Little Bayar takes a stand on the Mongolian steppe in Babies

In this epsiode:

• That adorable Babies documentary (see photo)
• That (according to Cynara) objectionable sci-fi Timberlake vehicle In Time
• That unforgivable thing Seth Meyers did on Saturday Night Live wherein he dragged the blameless and pure Kermit the Frog into his mire of fatphobia
• Childhood anecdote about cows
• Metaphors involving breasts

Note: my recap of this episode is not going to be as exhaustive as previous ones have been, because I just haven’t had the time this week. BUT! I did put some general review-type thoughts at the end.

Everyone is gloomily hanging out at the campsite, eating and sharpening knives and stuff. After exchanging a look with Dale, Glenn, with only, “So, guys” by way of preamble, announces that there are zombies in the barn.

Cut to the barn. Yes, there are zombies in there. The group discusses the situation. Shane wants to either kill all the barn zombies or leave the farm. Rick and the others do not want to leave because they have not yet found Sophia. They all spend the rest of the scene loudly fighting outside a rickety barn full of zombies, which doesn’t seem like the best idea.

Bear McCreary’s Strings of Doom and Destruction. Credits.

Shane considers the zombie barn and the strength of its locks. And the strength of the undead inside.

Glenn tries to get Maggie to talk to him; she smashes an egg on his head.

Lori is tutoring Carl with math books, who knows where she got them. Carl declares that he doesn’t want to leave the farm until they find Sophia, and not even after that.

Daryl is saddling up in the stable. Carol doesn’t want him to hurt himself further and indicates two things: she doesn’t believe her daughter is alive, and she doesn’t want to lose Daryl, too. Daryl reacts to this moment of intimacy by knocking over his saddle, hurting himself in the process, and calling her a bitch.

RV. Glenn is keeping watch atop it. Inside, Andrea is getting ready to take a watch down by the barn, and Dale warns her about Shane.  ”Is that how you want to be, like him?” Dale asks her. “He’s not a victim,” Andrea replies. After she leaves, Glenn asks Dale to keep watch while he takes a water break; Dale examines the cache of weapons on the RV table.

Farmhouse. Hershel is eating lunch when Rick knocks on the door. Hershel seems to be reading the Bible. Rick tells Hershel they know about the barn. Hershel doesn’t want to talk about it. Rick wants to stay at the farm. Hershel doesn’t want to talk about that either.

Zombie barn. Shane keeps watch. Rick approaches. Shane wants to know how soon he can go to town on those zombies. Rick says they’re still “negotiating” and that the barn is secure. Shane is not buying it. More fighting.
Farmhouse kitchen. Hershel tries to explain himself to Maggie, who lays some pretty good Biblical knowledge on her own fundie dad, saying that Jesus commanded them to love others. Which, she reminds him, was what Hershel told 14-year-old Maggie when he remarried and brought new people into the house. The underlying question in this scene, like the RV scene with Dale and Andrea, is “Who are you going to be when the world falls apart?” Which is a good sign to me, because it indicates this show is developing some thematic awareness.

Hershel gets Rick to join him and Jimmy in a zombie-wrangling exercise. But before we get to that, we get a boring scene with Shane and Lori where Shane tries to convince Lori that her husband is crap leader. He also knows about the baby and thinks it’s his. Oh boy. This is going to help the situation.

On his way away from Lori, Shane has a tête-a-tête with a Sheriff’s-hat-wearing Carl, who tells Shane that he believes in the Search for Sophia, and he wants Shane to believe as well. Given that Shane wants the Alpha Male Leader Role which includes being the Designated Father Figure to Carl Role, Shane says he is on board with this. Shane goes tot he RV to get some guns and finds that they are gone! Shane knows his nemesis Dale took them.

Down by the river, Hershel is giving Rick a crash course in zombie-wrangling, using poles with loops on the end — I think they’re used for livestock. Or cleaning pools. Or for rescuing people from pools. IDK. Hershel’s zombified neighbours are stuck in the riverbed mud.

Down by another river, Daryl shows Carol another appearance of the Cherokee Rose. He also apologizes for earlier. Carol asks her why Daryl still wants to look for her missing daughter; Daryl says it’s because he thinks she’s out there, and besides, he doesn’t have much else to keep him busy. Carol lovingly strokes the bloom, and says, “We’ll find her. We will. I see it.” By the end of the episode, of course, we learn that entire statement is true. Horribly true.

Zombie-wrangling. It’s less fun than it sounds.

Glenn makes another go at getting Maggie to talk to him. She reiterates that she is not pleased that he told everyone about the barn zombies after she asked him for “one thing.” She’s mad about this because now her dad is going to kick them out. But Glenn takes a dudely stand and tells Maggie that he wanted to tell his group the truth in part because of the talking-to Maggie gave him last episode — he has been willing to be “walker-bait” because he forgets how dangerous the zombies are, “whether they’re sick people or dead people.” And he wasn’t going to tolerate having a couple dozen of them within a hundred yards of his friends’ encampment. He’d rather have Maggie alive and pissed then dead. Needless to say, Maggie responds very well to this display of assertiveness and the two of them get with the smooches.

Shane tracks down Dale, who is hiding the guns in the forest (I think to keep Shane from using the guns to kill all the barn zombies, therefore resulting in their eviction from Hershel Farms. Though I can’t really think what Dale is thinking just leaving all their guns in the woods). The interaction results in Dale threatening to shoot Shane, and Shane daring Dale to do it (which he doesn’t). Dale says it’s OK that he doesn’t have what it takes to make it very long, because “at least I can say when the world went to shit, I didn’t let it take me down with it.”

At the farmhouse, everyone’s wondering where Rick is. And there’s Shane, carrying the bag of guns, handing them out to everyone. He wants to go clean out the barn. No one wants him to, because they know doing so will result in their eviction. And just then, Hershel, Rick and Jimmy (it’s Jimmy, right? Or is it another random teenage boy?) return with their pet river zombies. Shane’s agitation level is rising. So is Hershel’s, as he immediately notices that everyone has guns. Shane is ranting and raving. To demonstrate to Hershel that zombies are, in fact, dead, he shoots the captive (lady) zombie half a dozen times in the chest (to no effect, of course) before finally destroying it with a shot to the head. Shane is full on lathered now. He starts hacking at the lock of the barn. Because Rick is still holding his pole-tethered zombie, and he can’t seem to get anyone to take the pole from him, Rick cannot physically go and stop Shane. And frankly, it seems like no one really wants to, because Shane is holding a mean-looking pickaxe and he is acting really, really out-of-control. So he succeeds in unlocking the door and out come the zombies. Since he’s given everyone guns, everyone shoots. Glenn asks Maggie for permission to shoot, too, and she tearfully gives it. Only then does Shane  shoots Rick’s be-poled pet-river zombie.

When the shooting is over, at least 13 zombies lie (really) dead on the ground. Dale returns just in time to hear some more zombie growling coming from the barn. Two sneaker-shod feet emerge. It’s Sophia, undead. Carol sobs while Daryl holds her. Lori holds Carl and urges him not to watch. No one moves but Rick, who comes forward to put the little girl down with a single point-blank shot.

And there’s your mid-season finale.

A better episode than most of what we’ve had for the first seven episodes of the second season. For most of it, the show was trying to be the kind of thinky, talky philosophical post-apocalyptic tale, and it didn’t work. Throughout all these episodes, I’ve been resisting the urge to compare this show to another 2000s-era post-apocalyptic series — Battlestar Galactica. That show was a character not plot driven show (listen to the commentaries and hear showrunner Ron Moore point out the times he ditched plot in favour of character material), but it very rarely had the clunky, wheel-spinning feel that Walking Dead does more often than not. I want TWD to be a character-driven show, but I want it to be driven by the characters’ actions, not their words — especially not words delivered while whiling away days in an idyllic farm setting.

The Sophia story is very different from what happened in the comics, and it was a nice point of diversion, even if the execution (over the many episodes) was tedious. Once the zombies started pouring out of the barn, it was pretty clear to me that Sophia would bring up the rear (and I think one of the zombies we saw peering through the door near the start of the episode was Sophia, but she was unrecognizable at that time).
But Sophia’s appearance in the barn raises some questions. Apparently there was a preview for the next episode that indicated that no one in Clan Hershel knew about Sophia in the barn because it was Otis who put her there. The alternative is that Hershel did know Sophia was in there, but he was so invested in keeping his zombified friends and family “alive” that he did not want to risk Rick & Co. learning about the barn zombies. And he didn’t want to reveal zombie Sophia to Rick, because Rick would do what he did in this epsiode, end her unlife, going against Hershel’s right-to-unlife values. This discussion will just go in circles and we won’t know until the show returns in February, so it’s probably best not to think about it too much.

So let’s change the subject. This episode took time to put a question of ethics to Hershel — is it OK to turn away refugees just because they complicate your life? Same for Shane and Dale (do you shoot whomever you want in defense of the people closest to you?). When the world ends, what kind of person will you be? And will that person be able to survive? This is a central post-apocalyptic theme that the show has not touched on heavily before (or maybe just not that effectively, with the whole Lori pregnancy storyline and her questioning bringing a new person into a horrible world). It has, however, been a central theme of the comics, where Robert Kirkman has spent 90 issues asking the question, what do you have to become to survive? Should you become it? Are you still human if you do?

But to really delve into that theme, you have to put the characters in tougher situations. Most of this season has basically amounted to an unpleasant camping trip; speed up the timeline and put these characters in peril, and then we’ll see what this show can be.

Lori and Carl feeding chicken. Let’s take a moment here to acknowledge that this show has the same problem that Lost did after its first season — the inexorable aging of child actors. Chandler Riggs has grown a lot in the time elapsed since last season, which in the show is a matter of weeks but in the real world is about a year and a half. Lost had a similarly slow in-universe passage of time, and it had two child characters — preteen Walt and baby Aaron. You can always recast a baby (or a Bobby Draper), but a preteen main character is a little trickier. Lost solved this problem by writing Walt and his dad off the show for all intents and purposes. Given that [Highlight for comics spoilers] [[Carl is still alive as of issue 89 in the book]], I would be pretty surprised if they offed Carl any time soon.

Anyway. Chickens. Carl tells his mom not to worry so much. She says that’s her job, and he retorts that it’s not, she’s a housewife. Ugh, what a bozo kid. Lori points out that she can’t really be a housewife ’cause she doesn’t have a house. TOUCHÉ, little punk (her word). I’m really having trouble understanding Chandler Riggs’s dialogue. Did the bullet wound cause a speech impediment? He mumbles something about a mother — I think he’s referring to the mother of the chickens they are feeding. Then he remarks that maybe the mother chicken got eaten, and this causes Lori to look STRICKEN.

Wife of Otis (was she given a name? I’ll go look that up), meanwhile, is puttering around in the chicken shed. Pushing aside mean-looking hanging metal things, she takes a chicken literally to the chopping block. But she doesn’t chop its head; she breaks its legs and puts it into a sack. Oh. I think I know where this is going. She wheelbarrows sack to the barn, as a horse gallops across her path.

Barn zombies. Wife of Otis is up in the loft, and empties the contents of the sack (three or so still-live chickens) to the waiting jaws of the zombies below. Ugh, I am unreasonably annoyed by this. You know who could be eating these chickens? PEOPLE WHO AREN’T DEAD.

Bear McCreary’s Strings of Dread and Decay. Credits.

Binocular view of the barn. It’s Glenn, creeping again. Maggie comes up and scolds him for being “obvious,” then gives him a bucket of peaches. Glenn accuses her of “buying [his] silence with fruit.” Maggie says no, ’cause there’s also jerky in that basket. Glenn says he’s a bad liar (he can’t even play poker!), but Maggie insists he keeps the barn zombie secret to himself.

Glenn brings the peaches to Dale and T-Dawg at the RV. When T-Dawg offers a bleary-eyed “What’s up?” by way of greying, Glenn is hilariously hand-tipping as he insists that NOTHING is up. Nothing at ALL.

Daryl is convalescing in a tent (I guess only kids get to convalesce in the house, which given Hershel’s weirdness, is not inconsistent). Andrea comes in to bring him a book to read, and reiterates her guilt for having shot him. Daryl doesn’t have a problem with Andrea, though, because she was only trying to protect the group. As she leaves he teases her with, “If you shoot me again, you best pray I’m dead.”

Glenn is getting up in Lori’s business. Why? Seriously, wouldn’t the instinct of most early-20s males be to completely ignore this situation if they were even privy to it? But no. Glenn wants Lori to tell Rick. He also wants Lori to have vitamins and a nice pillow (his words). And his share of the jerky. Because she’s skinny and pregnant! To be fair, she does need to eat, because that fetus will suck all the nutrients out of her body whether Lori’s eating enough food or not. Glenn is really pushing it with talk of how someone needs to “take care” of Lori and that she has “a medical condition.” He offers to make a run to town, but Lori shuts him down and tells him to keep quiet. (This episode is called “Secrets,” GET IT?) Glenn and his peaches are summoned to the Search for Sophia.

Rick, Shane, and Jimmy are discussing the day’s search plan over the Truck Hood of Decision Making. Jimmy says there’s a housing development nearby, maybe Sophia went there? Sure, it’s a good a guess as any of the guesses they’ve been making for like five episodes. Rick says that after gun practice, Shane and a buddy can go out. (After what happened to Daryl, it’s buddy system all the way, now.) But, Shane asks, who will be his partner? Rick offers him the pick of the gun practice. How generous. Glenn arrives with his peaches. The guys chow down and Glenn clearly wants to tell Rick about Lori. Lori watches from afar to make sure he doesn’t. Shane asks for his binoculars back. Wife of Otis and Daughter of Otis (I think?) want to join in on gun practice. Rick says Hershel is not cool with that, but the ladies say he “consented” because Otis was the only one who knew guns and he’s gone now so they have to protect themselves. Rick learned his lesson with Jimmy, and says he’s not going to take their word for it.

Shane notices Carl hanging out by the RV. Carl asks Shane to teach him to shoot. Shane says that’s a parental decision. Shane may not be good for much in my books, but he is good for being able to tell when a kid is carrying a pistol he’s not supposed to have. So, at Shane’s asking, Carl shows the gun in his waistband. Shane is not happy, and neither is Lori when she finds out seconds later. Dale takes the blame for letting Carl into the RV to get a walkie. Long scene short: Rick thinks Carl can have a gun to protect himself. Lori does not agree. It turns out Shane is an accomplished child gun instructor. Lori capitulates. Carl gets a gun. This development happened much earlier in the comics and given how old Chandler Riggs looks, it’s not as shocking as it might’ve been.

Everyone packs into vehicles up to go have gun practice, and Glenn makes excuses to get out of it and hang out with Dale. Dale reads between the lines and asks Glenn what’s up. Steven Yueng is super adorable, have I mentioned that? He indicates awkwardly that he needs the benefit of Dale’s aged wisdom and at Dale’s urging he spits it out: “There’s walkers in the barn and Lori’s pregnant.” Best scene out of the season.

Wine bottles lined up along the fence for target practice. They all appear to have a few fingers of liquid in the bottom. I hope that’s water and not wine. First the wasting of chickens and now the wasting of alcohol? What is wrong with these people? Shane and Rick survey their students. Jimmy is actually doing the sideways-gangster pistol hold and not only that, T-Dawg actually has to call him on it. Shane reassures Andrea (looking very Annie Oakley in her straw cowboy hat) that she’ll hit her target eventually. Andrea points out that she did hit her target: three bullet holes perfectly within the “O” of the “NO TRESPASSING” sign beyond the fence. Shane binoculars to confirm. The cops are impressed. Shane gives her a heavier gun. Again, her aim is true. Rick says Shane should give Andrea extra advanced training after. After Rick saunters off, Andrea brings up the thing about Shane wanting to leave the group, neglecting to mention that she also wanted to leave the group. “Something change your mind?” she asks. Cut to Carl.

In the stables, Dale checks up on Hershel tending to Nervous Nellie, who has returned home after spooking and tossing Daryl last week. Dale casually praises Hershel’s beautiful fields, and says he took a walk out to the barn (DUN DUN). He says he heard the telltale zombie sounds. Hershel says that before broadcasting ceased, he saw the “atrocities” committed, like the one at his well two episodes back. We learn that Hershel believes zombies are still people, and that he believes this because his wife and stepson are in that barn. In his gentle way, Dale points out that that walkers are deadly and dangerous; Hershel rebuts that so are paranoid schizophrenics, but we don’t put them down. Not usually, anyway. Dale offers to talk to Rick and help secure the barn and make the situation safer. Hershel says that Rick may be “a man of conscience,” but not everyone else is.

Lori chats with Hershel over a barbed-wire fence in the field. She thanks him for his hospitality, and says that they’ll earn their keep in return. Oh, but you won’t be staying long, says Hershel. You’re moving on to Fort Benning, right? This is news to Lori.

Andrea is practicing shooting at a log swinging from a rope. She is missing, and Shane is encouraging her, saying that she hit a bullseye at 25 feet earlier. That bullseye wasn’t moving, Andrea replies. Ah, but zombies don’t really stand still, Shane says, and sets the log on another swing. Shane sets in on giving Andrea the drill sergeant treatment, yelling about shutting down your emotions and your fear and getting the job done and all the stuff he said to her a few episodes back, culminating in a reference to her dead sister Amy. You know, it really chaps me when people use the Drill Sargent approach to motivation without bothering to learn first if a given individual actually responds to that. Because unless you are actually a boot camp, the Drill Sargent approach is not usually the best motivational technique for humans. I’ve had the Drill Sargent approach (and its variation, the Jillian Michaels approach) used on me and I hated it. Andrea is not really responding to it here, either. Ideally, she would’ve vented her frustration by shooting shane, but instead she stalks off.

Lori confronts Rick about her newfound knowledge of Hershel’s eviction plan. No one else knows. Like father like son: Rick tells her not to worry. Rick says Hershel is flexible. Lori says that is not the impression she got. Lori wants to talk to Hershel; Rick wants to give him space. Rick is not happy that Lori is not unquestioningly following his will. Lori doesn’t like that Rick kept something from her. Rick says if they do have to leave, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her and Carl safe, blah blah.

Andrea’s stomping down the road when Shane comes along in the car. He asks her to get in; she declines. He apologizes for bringing up her dead sister Amy in his Drill Sargent routine. She calls him a dick and he does not reject that designation. He asks her to be his backup as he checks out a lead on Sophia.

Dale is frying what looks like Spam at the campsite. Lori practically runs away from the smell of the cooking meat. Dale notices. He opens the grandfatherly lines of communication with the story of the one and only time his late wife was pregnant (she miscarried). She couldn’t handle the smell of cooking meat then, either. Dale’s personal story has the desired effect and softens any irritation Lori feels, but she does realize that Glenn told Dale. Dale says, “What do you expect? He has no guile.” Lori reveals she hasn’t told Rick about the pregnancy. “Because of Shane?” Dale asks. Oh, now this is a fact I wanted to know. Who else knew about the Shane/Lori trysts? Because someone had to. And it turns out that Dale only guessed and is now having his suspicions confirmed. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because Lori is for some reason certain that Rick is the father. Wait, really? You’re just going to toss out all that juicy paternity drama? I can picture a writers’ room discussion where they argue that pushing the paternity angle makes it too soapy. And that’s a fair take, I guess. But I’ll just say I think I prefer the way the Lori/Rick/Shane stuff was handled in the comic. Regardless, Lori “hates [her]self” for sleeping with Shane. And she doesn’t want to bring a child into the joyless postapocalypse. Dale tries to convince her otherwise.

Lori finds Glenn and lets him off the hook for telling. But she does want to take him up on his earlier offer to run to town. He’s rewarded with a big, rather desperate hug, from Lori.

Glenn and Maggie are on horseback heading to the road. Glenn is trying to get Maggie to speak to him, and insists she didn’t have to make the risky trip away from the farm. Cut to later when they’re ambling into town, and she finally speaks up. She’s mad at Glenn for betraying her trust. Glenn asks her if she agrees with her dad’s belief that the zombies aren’t dead but sick, even after she saw the maggot-infested corpse they pulled out (well, pulled mostly out) of the well. Glenn says if Maggie had been in Atlanta she “would not have a barn full of walkers.” Maggie wants him to stop calling them “walkers” (can’t imagine how she’d object if he called them, say, “zombies”!) Given how neutral and innocuous the term “walkers” is, Glenn asks her, “What do you call them?” She replies, “Mom. Shawn. Mr and Mrs Fisher. Lacey. Duncan.”

Once again, Glenn is looking for a mystery supply at the pharmacy, but this time he enlists Maggie’s help, showing her the written note. “You have got to be kidding me,” she says. So, clearly they’re looking for something that’s will go towards ending Lori’s pregnancy. RU486? Maggie heads to the back, behind the pharmacy counter, and starts looking at bottles. Glenn is picking up other stuff in the front of the store. And then: ZOMBIE! It grabs Maggie’s hand through the shelf, and Glenn springs into action, grabbing a metal shelf to use as a weapon, which partially decapitates the walker. Keyword: partially. Because as Glenn hugs a sobbing Maggie, the nearly-headless zombie rises to its feet. Glenn pulls a small axe from his belt and goes overkill destroying the zombie’s brain. Maggie hugs him again.

Andrea and Shane drive into the remains of a once-idyllic housing development. It’s empty. “We’re gonna have to go ass-to-ass,” Shane says, as they walk down the street. That’s worth a snerk. But just one, because it’s Shane. Andrea remarks that if Sophia got this far, she has a real shot.

Maggie storms into the camp with Glenn on her heels. “Hey! We got your stuff!” she hollers at Lori, throwing the bag of “abortion pills” at her. Maggie says that the next time Lori wants something, she should go get it herself, because she and Glenn are not her “errand boys.” Glenn wordlessly goes after Maggie.

Glenn catches up with Maggie near a fence and some trees, as the sun starts to set. He tries to take the blame for Maggie almost getting killed by a zombie, because it was his idea to go into town and he shouldn’t have let Maggie come with. He’s confused when Maggie says that he’s pretty stupid for a smart guy. She kisses him. She says she’s already lost the people she loved the most. “You’re smart. You’re brave. You’re a leader. But you don’t know it and your friends don’t wanna know it. They’d rather have you fetching peaches. There’s a dead guy in the well? Send Glenn down.” Maggie, now I want to kiss you. If we were to tally up all the things Rick and Glenn have actually done to help and/or save people so far in the series, I’m pretty sure Glenn’s column would be at least three times as long. Maggie continues. “You’re walker bait. I can’t take you becoming one of them.” I’m sure a lot of viewers see Maggie’s erratic ups-and-downs as poor writing, but Maggie is, at this point, far from the most poorly written character on the show. The way I see it, she’s a young woman with her dead mother and brother down the hill in a barn, and that explains a lot of wack behaviour. Sidebar: I’ve stopped seeing the ill-fated Bela from the abysmal third season of Supernatural whenever I look at Lauren Cohan — a major relief, because Maggie is one of my favourites from the comic.

Shane and Andrea are scoping out houses. Andrea calls for Sophia; Shane shushes her. They don’t find Sophia, but they do find a living room full of corpses and a garage filled with burnt skeletons. “She was never here, was she?” Andrea asks. You think? And does Shane have other reasons for bringing Andrea here to what is sure to be a zombie trap? And hey, look, there are the zombies. Shane tells Andrea to cover the oncoming streets while he clears the walkers from their car. Andrea struggles with her gun, having to reload. A businessman zombie approaches her, gaining speed, and Shane’s standing right next to her. Andrea realizes that Shane wants her to do the deed, and she does. This gives her the confidence she needs to land three more shots.

At her tent, Lori asks Glen about the blood on Maggie’s shirt. He tells her about the attack, and Lori apologizes, saying she shouldn’t have sent him. Glenn reminds that he’s the one who offered. Lori says she thought the town was safe, and what if they didn’t come back? Glenn says he always does come back. Glenn asks if the “Morning After Pills” will even work. EXCELLENT QUESTION, GLENN! Let’s go over some emergency contraception facts, shall we?

The “morning after pill,” more correctly referred to as “emergency contraceptive pills” (ECP) do not terminate a pregnancy — they prevent one. Pregnancy does not occur the moment a male ejaculates into a female. The sperm has to travel up through the cervix, uterus and into the fallopian tube to find an egg to fertilize. This means there’s a window between sex and pregnancy, during which a female can take ECP to either prevent her ovaries from releasing an egg, prevent sperm from fertilizing her egg, or prevent the fertilized egg from implanting in her uterus (the scientific definition of the beginning of pregnancy). According to the manufacturers of Plan B, a brand of ECP, “If you are already pregnant and take Plan B, there’s no evidence that Plan B will harm you or your fetus.” The actual “abortion pill” is known as RU486 (generic: mifepristone). This drug blocks progesterone, which is a hormone required for pregnancy. A day later, a pregnant person has to take an additional drug that causes uterine contractions to expel the embryo in the uterus. That would be the course of treatment Lori would need. The “morning after pills” wouldn’t do anything.

And for the story, does it matter if the pills would work or not? No. Because the drama here is about Lori choosing to either try to end her pregnancy or to try continue it. But I’m annoyed because there is a LOT of misinformation about contraception in popular media, and it bugs to see more of it. /End sermon

Back to the tent with Lori and Glenn. Turns out Glenn fully supports Lori’s choosing her choice but he brought her a present. Prenatal vitamins. Which is actually a really useful gift for a woman in the postapocalypse, because as I said before, that fetus will suck everything out of her bones by the time it’s born if she’s malnourished. Glenn asks if they’re friends. Once you’ve bought someone a pregnancy test, I think it’s safe to say there’s a level of intimacy there, and Lori concurs. Glen reiterates that he is very glad he doesn’t have to make her choice, but that maybe she doesn’t have to make the choice alone.

Andrea is riding shotgun as Shane drives them back from Zombie Acres. She’s feeling pretty good. She looks over a Shane, then feels the bulge in his pants. Oh, ew. He pulls over, says, “C’mon then,” and she climbs into his lap. Andrea, no. No no no. Gross. Just yuck. This is the one time I’m grateful for AMC’s prudishness when it comes to sex scenes because it means this one is nonexistent, but I still need the brain bleach.

Lori is panicking in her tent. She pops the pills out of their blister packs and swallows them. Then she starts to panic even more. She runs to a safe barfing spot and sticks her fingers down her throat.

Shane and Andrea (the frequency with which I’ve had to type their names together this week might leave you wondering if I will invent a cute portmanteau for their names. The answer to that question is no. I will not, because I am counting down the episodes until Shane’s inevitable betrayal-induced death. So say we all.) Andrea gives the nil report to Carol. Dale asks what happened. “The place was overrun,” Shane says. Dale is not impressed, and is giving Shane major side-eye. I confess I was surprised by what Dale does next: he reminds Shane of Shane’s earlier plan to get out of dodge and suggests he follow through on that plan. Shane wants to know if this is about Andrea; Dale says he’s looking out for the group. Shane tries to list his credentials as a protector; Dale brings up Otis. Dale says Shane’s been “vague” about Otis’s death. Dale wasn’t there for that, but he was there when he saw Shane put Rick in his gun sight. “I know what kind of man you are,” Dale says. Shane does not deal with this confrontation well, saying that if he (Shane) would kill his BFF Rick, what would he do to Dale, whom he doesn’t even like? Good point. Watch your back, Dale. There are still seven episodes left in the season, and I’m betting Shane doesn’t bite it ’til at least episode eleven.

Rick returns to his family tent and finds the empty pill packs. You can see the gears turning as he puts it together. It takes longer than you’d expect.

Rick finds Lori out by the barbed wire fence, pill packs in hand. Rick is not satisfied that Lori threw up the (non-effective, may I remind you) pills. Rick puts together that Glenn must know about the pregnancy, which makes him feel more left out. Rick clearly wants the baby; Lori is ambivalent, currently on the side of not giving birth in a ditch. Rick says he wouldn’t make Lori have a baby she doesn’t want; Lori didn’t tell him because she wanted the abortion to be on her conscience alone. Rick says  they need to stop keeping things from each other (true) and asks if there’s anything else Lori needs to tell him. I’m surprised for the second time, because she reveals that she and Shane were a thing. And Rick takes it…well! He says, “Of course you did. The world went to shit, you thought I was dead.” That is indeed what happened, and Lori is overcome by Rick’s understanding. There might be hope for these crazy kids after all.

Wait, Walt wasn't the one who lab-brewed the best coffee...

We didn’t really have a solid plan for this week’s episode, but we are so dedicated to consistency that we forged ahead anyway and ended up talking about Breaking Bad for half an hour. Timely! But seriously, it’s on Netflix Canada now and so Jenny’s watched the first three seasons and it turns out Cynara was up to date all along. If you haven’t watched the series yet and plan to, don’t worry — we keep it SPOILER-FREE (or very, very, very spoiler-lite), talking about the themes of the show rather than the plot points.

Also on this week’s show:

-TVtropolis, home of the Roseanne rerun. Has any other sitcom in the last 25 years so deeply explored topics of class and real-life money concerns?

-On the flip side, today we have Up All Night, which has an amazing cast (Will Arnett, Christina Applegate and Maya Rudolph) but puts its new-parent comedy in a highly-privileged, wealthy setting.

-The Talk is unsurprisingly disappointing. Sharon Osbourne says troubling things. Cynara resembles every fat woman you know. Guess what? there’s a double standard between the genders on aging for TV news anchors! BREAKING NEWS.

Nearly Shirtless Shane and his buddies run for it. (Photo: AMC)

Previously: Sophia ran off, Rick talked about finding her, Darryl actually looks for her but finds only flowers, Lori wants a pregnancy test, Maggie and Glenn get it on, Lori gets her pregnancy test and it’s POSITIVE.

A backed up roadway, full of cars and people and car horns blaring. Flashback? Shane is scanning the radio bands. Sophia and Carl play checkers, sitting on a tailgate. Helicopters are heard. Sophia’s Angry Abusive Dad (AAD) is there, too, so definitely flashback, because he’s dead from zombie now. Sophia asks if they can go soon. Carl is hungry, Lori says they all are. Carol says AAD is a survivalist, so they have tons of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat, per the US Armed Forces). She goes to get one for Carl, but AAD is not OK with this, or even with Carol mentioning the MREs, because now everyone knows they have them! AAD goes on about “operational security” and Carol folds like a card table.

Lori asks Shane if there’s any joy on the radio. Shane says the emergency broadcast has stopped, but he wants to go up the road a bit to see if someone up there knows anything. Lori, for some reason, wants to go with him. Carol makes an excuse about the MREs and offers a granola bar or something, but Lori is over it already and asks her to instead “keep an eye” on Carl while she goes with Shane.

As they walk, Lori asks why they would’ve stopped broadcasting about the refugee centre (which, you will recall, was supposed to be in Atlanta, which is where all the cars on this particular road are headed).

Sophia tells Carl his “dad” is nice. Carl explains Shane isn’t his dad, and that his dad’s dead. (Actually, comatose in an abandoned hospital, but there’s a lot these characters don’t know at this point.) There’s an explosion in the distance. A fight breaks out at a nearby car. Helicopters fly overhead toward the city. Lori and Shane walk to get a better view, and what they see is huge explosions blanketing Atlanta. “They’re dropping napalm in the streets,” Shane says. He embraces Lori while she weeps.

Opening credits.

Lori is waking up in a tent. She fumbles for the bedside clock. Turns out we’re back in present day, at Hershel’s farm, and Lori has overslept. Carol, hanging laundry on the line, says she must have needed it. Carol floats the idea that they use the farmhouse kitchen to cook dinner for Hershel’s family tonight. Carol wants Lori to do the asking, because she’s Rick’s wife and that makes her their “unofficial first lady.” Clearly Lori thinks this statement is as ridiculous as I do.

Rick is once again holding court over the hood of the truck, talking about the day’s Search for Sophia plans. A very pale young man we’ve never seen before approaches and asks to help. One of Herschel’s kids? Rick asks if Hershel approves and Pale Young Man says he does. Darryl talks about “borrowing” a horse and looking up the creek. T-Dawg bugs Darryl about a chupacabra, which apparently Darryl said he saw while hunting once.

Glenn sits on the porch, staring into the distance and strumming tunelessly on a guitar. Maggie appears, Turns out Darryl found the guitar on the highway. Glenn mentions that they still have eleven condoms. Maggie says that’s eleven minutes of her life she’s never getting back. This dig doesn’t stop Glenn from doing his best Casanova impression, which Maggie doesn’t seem to buy at the moment.

Shane, Rick and their rifles are searching the forest. They banter about their sexual histories  in a way that recalls the camaraderie they had in the first episode. Also, it turns out Shane slept with married women in high school. Old habits die hard? Then the conversation turns to the validity of the search itself. Basically, Shane doesn’t think it’s worth it to keep looking for Sophia. The argument is brought to an end when they find a blue flag nailed to a tree, indicating they’ve found their way into Andrea and T-Dawg’s search grid.

Darryl shoots a squirrel with an arrow. He’s riding a horse at the top of a ravine when he spots a doll lying in the muddy creek bed. He dismounts and heads down to fetch it. He picks up the doll and calls for Sophia, then returns to his horse. He’s sauntering along when the horse gets spooked by a rather large snake, throwing Darryl  not just to the ground but to the bottom of the ravine. Ouch. Ouchier still is that the fall has caused one of the arrows in his quiver to impale him through the side in what is probably a nonlethal but incredibly painful injury.

Commercial.

I can’t quite figure out what Darryl’s doing — he doesn’t take the arrow out, but he rips off his shirt sleeve and makes it into a rope to kind of tie around his waist like a belt and tie the arrow to the belt as well? I guess to stabilize the arrow so it’s not moving around while he attempts to climb out of the ravine? Not sure. Anyway, Darryl still has to climb out of the ravine and it looks a lot higher than it did when he fell down it. He picks up a branch to use as a walking stick, and hears a rustling in the nearby bushes. He realizes he doesn’t have his crossbow anymore, so he wades out into the water to find it. You know, climbing out of ravines is really low on my list of enjoyable activities — somewhere between tooth extraction and eating pickled herring — and even less so if I had to do it while impaled with an arrow, so I really feel for Darryl in this scene. He’s got the found doll tucked into his belt, by the way.

Back at the farm. Glenn hounds Lori about the pregnancy test, and realizes that Lori hasn’t told “him” (presumably he means Rick) yet. Rick and Shane are back, and Rick tells Lori that Shane wants to call off the search. Lori reassures Rick that he is making the best decisions he can and that he’s not “soft.” A blonde tweenage girl interrupts and says her dad wants to talk to Rick.

Back to Darryl climbing. He’s trash-talking himself for motivation. And then he falls, again.

Rick finds Hershel working on an engine (generator?) of some kind. Hershel asks about his missing horse. He also asks about Pale Young Man, who we learn is named Jimmy. Turns out Hershel did not give Jimmy permission to go searching for Sophia, and that Jimmy is not his son but is “kin,” so that means Hershel is in charge of him. Hershel reiterates that he wants to control his people, and Rick control his. Thus endeth the meeting of the patriarchs.

Darryl is unconscious back at the bottom of the ravine. A figure approaches him. It’s Merle! I’m gonna go ahead and assume this is an hallucination. Hallucination Merle starts right in on name-calling and hassling Darryl about his situation, asking him why Darryl is going to die here in the dirt. Darryl says it’s for a lost little girl. Merle makes a pedophilia joke and notes that Darryl stopped looking for him. Merle wants to know why Darryl is hanging out with Rick, the guy who, from Merle’s perspective, forced him to cut off his own hand (we then see the hand, still attached to Merle, so we know for sure it’s an hallucination). Merle accuses Darryl of “playing errand boy for a bunch of pansy-asses, n****rs and democrats.” (Sidebar on AMC Standards and Practices: they’ll let the N-word fly, but not the F-word, not even once. I find that weird and incongruous.) Hallucination Merle goes on about how Darryl isn’t really part of the Rick group and they’re going to ditch him eventually and then he asks Darryl go shoot Rick in the face. Merle says no one but him will ever really care about Darryl. Hm. There are abusive overtones to this relationship that go beyond sibling-to-sibling toughness. Maybe this is why Darryl is so invested in helping Sophia and Carol? Because he relates to their being abused by a loved one?

Darryl is roused from his hallucination by a zombie gnawing on him (presumably just his boot, that’s a pretty stupid zombie even by zombie standards). While Darryl fights and kills the zombie, another one approaches, and Darryl pulls the arrow out of his own body to shoot the second zombie. Badass.

Commercial.

Darryl regains consciousness. Now he has a gaping wound in his side; he ties his shirt around his waist as a bandage. He cleans off his knife and guts and eats the squirrel he killed earlier. No, he does not bother to cook the squirrel. He makes sure to tuck the found dolly back into his belt. He cuts the ears off the dead zombies and makes them into a necklace. Not kidding.  So, to recap: Darryl is filthy, wearing a necklace of zombie ears, and has blood from the squirrel caked around his mouth. He resumes his ascent out of the ravine. The Merle hallucination reappears, and his taunts continue, including a reference to the chupacabra. Fortunately, the taunts give Darryl the push he needs to get to the top. Gotta hand it to Darryl’s subconscious for giving him an hallucination that was actually useful in the circumstances.

Hershel walks into the farmhouse kitchen and finds the ladies cooking. He asks Maggie what the deal is. Maggie explains that Lori and Carol are cooking dinner for everyone as a thank you. Naturally, Hershel is not pleased by this. But Hershel has a more pressing concern with Maggie, and that’s whatever’s going on between her and “the Asian boy.” The gist of the conversation, though, seems to be less that Hershel is worried about Maggie and Glenn knocking boots (it’s fair to say he has no idea about that) but that he wants to remind Maggie that Rick & Co. will not be staying forever, so there’s no point making friends.

Dale approaches the RV to find Andrea on top of it, wearing a cowboy hat and holding a rifle (I guess Shane gave her a gun after all?). He makes a crack about her “Annie Oakley routine” and Andrea is rightfully annoyed, saying she doesn’t want to do laundry anymore, she wants to guard the camp. (I was pretty pumped to see Andrea with a rifle in hand, as I imagine most fans of the comic were.) Dale is still on Andrea’s shitlist. Dale goes into the RV to find Glenn, who’s returning a book. He apologizes for returning it late, and Dale apologizes for bringing lousy books to the apocalypse. Glenn has other things on his mind, though. Like menstrual cycles. He broaches the subject that women’s cycles match up when they live together, and is that why all the women are acting weird? To his credit, Dale realizes that this line of questioning is less about all the women and more about one particular woman. Glenn is confused by Maggie’s mixed signals, and apparently he’s also confused about Lori, though I don’t see much for him to be confused about there. Dale is not pleased by the information that Glenn had sex with Maggie, the daughter of their persnickety host. His exact words: “What were you thinking?!” Glenn was thinking he might be dead tomorrow.

Andrea spots a walker from her RV perch. She thinks she can get it with her rifle; the guys are all gathering weapons, and Rick protests, saying that Hershel wants to “deal with walkers.” Shane (whose shirt, if I’m not mistaken, has been completely unbuttoned for this entire episode) wants to handle it himself. Rick, Shane, T-Dawg and Glenn all run out into the field towards the zombie. Andrea sets her rifle sights.

But wait! Closeup on the walker and it’s not a zombie, it’s Darryl. To be fair, he definitely looks like a zombie and is walking like one due to his injury. No one can tell this yet, though. In fact,  even when the guys get within ten feet of Darryl, they don’t know he’s not a zombie until he speaks. A shot rings out, and Andrea is pleased with herself for hitting her target, at least until she hears the shouts of “NO!” coming from the field.

Commercial.

Everyone comes running out at the sound of the shot. Good news: Andrea just grazed Darryl, but he loses consciousness. Glenn points out the ear necklace, and Rick stashes it. T-Dawg picks up the doll, and asks, “Isn’t this Sophia’s?” Going back to the previouslies, I can confirm that yes, Sophia was carrying that doll when she dashed into the woods. Hm.

At the farmhouse, Darryl is awake and Hershel is stitching him up. Hershel complains about going through the antibiotics so quickly. He asks about the horse Darryl “borrowed,” and when he hears the story of the spooking, says that he would’ve mentioned that that particular horse was known as “Nervous Nellie”, had Darryl asked.  Touché. But like there’s any chance Hershel would’ve willingly lent him the horse.

Rick reports to a waiting Lori that Darryl will be OK. Shane (having buttoned his shirt up to his navel, at least) says that it’s time to call off the search. Rick points out that Darryl brought back hard evidence. Rick leaves Shane to continue his pitch to Lori. Lori says she doesn’t always agree with her husband, but she respects him. Way to submit to your husband’s leadership, lady — Michelle Bachman would be proud. Shane says all he cares about in the world is Lori and Carl. Uh-oh.

Andrea sits on the farmhouse porch steps. Dale emerges to report that Darryl will be fine. Andrea feels guilty. Dale says they’ve all wanted to shoot him. This gets a chuckle. Fences mended? We’ll see.

Lori is crying at Carl’s bedside, mumbling something about “baby, what do I do?” Which baby is she asking? Neither of them will be any help. In fact, Lori is rather choiceless in this circumstance. Unless they can loot some RU-46, or unless someone in their party knows how to induce miscarriage, Lori will be carrying this pregnancy to its conclusion. Carol pops in to call Lori to dinner.

Everyone is eating in silence in the dining room. Glenn breaks the ice by asking if anyone knows how to play guitar. This serves to make things more awkward, because the only person who knew how to play was Otis. Maggie, sitting next to Glenn at the kids’ table, passes him a note asking where they can hook up tonight. Glenn writes down his answer, but not before Hershel notices.

Carol brings a tray in for the convalescing Darryl. She doesn’t put the food anywhere he can reach it or anything, but it’s a nice gesture. Then, she leans over and kisses him on the forehead. He mumbles something about his stitches. She turns to leave, and then says, “You did more for my little girl in a day than her own daddy ever did in his whole life.” Darryl replies that he did what Rick or Shane would’ve done. Carol agrees, and says that he’s “every bit as good as them.” Au contraire, lady — he’s better. He’s more useful than Rick and less psychotic (hallucinations notwithstanding) than Shane. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Dinner’s over, and Maggie is just now getting around to reading Glenn’s reply to her booty call. He picked the loft of the barn. Which, given the information he currently has is actually a good spot for a secret tryst. But he does not have all the information, something we can tell from the look on Maggie’s face.

Glenn approaches the barn and finds it locked. Flashlight and blanket in hand, he goes around back to climb up into the loft. Maggie is desperately running to the barn. Up in the loft, Glenn notices a bad smell. Then he looks down to the floor of the barn. Which is full of at least a dozen zombies. Maggie arrives, too late, and says, “You weren’t supposed to see this.”

4:25 – Mindy Kaling’s first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Sadly, Jenny cannot offer a ringing endorsement of the book because it’s front loaded with a lot of body/weight talk that’s somewhere in the same zip code as the place known as Trigger Town, USA (at least for those of us who prefer not to hear their comediennes define obesity as “unhealthy overweight.”) Which isn’t to say the book isn’t worthwhile. Just that you might want to skip the first couple chapters.

14:30 – A detour to talk about the specific pressures faced by actresses who are not Hollywood-standard size 0. Christina Hendricks most recently, but also Buffy‘s Amber Benson back in the day.

18:30 – Sidetrack: the difference between being the 20s and 30s; how age affects the way you perceive yourself and how strangers interact with you. ~It gets personal~ Also, Jenny draws a parallel with the Dog Whisperer, LET HER FINISH. Plus: an hilarious Cynara blue hair anecdote.

40:20 – A nice show on Discovery called Oddities, about weird people bringing weird stuff to a weird shop in Manhattan. Books bound in human skin, anyone? How about a “horaffe”?

58:15 – Jimmy Kimmel’s YouTube challenge where he got parents to convince their kids that the parents had eaten the kids’ candy. The kids do not react well. We explain why (it has to do with the economics of childhood), and also explain why lying to kids is NOT COOL, OK?

PLUS: Why hasn’t Amy Poehler written a book? What is the name of Tina Fey’s baby? Why does Cynara tell weird iguana stories?

Links:

YouTube Challenge – I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy [YouTube]

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns by Mindy Kaling [Random House]

Oddities [Discovery Channel]

Sarah Wayne Callies as Lori and Steven Yuen as Glenn in The Walking Dead

Watching The Walking Dead this week, I was overcome with an urge to write a recap of the episode. This is probably because The Walking Dead is currently balancing on the fence between quality dramatic television and paint-drying dullness, so a viewer has to fill in the entertainment blanks on her own. Episode four is a weird place to start recapping, I know, but we’ll see how this goes.

Previously on AMC’s The Walking Dead: Carl got shot, Sophia wandered off, people looked for her, Shane shot a good guy to save his own ass, Carl was OK, Shane shaved his head.

Pastoral countryside. There is an old barn. Near the farmhouse, everyone is gathering firewood or something near when up drives a caravan that consists of Darryl on his motorcycle, plus a car and the RV. At Carl’s bedside, Hershel assures Lori and Rick that Carl’s fever has gone down. Carl regains consciousness; asks about Sophia. Rick lies and says she’s fine.

Everyone greets the newly-arrived caravan. Dale asks after Carl, and the Grimeses report that he’s fine, thanks to Hershel and, of course, Shane, who heroically retrieved the needed supplies. Carol, T-Dawg, et al. are relieved; Shane is guilty in the corner.

There is a funeral for Otis. It turns out they weren’t gathering firewood earlier; they were gathering stones, which they have put in a huge pile, presumably as a cairn to substitute for the fact that they don’t have Otis’s body (given that Shane left him to be torn apart by zombies in one of the worst death scenarios possible).

Hershel is the ersatz preacher now, with the funeral God talk. Shane is flashing back to Otis’s death, and then everyone insists that he say a few words because he was with Otis at the end. Still flashing back, Shane concocts a complete fiction about Otis offering to take up the rear and dying as a result. The strains of Bear McCreary’s Ominous String Orchestra rise as Shane puts a final stone on Otis’s cairn.

Title credits. Which I think are quite eerie and cool, actually.

Hershel, Rick, Andrea, Shane, Darryl and Maggie conference over the hood of a truck. They’re discussing the Search for Sophia. Hershel says that Shane and Rick are not fit to search, due to Shane’s busted ankle and Rick’s having given pints and pints of blood to Carl. The gun issue comes up again; Hershel doesn’t want guns on his property. Rick says they’ll respect that, and he and Shane put their handguns on the hood of the truck. Shane asks what they should do if they find Sophia and she’s a zombie; Andrea says that they do what needs to be done. Hershel and Maggie share A Foreshadowing Look. Honestly, this whole  scene is super boring and processy, and ends with Maggie wanting to go into town for antibiotics. Rick suggests that Maggie take Glenn, their “Go to Town” expert. (This is also foreshadowing.)

Lori and Shane talk outside the RV. Shane asks Lori if she meant it when she told him he could stay, and not skulk off like a psychotic almost-rapist should. Lori says she did mean it, and looks like she immediately regrets saying it.

Maggie approaches Glenn, who is tongue-tied but rescued by Dale, who asks Maggie for some fanservice exposition regarding the farm’s water and electricity supply (wells and generators, got it?) Although I guess it’s not totally fanservice because the well does figure in later.

Andrea storms over to Shane to get mad about giving up their guns. Which is weird because she’s spent the last couple episodes being mad that she doesn’t even have a gun. While I cut Andrea a lot of slack for being obsessed with guns after having to shoot her zombified sister’s brains out, I still wish that Show Andrea was more like Book Andrea. Of course, in the early issues of the book, the characters spent a lot less time talking about their feelings and Rick was handing out guns like candy. Anyway, apparently Shane wants to clean the guns before he gives them up (I guess putting his handgun on the hood of the truck was just for show? Because he still has guns) so he shows Andrea a thing or two about that, and they bond or something.

Rick is hanging out with his hat on the porch. He sees Darryl on his way out to search for Sophia, and says something about setting up a proper search or whatever and then says some stuff that sounds a lot like trying to talk Darryl out of searching for Sophia, saying “you don’t owe us anything,” to which Darryl replies with what has become characteristic magnanimity, “My other plans fell through.” Or wait. Was that supposed to be a threat? To do with his handless brother running around Atlanta? Ugh, I don’t even know.

Darryl tromps off, and Hershel appears. Rick offers to have his people set up camp over by the barn if they’re getting in the way in and around the huge farmhouse. Hershel says no, DO NOT GO NEAR THE BARN. (I wonder why?) Hershel wants them to stay close to the house. In the same breath, he informs Rick that the RV gang will have to be on their way once Carl is better and Sophia is found. I guess the message is, stay close so that I can more easily kick you out later?

Glenn is looking through binoculars for some reason. He sees Maggie approach on horseback, leading an additional horse. He says “Hello, farmer’s daughter,” so that we in the audience can for sure know that he has a boner for her. Lori kills said boner by appearing in his line of sight and handing him a list, with instructions to be very “discreet” about a certain item. Which, when pressed, she says can be found in the feminine hygiene section of the drugstore. Gee, I wonder what it could be?

T-Dawg and Dale are working on the well in the field. T-Dawg says he takes back all that stuff he said about him and Dale being weak and the rest of the group not caring about them. Because he and Dale are bros now, Dale assures him it’s cool. T-Dawg asks if there’s “a snowball’s chance” of finding Sophia. Seriously, these people talk about Sophia a lot, but currently Darryl is the only one actually looking for her.

Anyway, they’re pumping water, and Dale goes over to check out the well, which is covered by a wooden circular cover with a huge hole in it. T-Dawg is about to take a drink of the water he’s pumped when Dale stops him. Next we see the whole gang coming over to check it out. Surprise! There’s a disgusting bloated zombie in the well!

Commercial.

Andrea, Lori, Shane, Glenn, Dale, T-Dawg and Maggie stand over the well and weigh their options. They don’t want to shoot it because that would contaminate the well. Guys, I’m pretty sure once there’s a dead thing in your well, it’s contaminated. But OK. So they want to get it out of the well instead.

Rick and Hershel are off somewhere looking at a map and talking about where Sophia might have gone. Hershel gets Rick to take a moment and enjoy the pastoral view. Then there’s a boring talk about whether Rick believes in God.

Let’s go back to the zombies. The magnificent seven have tried to bait the zombie with a canned ham tied to a rope. Riiight. ‘Cause the zombie was totally going to grab the canned ham and climb up the rope in the hopes of finding more canned ham? They decide they need live bait, and as soon as the idea is tabled, everyone looks at Glenn. Clearly, he is confused as I am as to why he’s always the obvious choice.

Sure enough, they tie him to a rope and try to lower him down into the well, and of course that means that he almost gets dropped into the waiting arms of the watery undead. But he survives. And there’s a twist! He’s eager to go back down and try again! It’s unclear whether this is fuelled by Glenn’s near-death adrenaline rush or his boner for Maggie.

Darryl is Sophia-hunting. He comes across a farmhouse that appears to have been abandoned long before the apocalypse. Inside, he finds a recently-opened can of sardines and a pile of pillows and blankets in a closet. Outside, he calls Sophia’s name, but finds only pretty white flowers, which he studies intently.

Back to the zombie in the well. Apparently Glenn succeeded in getting the rope around the zombie’s neck, and they are now all pulling it out of the well, with the additional help of a horse. It works until the corpse gets stuck on the edge of the well, causing it to split at the waist in spectacularly gory fashion, with the lower half tumbling back into the well and the upper half, still animated and growling and oozing maggots, on the grassy ground level. Before anyone can get a word in, T-Dawg takes a hatchet to the zombie’s head; Maggie turns away in disgust, and Glenn notices. I’ll leave the last word on this scene to T-Dawg: “Good thing we didn’t do anything stupid like shoot it.” Yep.

Commercial.

Back on the highway, Carol stands, forlorn, next to a late-model two-door, where a collection of food and water has been left on the hood and a message has been inscribed in white block letters on the windshield “SOPHIA STAY HERE WE WILL COME EVERY DAY.” Aw. Andrea and Shane are with her, and Andrea promises they’ll come again tomorrow and then she and Shane start in on the platitudes but Carol is really not interested in hearing it.

Shane, Carol and Andrea are walking through a field toward a fence, presumably talking about a defense perimeter or something. Andrea asks “when she can carry.” Shane is, I should mention, carrying a rifle. Shane says he’s not worried about Andrea killing herself. Then he launches into a speech about the stuff she really needs to know if she wants to carry a gun. Paper targets are easy, he says, but assailants who are trying to kill you are different. He says fear can cripple you but you can’t let it. Andrea asks how you do that. Shane, in psychopathic fashion, says you turn off a switch — “the one that makes you scared, or angry or sympathetic,” because there’s always someone else who depends on you, and taking a man’s life is never easy. “Wait, what? I thought we were talking about zombies. You’re talking about killing dudes?” Andrea says. Ha, no she doesn’t. (Though, to her credit, Laurie Holden was playing that scene with more than was on the page.)

Glenn and Maggie sidle into a very old-timey looking town on horseback. Glenn is trying to be all macho, and not explicitly saying, “Hey, Maggie, did you see how macho I was back at the well?” but pretty close. He also says he knows it’s rough when you see a zombie get killed up close for the first time. They dismount and hit the drug store. Someone has left a very friendly sign saying “Take what you need.” While Maggie goes to look for antibiotics, Glenn fumbles through what’s left of the feminine hygiene section. He finds what he’s looking for, but in an effort to hide it when Maggie reappears, he holds up a package of condoms. This leads to a rather schticky back-and-forth that in turn leads to the good part. I maintain that since the beginning of the first season, this show has been seriously deficient in apocalyptic nookie. Sex is one of the few recreational activities left after the collapse of civilization, so it only make sense that people would be getting it on a lot more than they have been. Let Glenn and Maggie raise the standard for the rest of the cast of characters. They have my blessing. Of course, because this is AMC, we cut to commercial as soon as their shirts come off, because goodness knows, you can show a death-white, bloated, growling half-person with maggots flowing out of their exposed intestines and then have a main character crush that half-person’s skull with a sledgehammer, but you can’t show any titty. Say what you will about True Blood, at least it gives equal opportunity to sex and gore (and, OK, usually combines them, but that in a nutshell is the difference between AMC and HBO).

Back at the farm, Rick asks Hershel to reconsider making his crew leave (eventually). Not for him, he says, but FOR CARL. Because Rick is first and foremost a FATHER. Turns out Hershel had a horrible abusive father, but he notes that Rick is not one of those. He says there are “aspects” to the situation, but he’ll consider Rick’s request. Rick returns to Carl’s bedside, where Lori already is.

Maggie and Glenn are riding back to the farmhouse. Maggie tells Glenn that their tryst was “a one-time thing.” Right. Hershel asks if everything went OK, and Maggie says nothing happened. Lori bursts out of the house in a hurry looking to get the stuff she ordered from Glenn.

Darryl has returned to the farm and the RV, where Carol is stitching, having tidied up the place so it’s nice for Sophia’s return. He presents one of those white flowers in a beer-bottle vase. It’s a Cherokee Rose, he explains. On the Trail of Tears, he says, native Elders asked for a sign to give the mothers of missing and dead children hope. The roses grew where the mothers’ tears fell. Darryl says there are no flowers blooming for his (racist, presumably dead) brother, but this rose bloomed for Sophia. OK, we get it, Darryl is awesome. But I’m not quite sure what the point of Darryl’s uniform sensitivity and wonderfulness is — is it to play against our expectations that the brother of a racist dirtbag like Merle would turn out to be a great guy? I feel like it’s more effective when heroic characters are also flawed, but maybe I’m still too hung up on Battlestar Galactica. Or maybe Darryl is going to unleash a torrent of terror later in the season? (The question is, will it be before or after Shane does?)

Rick at Carl’s bedside. He tries to confess to his son that he lied about Sophia, but Carl says Lori already told him. Way to do the parenting heavy-lifting, Rick. Rick apologizes. He also says he truly believes they’ll find Sophia. Carl says, with no small amount of pride, that he’s like Rick because they’ve both been shot. Rick says now that Carl’s in the club, he gets to wear the sheriff’s hat. I Love You’s are said, and Carl goes back to sleep.

Rick is taking off his uniform as Lori watches from the doorway. He puts his badge and nametag (?) in a drawer. Lori helps him take off his shirt, touches his gunshot wound. “Are you putting them away?” she asks. Rick shuts the drawer. Lori mumbles something about Rick staying with Carl for a little longer.

Lori leaves the house and walks out past the tents and RV and into a field. she pulls out the pregnancy test she got from Glenn (the item was a pregnancy test, if you hadn’t figured that out by now). She squats to pee on the stick. It’s positive. She does the only thing a woman can do when faced with a positive pregnancy test during an apocalypse where she’s not even sure whether the father is her husband or his increasingly unstable best friend: she cries alone in the dark of the night.

Prancing Gosling

This episode is mostly about Ryan Gosling.

1:00 – Drive. The new Nicolas Winding Refn film starring Ryan “Hey Girl” Gosling. Jenny liked it, Cynara looooooooved it. Of course, that might be because she read Ryan Gosling’s character as a lesbian.

24:00 – The Ides of March. Cynara is not pleased with the film that shares a name with her birthday.

32:00 -TV Talk: Once Upon a Time and Grimm — two new network series mining the public domain. One is slightly better than the other.

37:00 – In brief: Jenny’s adventures in Netflix — Agora, Unstoppable, No Strings Attached.

50:00 – New Muppet movie! Jason Segel!

References:

End clip: “Pass It On,” from  A Muppet Family Christmas.

Feminist Ryan Gosling [Tumblr]

And we’re back! Sound quality is not so great on this episode. We apologize.

1:30 – Community! Rough start, strong third episode.

12:30 – Blink and you missed it (and not a moment too soon): The Playboy Club. But we talk more about how muscled arms are “in” for women these days, or at least “in” as long as you’re femme.

15:20 – Rosie O’Donnell has a new show. Cynara realizes she basically blocked out everything Rosie has said and done since the end of her ’90s-era daytime talk show. Also, Cynara is not really impressed with how Oprah now goes on TV and analyzes people who were on her old show in the past, but this time they’re not there to defend themselves!

25:05 – Zooey Deschanel. Jenny actually likes her new sitcom.

31:00 – The Eli Gold Show, um, we mean, The Good Wife. Jenny is bored of Will/Alicia. Also, did you know there is at least one person on this planet who thinks Hugh Laurie’s American accent is crap? There is!

40:00 – Jenny and Cynara need D/s lessons for friendship. This branches into a discussion of Don Cherry and Ron McLean and how Ron defended bullying as a practice on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. And how neither Cynara nor Jenny is a hockey fan, yet we speak conversational hockey-talk. This is Canada, for you.

Tina Fey in a promo shot for her May 2011 hosting appearance on Saturday Night Live

00:52 – Fabulous girl-driven action flick Hanna. We discuss all the reasons we loved it, while trying not to spoil it too much because you might not have seen it and we want you to!

16:00 – Tina Fey’s memoir Bossypants. Again, we give all the reasons we like it and also some advice as to whether you should pick up the hardcover, ebook or audiobook.

37:12 – Chaz Bono embracing the role of most famous transperson on the planet with a documentary, book and mainstream media experiences – specifically a two-segment one with David Letterman. Talk of how much we (surprise!) admire Chaz and also, via David Sedaris, talk about how scripted Letterman’s interviews really are.

53:20 – Nardwuar the Human Serviette, National Treasure. If you didn’t know  about him before, it’s probably because you’re American and it doesn’t matter anyway because now you DO know.

Links:

Chaz Bono appears on The Late Show David Letterman [YouTube]

Nardwuar’s talk at TEDxVancouver [YouTube]

Thee Official Nardwuar the Human Serviette Web Site [nardwuar.com]

End Audio Clip:

Nardwuar vs. Snoop Dogg 2002 [YouTube]