The Walking Dead: Season 2, Part 2, Episode 2

Well it took me almost a week to sit down and write about last week's episode. Mostly because I was on vacation!  But also, the episode left me feeling a little flat.

Why?

Well it continues to be characters with well defined "character" defying that character in order to create plot/drama.  They avoided this pitfall in the first season, which was a character defining season. In the first half of this season, they allowed those characters to do their thing when faced with certain situations. Now that they have used up the situation, they are left with forcing the characters to do things OOC or Out Of Character.

Now, this is not to say that characters don't evolve.  A great example of evolution of character is Rick/Hershel.  Last episode you saw them both transform right before your eyes. Rick became the leader/decision maker, (In his own head) and Hershel popped a cap in a dude.  Both of those things were month in the works.  And especially in Hershel's sense, were major direction changes for character.

But that is not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about stupid Lori getting into her car and not only leaving her son alone, but not even telling him she was going, and driving out after Rick, only to get herself in a wreck, which would force Shane to have to come get her, then lie to her, and create more drama.

What happened in this episode? Well, Rick insisting on saving the dudes life.  Why was this out of character? Well the guy has a pretty well defined sense of wright and wrong. He has rigid morals. Black and White.  2 minutes before the guy's legs were impaled on the fence, he was shooting a high caliber rifle at Rick and narrowly missing him.  That makes him the bad guy.  Rick is a COP.  I won't pretend to be able to speak for all cops, but most cops I know would pretty much be ok with letting that dude die to zombies. He played a round of poker with the devil, and lost.  He fired on Rick!  Rick not only risked his own life to save the dude, but risked Glen and Hershel.  Bull.

Sure we can say that this was Rick's predetermined morals taking control. He could not leave a guy to "Bleed Out" as he put it.  (Not that he would have had time to bleed out any way, those Z were like 30 feet away.)  But just five minutes earlier he executed two bad guys for just thinking about shooting at him.  Now he was going to risk death by making Hershel amputate a leg with a pocket knife while Z are coming down the alley.

Then he just says screw it and pops the guys leg off the spike any way.

So who else is behaving oddly?

Glen.

The dude was a pizza delivery boy. He is probably 20 years old. In the old world, there is NO WAY he would have scored a honey as fine as Farmer Becky.  It took a Z apocalypse to get a babe like that. And what does he do? He pushes her away because he is afraid to hurt her by getting himself killed?  Whatever. It's silly and bad writing.  You take any kid who has spent the last 300 Friday Nights jerking into a sock, give him a sweet babe like that, and I refuse to believe that he is going to do any thing but stare all doe eyed into her glory. That whole bit of drama is just contrived.

Daryl.

Well he played right into his character. I guess because he is the only character in the show without an entire series of novellas to define him. The writers are free to do what they want with him.  So he goes all red neck ghetto on a woman who just watched her Z daughter get blown away. The acting is fantastic. I love how he gets so enraged that he can barely spit out his lines. I know rednecks just like this, that start shouting things while angry and don't even finish their statements.  The show needs much more Daryl. Eventually Rick and Shane are not going to be able to coincide and they are going to have to do away with Shane. So Daryl is going to have to pick it up as a main character.

Tdog, Dale, Carol, comatose blonde, etc etc.  I don't think most of these characters even did a thing other than stare at the protagonists.

Over all the episode did very little. It revealed that Hershel can actually kick ass when he quits whining. It continued to muttle up Rick's character. It further reinforced that Shane is a liar and will do what it takes to further his own agenda. (He wanted Rick to die and had no intention of going looking for him but he had to have Lori back.)  Daryl and Carol have a weird relationship.  (The one thing she is good at is getting yelled at, she barely even flinched when Daryl was unloading.)  Are they gona do it?  The blonde continues to be useless. Tdog had less lines than Arnold in Conan the Barbarian.

What actually happened? The 3 muskateers escaped the bar, saved a plot point, and came home.  Oh and Lori started working her weird woman ways on Rick, while he stared right at the camera with a look of disbelief on his face.

I suppose I could talk about that for a bit. What was that look? Was it Rick realizing that he was going to have to cross a line from which he knew he would never return? All he had done up to that point was for naught... all of his attempts to maintain the law were wasted because he realized he was going to have to kill Shane.  We shall see?

The previews for tonight's episode look to be pretty good.  Finally, after most of a season, some real action.

Lets see!

Jawaballs