The Walking Dead Recap: “I’m sure we’ve all lost enough people, done things we wished we didn’t have to…”

by Scott Poole:

The Walking Dead: “Triggerfinger”
Original Air Date: Sunday February 19, 2012 (AMC)
Season 2, Episode 9 

Tonight The Walking Dead opened with a suddenly conscious Laurie trapped in the car she flipped like a dummy last episode, a walker trying to push and chew its head through the windshield. Laurie screamed “oh my God why was I so stupid that I came out here by myself to go and find the people who went to find the other person! The writers must hate me! Why are female characters like me always making such bad decisions on this show!”

Actually, I made up that entire last bit. But not the part about the walker chewing through glass to get at Laurie. In fact, a great zombie predicament and a couple of great zombie kills come from Laurie’s bizarre decision.

Now, I must admit I expected Shane to show up any minute and save her. I was happy to see her defend herself pretty respectably against not one but two zombies. She wielded a screwdriver and a hubcap like a pro. Finally she just shoots one though that, as we know, is only going to attract more walkers. Run Laurie.

She does and, well, Shane saves her.

Meanwhile, Rick, Glen and Hershel find themselves besieged at the bar in town. Some of the egregiously gross Dave and Tony’s friends come looking for them. Rick, of course, tries to reason with them and explain why he shot their pals. The taunt showdown that follows becomes the central drama of the first half of the show.

As we’ve come to expect from The Walking Dead, the gunfight becomes something of a macguffin, preparing us for the real story.  Even the title of he episode, “Trigger-Happy,” throws us off a bit. It’s not an episode about gunplay. Instead, it explored the consequences of being trigger-happy and how love and compassion work in a world where it seems most everyone is.

The zombie genre has always suggested that human beings won’t keep their humanity in the post-apocalyptic world, even if they avoid becoming zombies. Night of the Living Dead (1968) turned on the idea that the survivors in the farmhouse (!) are distrustful, suspicious and at each other’s throats from the moment they meet. Dawn of the Dead upped the ante, giving us the first of many post-apocalyptic marauders who find that the collapse of civilization gives their Id a chance to go out and smash, plunder, kill and rape things.

The decision to save the outsider kid who managed to impale his leg on a fence reveals not only the moral nuances of the world of The Walking Dead. It questions one of the central premises of the genre. The outsiders’ willingness to abandon one of their own to his death short-circuits the shoot ‘em up action and forces Rick to make another difficult choice. They either have to leave the kid to get eaten or save him. Guess what Rick does? His decision will force an evaluation of “outsiders” and the dangers they pose. The kid’s name, we learn, is Randall.

I have to say that the rest of the episode mostly dragged for me. Conversations at the farm are becoming a bit tedious. Even a confrontation between Shane and Laurie, after he gets her safely back from her inexplicable adventure, falls flat. Shane, of course, uses the opportunity to proclaim his undying love and Laurie’s response missed the opportunity for some good writing. Aren’t there perfectly explicable reasons why people might cling to each other in an apocalyptic aftermath other than pre-apocalypse notions of “love”? Couldn’t Laurie have explained that fact rather giving Shane and the camera the classic soap opera look of emotional confusion?

Speaking of soap operas, what’s up with Carol and Daryl? I hope something more complex than a love connection.  The idea of a friendship developing between them, completely unsentimental and forged in the pain over the loss of Sophia, makes a lot of sense.

What doesn’t make sense is how Carol moved so quickly from utter catatonia to being able to deal with Daryl Dixon at his most surly. When we left her last week, she was wandering in the woods and apparently digging a grave with her own hands.

When Hershel, Rick and Glen do make it back to the farm, it’s anything but a happy homecoming. Shane and his allies express disgust at Rick’s willingness to bring Randall back with them.  This gives Hershel the chance to give us the best line of the night (especially for all of us Shane-haters). “Do us both a favor,” Hershel tells him “keep your mouth shut.” In fact, do us all a favor, Shane.

The return of the trio plus one should be a happy reunion for Glen and Maggie. Nope.  Glen tells Maggie he froze during the standoff because off her love for him. This is no pick up line. A distraught Glen runs from her embrace and we get another thematic reflection on the whole “love in time of plague” idea that is well worth exploring and will be more interesting than if the show turns into “guess who’s hooking up with who this week” or Friends with zombies. Glen’s reaction to Maggie raises the possibility that love is a luxury no one can afford in a world taken over by monsters.

The last act turned into a referendum on Shane. Andrea tells him that he makes all the right decisions but needs to work on his presentation. Laurie says he “dangerous and delusional” and, in case Rick missed the point, “he’s dangerous Rick and he wont stop.” It looks like next week might center on the conflict between Rick and Shane. This means of course that the show will continue to sharpen the distinction between alternative ideas of dealing with the world of zombies that each of them represents.

Chuck Klostermann’s 2010 New York Times essay about zombies and popular culture suggests that the popularity of the genre has to do with how much zombies reflect our experience of everyday life. For Romero, they may have been representations of consumption, but now they are mainly about our fear of “being consumed” by “the Internet and the media and every conversation we don’t want to have.” We have so many point and click options that a million distractions feed on us like a horde of zombies.

Maybe this is true of zombie fictions that valorize the headshot and focus on the repetitive nature of destroying the threat. Maybe for a nation of cubicle workers, the satisfaction of repetition dressed up as monster killing does have an appeal. The brainless hordes of data, instant messages, texts and Facebook status updates beset us on every side. Will we survive it? And then are more on their way? Certainly.

But some of the best zombie fictions, like The Walking Dead, use the genre to imagine a world of intense pathos, where the undead are less massive hordes of horror and more embodiments of loss and pain. Think of the famous “bicycle girl” from The Walking Dead. She represented a world that had passed away and a life that would never have the chance to be. Think about how the conversations the characters are having keep circling back to the crisis of meaning in a world of loss you have barely time to mourn because more are coming.

Want more shooting and less talk? I hope we get a bit more too. But for right now, there’s a lot to talk about in the world of the walking dead.