by Scott Poole:
The Walking Dead: “Better Angels”
Original Air Date: Sunday March 11, 2012 (AMC)
Season 2, Episode 12
If you wanted more zombies, you’re going to get them. At least next week.
Tonight’s episode opens with Dale getting a way better funeral than the barn zombies did. Intercut with images of the mourners we see Daryl, Andrea, Shane and T-Dog on a zombie hunt. Actually it’s more of a zombie lynch mob that ends with a Rodney King-style beating of one of the dead zeds. When is this happening? Is it happening anywhere other than in Shane’s head?
Before we find out, we are confronted with Shane and Rick doing the kind of “whose the alpha dog” circling of one another they always do. This episode starts off with yet another stand off over Randall, the prisoner that serves as a metonym for every interpersonal conflict the group is experiencing. Shane whines this week, not only because Rick has decided to let the kid live (again) but also because he’s taking Daryl, not Shane, along to set him free.
Taken as a whole, tonight’s episode seemed largely about defining relationships in the aftermath of Dale’s death. Everybody seems to be aiming for a bit of clarification of where they stand with everybody else. Rick tells Dale’s mourners at the funeral that they are going to “prove him wrong.” They are going to create a family.
Or not, it turns out.
Carl and his hat are still front and center and this week he confides in Shane about his alleged responsibility for Dale’s death. Bizarrely, Shane insists that Carl keep the gun he stole from Daryl’s bike and Carl refuses (which makes no sense, given that not using the gun doomed Dale in the first place).
When Rick and Carl have a heart to heart in the barn loft, Rick gives him a bit of post-apocalyptic advice; “people are going to die… there’s no way you can ever be ready for it.” And Rick gives Carl a gun which, this time, he accepts. This is a strange moment that provides an interesting twist on the gun fetish that has been a tiresome part of some much zombie enthusiasm.
Let me say that I’m just not clear on why some zombie fans come across as survivalist militia members. But in this scene, the gun is less fetish object and more a symbol of growing up too fast. Rather than something to be celebrated, weaponry suggests mourning a lost childhood and Rick’s own weariness… his sense that he can’t apply the ethics of the old world to the new one and ultimately is not able to protect Carl from death. “I’m tired,” he groans as he hands Carl the sidearm.
And by the end of the episode, Carl’s gun will take on even more layers of meaning.
T-Dog is finally talking but mostly for comic relief. He has one interesting line when going to release (he thinks) the prisoner. “Yo Randy… governor called and you’re off the hook.” Are we hearing a bit of foreshadowing? We know the Governor’s on his way, apparently next season, and comic fans are hopeful he will be as sadistic and insane as his between-the-panels counterpart.
I didn’t miss Dale much this episode. Although one of my favorites from the comics, he didn’t transfer well to TV. Still, seeing Andrea and Glen trying to start the camper without him had the intended effect of making us miss the old guy.
Ok, what the hell is Lori up to? Along with praising Shane’s sink fixing skills, she admits she “doesn’t know whose baby this is.” All of this is framed as some kind of effort to apologize for setting Shane and Rick at odds.
The result is to give Shane all the encouragement he needs. “Whatever happened between us….I’m sorry Shane.” I’m not sure what the writers are doing with Lori’s character. I’m not sure if we are supposed to admire her as much as we do in the comics or if they actually want us to perceive her as manipulative. The latter is mostly what’s happening and the results are catastrophic.
Daryl and Rick are setting off to take Randall and release him into the wild. He’s not to be found and no one is clear what has happened to him, especially since the barn door is still locked tight.
It turns out Shane has happened. He takes Randall out into the woods using the subterfuge that he wants to join up with his camp. Shane kills him and rams his own face into a tree, in order to concoct a not very convincing cover story.
Shane’s motivations here are unclear. At first, we read him as becoming increasingly irrational and believing that disposing of Randall will set right everything that’s gone wrong. In this, he’s not so different from the rest of the group who, whatever they want done with the kid, more or less make his fate a touchstone for their future. Shane apparently wants the future to die. It also becomes clear that this is not all he wants dead.
It turns out that Shane did not cover his tracks, literally in fact. Daryl Dixon is, not surprisingly, a champion tracker who more or less reconstructs the whole sordid tale. Shane’s actions are sure to come to light anyway, Daryl’s forensic skills to one side. Zombie Randall comes stumbling out of the foggy darkness and Glen manages to put a knife through his forehead. He didn’t die of a bite.
Meanwhile, Shane and Rick are off looking for Randall, leading to a couple of great shots of Rick and Shane framed by moonlight in an old west standoff. And, it turns out, Shane’s motive was all about getting Rick alone. He’s convinced he’s going to get rid of Rick for Lori and Carl’s sake. “You got a broken woman and a weak boy,” Shane tells him. But things are not as broken in the Grimes’ household as Shane thinks.
The final scene has Carl, with the gun his father gave him, firing a shot that’s heard around the zombie world. We are left with a vision of hordes of undead descending on the farm. We’re also left wondering why all the other gunfire that’s gone on in the farm’s vicinity, including the shoot ‘em up at the barn, didn’t bring the walkers before now (insert suspension of disbelief here).
All in all, this episode had a quicker pulse than the last couple. The ending (which I’m sure you know by now but that it still feels wrong to give away) came as a welcome surprise since it closed off a plot point that’s been building too long. Although I would hate to see this descend into Survivor… who gets eaten off the island this week.
One last question. When did the opening montage of Shane and the gang on a zombie hunt happen? Was this a peek inside Shane’s fevered imagination, his fantasy about surviving the zombie apocalypse? I found myself thinking about how Dale had told Shane that this world was made for him in its brutality and savagery. Maybe, in Shane’s final moments, he imagined this as the world he was making… where the dead could be hunted down by the living. Maybe the show itself used that moment to question our shovel through the head, pitchfork in the face zombie fantasies. Why do we need that story and what is so satisfying about it?
Season finale next week. Siege of the farmhouse… I’ll be looking for some Romero homage. And my recap will include some reflections about where the series has been and where it might (should?) go.
I’d also like you to follow me on twitter @monstersamerica. I’ll be tweeting up next week’s finale.
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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