Good thing they're correct. Without getting angry or defensive, Shane says it was either him or Otis. And anyway, "[Otis] had no business bein' here. There. Whatever." Because it's Shane's job to decide who in this world lives (which, obviously, includes Shane). He tells Rick, "You can't just be the good guy and expect to live." See, there he goes again. Rick says he isn't, and adds that Shane is done being dangerous like Lori thinks he is. Rick argues that his restraint in not feeding Shane his teeth for screwing Lori wasn't weakness. "That is my wife. That is my son. That is my unborn child. I will stay alive to keep them alive." Rick then says that Shane doesn't love Lori, and Shane has to accept everything Rick's said or they're done. Shane has little to say. He just retells his story about having to leave Rick in the hospital and not being able to live with it. "I didn't keep Lori and Carl alive, man, they kept me alive. I want you to know that I didn't look at her before that." He says he'd take it all back if he could. That seems to be all Rick needed to hear. "I want to check the ropes," he announces.
Then we're looking up at Rick from the trunk of the car from Randall's point of view as Rick pulls the hood off Randall, checks his bonds and the duct tape holding the music-blasting earbuds in and his mouth shut, and stuffs him back in. The first time I thought Rick said he wanted to check the roast, which sounded like some hardcore kidnapping slang and therefore realized it couldn't have been what he said.
At the house, Maggie and Lori are in the kitchen making a single-serving lunch, because it's not like there are over a dozen people living there who have to eat, too. Maggie tells Lori about Glenn blaming her for his freezing up last week. Lori isn't exactly full of sympathy for either of them. "Glenn's a big boy... tell him to man up and pull himself together." But she warns Maggie not to use those words, which, why the hell not? Maggie's about to deliver the tray up to Beth's room, but Lori's got it. What could go wrong?
While Rick drives, he chatters to Shane about using knives more to reduce noise and save ammo. He natters on about the effect winter might have on the Walkers and his hope for another cold, snowy one this year, which he thinks would kill or at least slow the Walkers, making the promise of spring more than symbolic. Of course Shane hates this kind of talk, not just because he's had it up to his scalp-stubble with Rick's hippy-dippy hopefulness, but because the end of the zombie plague means an end to Shane always getting to do whatever the fuck he wants in the name of being The Great Protector. And anyway, Shane's attention is focused in the distance, on a single Walker shambling through the field. Not that he bothers to mention it to Rick.
Lori delivers Beth's food to her in her room and offers to take her for a walk after she eats. Beth: "You're pregnant? How could you do that?" Somehow Lori manages not to tell Beth to just go back into shock.
The trip odometer on the car is at 18.7 miles, but Rick's looking for a good place to drop Randall off, where he'll have a "fair shake." Shane says nothing, but it's not like it's hard to tell what he's thinking. Presently they come up to a Public Works compound surrounded by chain link fence. The place looks pretty familiar if you saw the teaser, but now it seems quiet and abandoned. They get out and walk up to the gate, and Rick seems satisfied, apparently not considering the idea that any one or all of these buildings could be concealing nests of Walkers who have been trapped inside by the fence since week one. For now there's just one visible, stumbling around in a rotting gray sheriff's deputy uniform. Shane levels his automatic, but Rick reminds him of the new knife policy. Which he demonstrates by using his to cut his own finger, then smears the blood across the chain link. When the Walker hurls itself forward to lick the bloody metal, Rick sticks his knife through the fence and straight into the thing's forehead, then gives the handle it a sharp twist. Walker down. "One more. Your turn," Rick says, indicating the approaching zombie. Shane pulls out his own pocketknife. Well, look who's come over all obedient-like.
After using bolt cutters to cut the lock, they walk inside and find the usual post-apocalyptic disarray: trails of canned goods, debris, and a small burned-out pyre with a few charred skeletons. Shane explores the school bus, which was clearly repurposed for some final flight -- it's full of blankets, camping gear, and a child's empty car seat. Downer. Later, while Rick siphons fuel from a truck, Shane finds a couple of apparently unbitten corpses lying side by side in deputy uniforms, but Rick points out the scratches. That's not reassuring. Then they drive the car onto the grounds and haul the bound, hooded Randall out. Of course they didn't check the buildings, but they probably figure that's Randall's job.
Lori returns to Beth's room to find the food untouched and Beth sitting there crying about how pointless it all is. So now Lori finds herself on the other side of that argument we got so tired of her and Rick having all the time in the first half of the season, about how they have to be strong and "make now all right." Beth puts on a brave face and says thank you in a way that should alarm anybody who's ever seen a suicide plotline on TV. But Lori doesn't catch the snap until she gets downstairs with the tray and realizes there is one thing gone from the lunch tray: the sharp steak knife. She rushes right back up and demands it back. Beth hands it over without a word. So I guess the walk is off, then? Instead, Lori runs out to the camp to ask Andrea to climb down from her post on the RV and go find Maggie toot-sweet. No Hershel this week, probably because of his punishing schedule doing a guest shot on Talking Dead. Come to think of it, this week's episode also has no Dale, Glenn, Daryl, Carol, or T-Dog. Which I'm sure has nothing to do with how it's better than usual.
At the compound, Shane and Rick drag Randall to the middle of the pavement near another school bus, remove the hood and the duct tape and the earbuds, and start to walk away without a word, leaving him there with his hands and feet still tied. Randall tells them not to be stupid; he owes them, he can help them. Rick's only response is to drop his knife on the ground several yards away. It's the same knife that he just stuck in a Walker's brain a minute ago so it's still covered with poison gore, which means Randall will probably want to be careful about that. Rick and Shane both ignore Randall's increasingly desperate pleas, until he says he went to school with Maggie. That brings them both up short, as Randall goes on to say he'd never hurt any of them. "I'm not like the guys I was with!" Shane quietly points out to Rick that this means Randall knows where the farm is, and if he finds his group... he leaves the thought unfinished, with words at least. Rick only just prevents Shane from killing Randall by pushing him down and sending the bullet a foot or two wide. Rick kicks away Shane's gun and says he needs a chance to think about it. He says they're all going back, but of course Shane is back to his old argumentative self. "He ran with men who tried to kill you. You gonna bring him back to where Lori sleeps? To where Carl sleeps?" Rick says they'll lock him in the barn. "Unless you bust it open," he jabs. Well, look who's finally coming alive. Shane gets to his feet and they keep having that old argument again about right and wrong until Shane crosses the line: "I don't think you can keep them safe." Rick takes a swing, but Shane, ready for it (he provoked it after all), catches his arms and head-butts Rick, and then disarms him. They fight and fight and fight while Randall starts crawling towards that knife Rick dropped. Well, sure, what else is Randall supposed to do?
They keep fighting through the ads and Randall keeps crawling. Eventually Shane hurls Rick to the ground and tips a motorcycle over on top of him, then goes to get his gun back from under the fire engine where Rick kicked it. He's about to dispatch Randall, when Rick grabs him from behind and they recommence grappling. The fight comes to a lull when Rick ends up feeding Shane his teeth after all. Randall finally gains the knife and starts sawing at the ropes around his ankles. Rick and Shane are both bloody as Rick backs off and yells that he's not letting Shane make these calls any more. Shane's thoughtful, reasoned response is to grab a three foot crescent wrench -- a good twenty-five pounds of solid cast iron -- and chuck it two-handed straight at Rick's face. Rick dodges the missile, which crashes through a window behind him. One of the shattered panes briefly shows Shane as he is -- panting, shambling, bloody-mouthed, ugly, no better than a Walker, in case you've been a little slow getting the memo -- and then the hand of a real Walker appears, before the rest of it rolls out right to Rick. Rick pins it and gives it the old forehead stab among the garbage bags, piled to the wall, but the thing you know a swarm of them come pouring out the window. Rick rolls the freshly re-killed Walker over onto himself and passes unnoticed, and as for Shane, well, clearly it's every ex-deputy for himself now. After a quick check-in on Beth, who's currently being yelled at by Maggie for being suicidal, we're back to watching Shane being chased by the horde. But one of them, a female, spots Randall still on the ground sawing at his roped and peels off to come after him.
Rick rolls his latest victim off himself and regains his feet, just in time to greet Herman Munster from the teaser and go running in the other direction. Randall gets his feet loose just in time to jump up and dodge the Walker making a grab for him, then stomps on her arm while she's down. Somehow that buys him the time to get his hands under his feet and in front of him. Still holding the knife in both hands, he welcomes the Crawler, saying, "Come on, bitch, let's see what you got." He manages to get around behind it and stab it in the back of the skull a half-dozen times. I think you got her, Randall.
Lori and Andrea are standing in the kitchen, listening to Beth and Maggie arguing upstairs. "This could have been handled better," Andrea says, meaning Lori shouldn't have taken the knife. "Like Dale taking my gun. That wasn't your decision." Lori thinks this argument is pretty ridiculous. "You'll understand if I don't send you in there." Andrea points out that she came through it. Obviously the reason Andrea's argument is ridiculous is that Dale didn't just confiscate Andrea's guns, he also emotionally blackmailed her into leaving the CDC with him before they both got flash-fried. How does Andrea think she'd have come through that, exactly? And tangentially, how dissed do you think Jacqui felt when nobody was willing to stay with her except Jenner, who never planned to leave anyway? But rather than pointing any of this out, Lori says the one thing most calculated to start a fight between these two: "And became such a productive member of the group." Yeeowch.
Andrea says she helps keep the place safe, but Lori says that's the men's job. Which is another stupid thing to say when she could have just pointed out that the only Walker Andrea ever tagged from her perch was Daryl, and she even fucked that up. But no, Lori whines about Andrea not doing her share of the housekeeping. "You sit up on that RV working on your tan with a shotgun on your lap." Andrea argues that guarding is more important than the domestics. And by the way, who decided that the collapse of Western Civ has to mean a return to caveman gender roles? Lori points out that she went after Rick (which I maintain was totally unnecessary; he wasn't like, at a strip club or something and was obviously going to get back as soon as he could anyway) and took down two Walkers. Andrea points out that Lori also crashed Maggie's car in the process. "Ever apologize for that?" Lori just says Andrea's insane, so we can probably take that as a no. Andrea says Lori takes it all for granted; "Your husband came back from the dead. Your son, too. And now you got a baby on the way." She sarcastically tells Lori to go tell Beth everything will be okay. "She'll get a husband, a son, baby... a boyfriend. She just has to look on the bright side." Well, that was ugly. And now I hate both of them more than ever. Good job, show.
In the much less disturbing battle happening concurrently -- namely the one between their male counterparts and the relentless undead -- Rick scrambles between two police cars and finds a handy, fully loaded six-shooter under one of them, just in time to take down Herman Munster while still lying on the ground. Unfortunately, Rick's too slow to roll out of the way and avoid getting pinned under the twice-dead behemoth, and more are on the way. Rick tries to shoot the second one, but this one somehow has the sense to blindly grab Rick's arm and send the bullet wide. Rick manages to brain him on the second try. Now he's got two dead Walkers on him and a third crawls on top of them all, clawing at Rick's face. It's obviously not trying very hard, now that we know a scratch is all it takes. Rick can't get his gun around the other two heads for a clean shot at this third beastie, so he sticks the muzzle into Herman Munster's mouth and empties the revolver through the back of Herman's head, pulling the trigger until it dry-fires. Covered with gore, Rick finally heaves the zombie hog-pile off of himself and yanks the sticky revolver out of Herman's mouth.
Maggie's still dropping some cold, cold shit on Beth, who isn't hearing it. In fact, Beth suggests she and Maggie kill themselves together, that night. "Or we'll be forced to do it when the farm and this house is overrun." Beth says it's inevitable, and there's no one to protect them. Beth has decided that Glenn's useless, based on the scuttlebutt she picked up while she went Cameron Fry on everyone; Rick and Shane will protect their people; and Hershel and Jimmy are probably useless. Wow, Beth's worked out the whole endgame. Andrea's wrong, the group can't afford risking the loss of the most strategically advanced mind on the farm.
Back at the compound, Shane barricades himself in that bus again. This time he cuts his hand, smears blood on the door frame, and stabs the first zombie-head that pries itself in for a lick, just like Rick showed him. Who's keeping you alive now, Shane?
Andrea comes to Beth's room and offers to relieve Maggie. Unaware of what Andrea was arguing to Lori earlier, Maggie takes Andrea up on it. Andrea doesn't have a whole lot to say to Beth; she just opens the other door and asks, "Is this what you want? The pain doesn't go away. You just make room for it." With that happy thought, Andrea leaves Beth alone to do as she wishes. What were you saying about keeping people safe, Andrea?
Rick catches Randall and nearly shoots him on the spot, but collars him instead. They hide behind a car and briefly watch the zombie siege on Shane's bus, while Randall begs to be let go, like they planned. He wonders why Rick wants to stay and "help the guy that tried to back your head in." That's an excellent question, Randall. In any case, there's ten of what Randall calls "Roamers," but Randall argues that this is his and Rick's chance to get away together. When Rick doesn't jump on that idea, Randall asks Rick for a gun so he can help, but Rick says they're leaving. "He did this. We're going." And thus Rick solves half of his problems. From inside the bus, Shane watches Rick drag Randall through the gate, and has the nerve to look betrayed.
Maggie enters Beth's room to find it empty, but the bathroom door is locked, Beth is crying behind it, and glass breaks. Lori comes in, and Maggie says she left her with Andrea. Lori pries the lock open, and they find Beth inside, in front of a broken mirror with blood coming out of her wrist. "I'm sorry," she sobs to Maggie. No shit, it's not like replacement bathroom mirrors are going to be easy to come by in Zombieland South.
Leading Randall, Rick pauses at the two dead uniforms to loot their gun belts. After accomplishing this, he pauses to look at them. Two guys in uniforms. Side by side. Like brothers. Together to the very end. Oh, Rick, you fucking moron.
Shane manages to get rid of another Walker using the blood and knife trick, but nearly loses his knife in the process this time. Worse, that door does not want to stay closed. Suddenly the car bursts through the front gate, with Rick leaning out the passenger side window with a gun, picking off a couple of the Walkers besieging the bus and yelling at Shane to run for the back door. Shane leaps straight from the emergency exit into the car's open back window as it pulls around behind the bus. Randall throws it into reverse, double-crushing the skull of a supine Walker in extreme close-up. Randall crashes through yet another section of fence and out onto the street, leaving a nice wide gap for the Walkers to pour through. Sure, they're 18.7 miles from the farm, but it's not like Walkers get tired. Randall is celebrating behind the wheel until Rick sobers him up by sticking the gun in his temple. Sorry, Randall, you're not in the gang yet.
Andrea comes running up to the house like she gives a shit about Beth, only to be met on the front porch by a seriously pissed-off Maggie and Lori. Andrea asks how bad it is, and Lori says it wasn't deep. Andrea actually has the stones to not only stand there and smile at Maggie about how this means Beth chose to live, she also tries to step around Maggie and into the house. Maggie hisses at Andrea to stay away, and never come inside the house again. Lori doesn't say anything in Andrea's defense, and who could blame her? Andrea walks away, looking wounded over how nobody seems to appreciate her tight reverse psychology. Lori tells Maggie she doesn't think Andrea was right, but Beth has made her choice. "She wants to live and now she knows it. And sometimes you have to cross the line." Maggie just grunts and walks inside, while Andrea marches back to her perch atop the RV. Where hopefully she will stay indefinitely.
Swerving tire tracks on the road indicate that Randall didn't give up the wheel without a fight, but now the car is stopped and he's back on the pavement where he belongs, the iPod now playing, ironically, "Driver's Seat" by Sniff 'N' the Tears. We watch from Randall's point of view as Rick bodily drags him over to the trunk and puts the hood back over his head before Shane shuts him in. The two of them lean against the back of the car, still encrusted in the blood of themselves, each other, and the undead, like the besties they'll always be, at least in Rick's addled mind. Rick tells Shane, "If you want to kill me, you're gonna have to do better then a wrench." Seriously, that's all? Rick admits that they're probably going to have to kill Randall, like Shane says. "But I am going to think about it a night. It can't be that easy killing someone. Killing anyone. You know that." And Rick thinks this why? What has Shane ever done to show Rick that he sees himself as anything other than the hero of a first-person shooter? Rick repeats, "That is my wife. That is my son. That is my child. If you're gonna be with us, you're gonna follow my lead. You're gonna trust me." For realsies this time, I suppose. Didn't they just have this conversation again, and won't they have it again the time a moral dilemma comes up, and don't we all know Shane is going to do better than a wrench? Is Rick even going to ask Shane to say a single word to explain himself before welcoming him back into the fold? I guess not. "It's time for you to come back," Rick says, handing Shane a gun. They get back in the car and drive on. On the way back, Shane sees that same Walker, now on the other side of the road. And still he says nothing to Rick. So Shane hasn't changed at all. And why the hell would he? At the very least, Rick needs to confiscate that goddamn hair clipper that Shane's obviously still using on a daily basis.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.
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