The Walking Dead Recap: “You can’t be the good guy and survive.”

by Scott Poole:

The Walking Dead: “18 Miles Out”
Original Air Date: Sunday February 26, 2012 (AMC)
Season 2, Episode 10

The first two episodes of The Walking Dead have been finely crafted television. They’ve also been a bit flat.  We get that this is a show about the survivors. They are the real walking dead, etc, etc. But the subtext has really been the text and its time for some zombies.

The first few moments promised we would get them. But only later in the show. First, we’ve got some really intense male aggression to vent and some testosterone-fueled angst to overcome. These boys really miss their man-caves.

I hate to sound flippant but the Shane /Rick standoff really felt empty to me. It seems odd to say a fiction felt contrived but, the truth is, good fictions don’t show their seams. Clearly catharsis for the low-intensity conflict going on between these putative alpha dogs is the writer’s goal here.

Here’s how it goes down. After the credits (love the idea, by the way, of images of ruined modern life with photographs of the characters imposed across them, photographs that look like nothing so much as Victorian death photographs) we see Shane and Rick driving along with Randall, the outsider Rick saved last week, bundled in the trunk. They are headed out to drop him in nowhereville so he can’t tell his people about the farm.

Rick stops the car at a highly symbolic crossroads (nice overhead shot of this) and confronts Shane about, well, mostly about being Shane. And, of course, about Laurie. It’s striking how Shane seemed to more or less shrink in size as the sheriff lays down the law.  And this settles things, yes? Well, of course not.

Getting back in the car, they continue the search for a place to drop the kid where he’ll have a fighting chance (Shane, predictably, just wanting to drop him). This is followed by a strange moment, somewhat inexplicable, in which Rick gives a monologue about planning for winter as Shane stares out the window. A lone roamer bumbles across an open field in afternoon sunlight and only Shane seems to notice him “Sounds good,” Shane groans.

Rick and Shane. Mortal enemies or blossoming bromance? This seemed like an open question. It also seemed like it got settled pretty quickly when they started wailing on each other. Stopping at what appears to be a gated public works compound, they plan to turn Randall loose after killing two security guard/walkers. Until the battle royale begins

I don’t want to spoil the moment that triggers their throw-down but, wow, does it get triggered. Effectively beating the crap out of each other, the whole thing is just a little too intense, if you know what I mean. You expect these guys to start crying and do some hugging (maybe more). Actually though, it ends with Shane hurling the heaviest wrench in the entire world at Rick and breaking a huge glass window in the building behind him.

Way to unleash a whole building full of  flesh-eaters, Shane. Suddenly, the Dead are everywhere, Rick and Shane are running for their lives (Shane tries to barricade himself in a schoolbus…good call Einstein) and Randall, still tied up, has to cut himself free and kill a rotting adolescent trying to eat him. Rick meanwhile finds himself in one of the stranger conundrums of the zombie apocalypse. What do you do when you’re at the bottom of a walker pile? Rick’s giant hand-cannon saves the day though he has to get inventive (you have to award him zombie kill of the week for this).

Meanwhile, the women are cooking at home. And giving each other support. Or not.

Truthfully, the “Little House on the Prairie” gender constructions on this show are utterly risible. I’m hoping that Beth’s attempted suicide and the conflict that surrounds it represents the moment the show begins to question the way its female characters have been presented to us so far. Maybe that is what we are seeing in the argument between Laurie and Andrea.

There is an awful lot of Laurie-hate among fans out there. I didn’t credit a lot of this, in part because, as with all of the characters, their comic iterations really inform my understanding of her.  Plus, to be honest, I wrote some of it off to slut shaming, which is never ok. What might you do if the world became a horror movie and, if besides that, your significant other had apparently died in a hospital ? Are we really going to judge her for some post-apocalyptic comfort sex?

Increasingly, I’m thinking there’s more than this about Laurie’s character not to like. Here, let me quote her giving advice about boys to Maggie. “Men have to do certain things…what happens out there happens out there.” Ok. So, Glen deserves some special specialness because of his manhood and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? What should Maggie do then, Laurie? “Tell him to man up…just don’t say man up.”

Or Laurie, since its not 1951, Maggie could just say, “Glen it’s the zombie apocalypse, could you maybe realize that old conceptions about manhood and relationships are literally rotting all around us. Maybe we should just see this whole “love” thing for what it is and not pretend we’re in a rom-com that’s going to work out in the end. By the way, it’s not my fault you froze. Also, I know how to use a gun and I’m going out next time because I’m not so in love that I’ll freeze like a stupid idiot”

Andrea seems to pretty much have Laurie’s number. She tells her she’s “playing house” and well, that’s literally what she’s doing.  Laurie’s response to Andrea suggests that it’s really very important, in this apocalyptic situation, to maintain a gendered division of labor on the farm. “The men can handle this on their own,” she tells her. What’s this? Well, the whole zombie thing. Really,  Laurie? And why did you wreck that car last week?

Other than finally getting some truly intense and prolonged zombie action, Beth finally speaking up had to be the episode’s highpoint. Actor Emily Kinney shows some serious chops in this scene, almost making up for all the time she has spent in complete catatonia.

It turns out that Beth has a lot to say about what has become the central premise of the show.  And she sounds like a zombie apocalypse Camus, pointing out to her sister and the rest of the survivors that the only real question is whether or not to commit suicide. And she sounds like she has made her decision. ‘’We’re alone…against a whole world of those things…I don’t want to be gutted. I want to go.”

It’s an interesting point. Why all the striving, why all the fighting? Is there even anything to worry about anymore, hasn’t the end already come? Driving back to the farm, Randall tied up and in the trunk again, a sulking Shane looks out the window to see the lone zombie still shambling across the field. What does Shane see in this single figure? Maybe himself, alone. Maybe himself alone and engaged in an empty charade of life, the walking dead walking to nowhere for reasons that don’t matter.

Hope or despair. Rick’s ethics only matter if the human survivors are going to make a world that matters.  If it’s only about not wanting to be gutted then Shane was right tonight: the only right decisions are the decisions that keep us alive. And Rick himself, in a moment I don’t want to give away, came close to agreeing with him.

No Daryl this week! I felt a collective groan rise up from the legions of Norman Reedus fans. Previews suggest that we’ll get more than enough of him next week. He’s going to interrogate Randall and its not going to be pretty.

Only three episodes left in the season. Are you kidding me! See you next week.