by Scott Poole:
The Walking Dead: “Nebraska”
Original Air Date: Sunday February 12, 2012 (AMC)
Season 2, Episode 8
You knew what would come shambling out of the barn, its small feet halting and dragging some semblance of life. Before you saw her, you knew the search had come to an end. The group had found Sophia.
And you knew Rick Grimes would be the only one with the balls, and the compassion, to pull the trigger.
The midseason premier of The Walking Dead left none of the issues surrounding Sophia’s death resolved. In fact, the crisis in the group’s leadership goes on, with two very complex ideas about “what it takes to survive in this world” at odds.
This is the first of my reflections on the second half of season 2 of The Walking Dead. I’m actually trying to ponder what happens with each episode while leaving you some space if you haven’t caught it yet. But, be warned, there’s no way to keep a recap spoiler-free. If you don’t want to know at least a few plot points, come back and see me after you catch this week’s episode.
This first episode may have seemed to some fans like a series of conversations punctuated by horror. It was. But this works because the season has come to be about a conversation concerned with the nature of hope in a world of death and how the bleakness of such a world affects the relationships of the characters. It’s also become a larger meditation on the connection between the world we live in and the world of The Walking Dead, a connection becoming increasingly and uncomfortably explicit.
Episode eight opened literally where we left off before the break, Rick Grimes’ gun still smoking. If you wanted some zombie killing action right from the start, you were not disappointed. Beth (are we going to find out anything at all about her?) runs to the corpse of her mother, seemingly at last truly dead and quiescent. She’s not. Andrea, whose character and motivations need development stat, repurposes a farm implement to do away with the things that bites and snapping even as it dies.
And then there’s Shane, as unbearably full of self-justification, rage and anxiety-ridden masculinity as ever. Fans of the comics know how drastically the show has departed from Rob Kirkman’s narrative by keeping Shane around. But after tonight’s episode, I think most will agree that keeping the rivalry between Rick and Shane growing makes for great TV. Any possibility that Rick’s incredibly tough and compassionate action would silence Shane quickly proved wrong. “Handling it” Shane mocks when Rick tells him he had things under control. “I’ll call you when I need a radiator hose,” he dismissively says to Dale.
Shane. I hate that guy.
Dale, by the way, has Shane’s number too, warning Laurie that, “sooner or later, he’s going to kill somebody else.” I’m hoping something isn’t being telegraphed here, a symbolic turnabout that will be more melodrama than drama. We’ll have to wait and see. My fingers are crossed that the writers don’t go where I’m afraid they’ll go.
So many little moments in tonight’s episode made wandering through a world full of monsters feel real. Rick scrunching his hat on Carl’s head and saying “you dropped this.” Watching Herschel select his tie to wear to his family’s burial service. The overhead shot of the barn, surrounded by corpses of walkers and a funeral service that’s no service at all…its just a moment of loss and forgetting, and the true walking dead, the survivors, wordless and with no time for mourning.
Herschel’s disappearance soon after the non-funeral sets up an effort by Rick and Glenn to find him and an encounter with the first of many scary outsiders we are likely to meet. Herschel’s character has a depth here that is compelling, especially in comparison to the first half of the season where he just played “super-old religious guy.” His conversation with Rick about the loss of hope, seemingly the only possible response to a world of hungry corpses, constituted one of the best set pieces of the episode.
The sudden appearance of Tony and Dave at the bar where Hershel’s drowning his sorrows gave the show a needed narrative kick. They’re also the first to offer a picture of the larger world…including news of Fort Benning. “I hate to piss in your cornflakes…the place is overrun by lame brains.” Who knows if they can be trusted on that point since it quickly became clear they represented menace. Rick manages to dispatch both of them in a scene that reminds us again of Rick’s toughness. It also complicates our understanding of his philosophical differences with Shane. He seemed awfully eager to reach for his gun. Shane would have approved and probably yelled “boo-yah.” And then, in my daydream, died of testosterone poisoning.
Did I mention how much I hate that guy?
We certainly didn’t see the softer side of Daryl Dixon this episode. He decides to whittle arrows rather than going into town looking for Glen and Rick. This suggests that the writers hope to further nuance his character after showing us his more compassionate side in the first half of the season, moving him from racist bumpkin jerk to sympathetic badass.
It also shows us, frankly, that Daryl’s not a stupid idiot. I don’t know that anybody is going to argue with his decision (and not just because of what the guy can do with a compound bow). Its an open question why Laurie thought it was a good idea to send yet another person off by themselves. I call narrative fail on this, as it seemed just an excuse to set up a crisis.
In fact, I have to add that I’m not happy in general with how the show’s writers are treating its female characters. Laurie not only tries to convince Daryl to head off looking for the people already out looking for Herschel, she inexplicably decides to go after them alone because that’s the dumbest thing she could possibly do.
Otherwise, all our female characters other than Andrea are catatonic, in shock, or, in Carol’s case, wandering around in the woods digging in the dirt. Laurie’s dumb idea leads to her running over a zombie, freaking out for some reason (anybody whose played Dead Island knows how much fun running over zombies can be) and then flipping her car.
This is my biggest complaint of the entire season and not just the first episode. Andrea is the most interesting female character right now and we aren’t learning anything about her even as she seems to have moved pretty clearly into the Shane camp. Laurie feels like the spoils of war in the ongoing struggle between Shane and Rick. In other words, like most fans of the comics, I’m ready for Michonne to show up and start swinging a sword.
“You did what you thought was right. It just so happens that it wasn’t.” Rick’s comment to Glenn sums up where this excellent opening episode suggests the season will go. We are having a debate about how you use violence, create community and respond to outsiders in a world utterly off-kilter. Life in the world of The Walking Dead mirrors life here in the world of the walking dead.
“Nothing has changed. Death has always been there.” Rick’s plea for Herschel to come to his senses felt both bleak and hopeful, a tone that I hope the rest of the season manages. The sadness and pathos of this show reminds us of why the zombie is the monster of the moment. The broken bodies of the dead are the remains the deepest fears of the living.
Next week’s teaser suggests we’ll get more action and less talk. But even in what promises to be an old-west shoot-‘em-up, the conversation about “what it takes to survive in this world” will hopefully go on.
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Scott Poole is the author of Monsters in America: Our Historic Fascination with the Hideous and the Haunting. Read his blog at www.monstersinamerica.com and follow him on Twitter at @monstersamerica.
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[Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC]
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