The Walking Dead Recap: “The world we know is gone, but keeping our humanity? That’s a choice.”

by Scott Poole:

The Walking Dead: “Judge, Jury, Executioner”
Original Air Date: Sunday March 4, 2012 (AMC)
Season 2, Episode 11

A beating from Daryl Dixon opens up this week’s Walking Dead.  In the opening seconds, Daryl goes all gitmo on the prisoner Randall. We learn that the group that Randall comes from includes at least thirty guys, armed with automatic weapons and with a penchant for raping young girls. So that’s bad news, most immediately for Randall.

If you’ve been thinking that the second half of season two ought to be subtitled “conversations on a farm” then this episode is not going to please you. Daryl’s beating (and knife work) on Randall turns out to be one of three short, very short, action sequences. One zombie appears in this episode, although it turns out to be a pretty important zombie in the history of the series.

Its actually not conversations plural in episode 11, its really just one conversation. Do we kill Randall or not? Not surprisingly, the episode becomes a series of discussions about the ethics of the postapocalyptic world. As per usual, Dale beats the drum of “shouldn’t we behave like the people we were before the zombie apocalypse” with Shane smirking in the corner, everyone else fading into the background and Rick standing in for the audience who’s really not sure what we ought to do (and wonders where all the zombies went).

Dale confronts Rick in the first of many of these scenes, insisting that he can’t possibly consider killing Randall. Rick claims that he is acting on behalf of the group, that “people are scared…they want to feel safe.”

The idea that safety represents an option in this world of monsters becomes all of the character’s unexamined assumption throughout this episode.  Both sides of the debate make a fetish of the execution of Randall, seeing it as the only possible path to safety or, alternatively, a severing of their final link with humanity.  Evocations by both sides of a judicial system that no longer exists hyperlinks these illusions. You keep expecting somebody to say that if we just kill Randall, the Wi-Fi will come back on and Wednesday garbage pick-up resume.

When Dale and Andrea have it out over Randall’s fate, the argument turns on the question of civilization. “Who says we’re civilized anymore?” Andrea demands to know. Dale doesn’t have a good answer other than to invoke the past and to ask her to remember who she was. This actually works up to a point.  She agrees to watch Randall to make sure Shane doesn’t just shoot him.

By the way, did we know that Andrea had been a civil rights lawyer before the apocalypse? We find it out here.

Rick thinks his little talk with Shane last episode settled things. Of course he’s wrong (this guy would never have made detective) and Shane is still plotting. Shane makes it clear to Andrea that leadership of the group ought to belong to him. Rick, he says, is “his friend” but he also might lock him in a room and take his guns away. And, presumably, have sex with his wife and raise his kid as his own.

Speaking of which, Carl and his hat got a lot more time tonight. He sneaks into the barn (bad things happen in barns) to talk to Randall. Shane catches him and tells him to stop trying to get himself killed. Good advice but, not surprisingly, Carl does an excellent job of trying to get himself killed in this episode.

Wandering in the woods after a confrontation with Carol about Sophia’s death, Carl comes upon a roamer whose feet are stuck in pluff mud. Engaging in a little childhood sadism, Carl takes the opportunity to hurl some rocks at the trapped monster. A trapped monster that eventually gets free.

“The group’s broken” Daryl says when Dale urges him to act on Randall’s behalf. By the way, Daryl seems the most sensible person in the whole group. It’s hard not to applaud his decision to just take his tent and move away from all of them and their need for incessant amounts of dramatic talk.

Rick and Lori’s conversations are the most annoying of the lot. In one particularly strange scene we see them talking as Rick tests a rope to see if they could adequately hang Randall with it because, of course, hanging would be the humane way to handle this. Lori is clearly not pleased and Rick responds, because apparently it’s anachronism Sunday, “ I know how you feel about the death penalty.” Seriously?

And, unfortunately, this gave the writers another opportunity to make Lori uber-annoying.  She gives Rick her unconditional support while disagreeing with him. Stand by your man, even in the zombie apocalypse. Every week she seems more and more like the only woman in America that would testify on behalf of the Blunt amendment.

“If we do this, we’re saying there’s no hope.” This is Dale’s argument when the group gets together at sundown for a final palaver about getting rid of Randall. He makes the obvious but powerful point that the group has decided to kill Randall because they can’t decide what else to do with him. Only Andrea speaks up for this position, hopefully signaling, at long last, that we’re going to see her character develop some depth and complexity she has sadly lacked this season.

Randall, when all is said and done, is still with us. Carl, the key to this episode in many respects, walks in on Rick as he is about to pull the trigger to put Randall (and us, by this point) out of his misery. Rick can’t do it but, notably, neither can Shane or Daryl.

Weirdly, in an episode where everyone seems to be talking their heads off, “T-Dog” continues not to speak. We haven’t really heard from him since last season and this is getting weird, even weirder than the decision to have a black male character that goes only by T-Dog.  The rumor has been that, at some point, he’s going to reveal that the “T” stands for “Tyreese,” a fan favorite from the comic book. Robert Kirkman, I should note, recently made it clear in the letters section of the comic than this was not the case. So… he’s just a black dude on the show named T-Dog? Brilliant and not offensive at all.

The last few minutes are going to surprise comic fans as a major character meets up with Carl’s zombie and has his insides ripped out.  I’ll keep this moment spoiler-free but I have to say it’s one of the show’s best sequences this season and one that’s effect on the group, especially on Carl and Andrea, is going to be substantive. It’s also doubtful that you haven’t heard about it yet though you’ll at least have to admit that, like me, you probably didn’t see this coming.

SFX master Greg Nictotero directed tonight’s episode and pulled off several nice shots (the zombie stuck in the mud stands out). I have to say though that this one really did feel like a place-holder, almost as if it could have been labeled “this is the one where we kill______.” There’s every reason to hope the pulse of the show will pick up a bit in the last two episodes. Won’t it?

Let me conclude by saying Fans of The Walking Dead really ought to be reading the comics. In the last few issues of the book, I’ve noticed an interesting intertextual relationship developing between the show and the comic narrative. Some of the same issues are examined in a very different context.

Most interesting to me, the characters are very similar but have very different story arcs. I suspect there are some purists that won’t be able to deal with these shifts and reimaginings. But if you love the bleak world Robert Kirkman created, you’ll enjoy seeing two alternative histories of it work themselves out.

The previews make it clear that Randall’s going to escape and hint that Lori has some snuggly things to say to Shane. Oh God. Of course, you can never trust the previews.

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[Photo Credit: Gene Page/AMC]