Season 2, Episode 9
“You missed all that gun training. Could have come in handy now.”
One of the biggest complaints against the show – one that I and many others have made, especially in it's second season – is that there is always too much talking, and not enough zombie action (or really any sort of action, really). Now, depending on who you talk to, the problem with this formula is that (for fans of zombie/horror films) there's not enough explicitly action-oriented scenes, or (for those who decry The Walking Dead as the symbol of AMC's artistic decline) that those scenes that don't have any action don't do enough character-, world-, or story-building to be worthwhile. While I understand the former complaints (zombie action is the only thing the show seems to do well at this point), as a fan of character driven drama, I count myself in the latter camp.
“Triggerfinger” then, as one of the most-action oriented episodes of the entire season, raises some interesting questions about exactly what kind of action we expect/need from any given episode, and whether that those scenes also need their own specific context in order to work.
Not surprisingly, the episode was split amongst two locales, as is the show's increasingly frustrating MO, this time being Rick, Glen, and Hershcel still being holed up in the bar in town, and everybody else still back on the farm. The scenes with the three guys in the bar, fending of the attacks from the rest of Dave and Tony's crew (who you will remember Rick killed last week) were obviously the best of the hour, both because it's where all the action was, and because it was perhaps the best representation of the way in which living in a lawless wasteland can lead to a fight for survival, which can itself lead people to act in an manner that by contemporary societal standards is unethical.
Meanwhile, back on the farm, the story slowed down about as much as we expect it to, as the episode seeks to continue to deal with all those various layers of anger that seem to exist between everybody all of a sudden. While I said last week that I was excited to see the show try it's hand at something a bit more complex, I also said that the show continues to be hampered by A) the arguments not being couched in developed characters and B) nothing actually happening because of these argument. That continued to be the case tonight, as we mostly got rehashes of what we saw last week without anything new happening. Sure, Lori hears about Dale's hunch that Shane killed Otis, and Carol becomes the second person to see Daryl regressing to his former misanthropic self, but those developments don't really mean anything.
But since this is nothing really new for the show, I can mostly shrug it off at this point; it's hard to be disappointed in a show that keeps making the same mistakes over and over. The real trouble then comes when these two plotlines come together, and not just because the episode gave more time over to people just standing around the farm, doing nothing. No, it was how these two plotlines were brought together that really bugged me – that is, through the introduction of Randall. After seeing the three guys kill men from the other party in order to protect their hideaway on Herschel's farm, Randall and his conveniently timed injury showing up feel like the product of the writers suddenly realizing that they might be making their characters fall out of the morally good category. (Because if there's one thing that goes against the AMC brand, it's moral ambiguity.) So while it would have been rational for Rick just to shoot Randall, we instead had to go through a whole song and dance where they end up saving his life.
Again, the scene with Randall in town weren't that troubling because, you know, zombies. But I was greatly perturbed by what this ended up leading to, that is Shane's sudden going off about how Rick bringing Randall back to the farm will only endanger the rest of the group. Now, the show has been slowly building to some sort of emotional break for the character, which I agree with since it's the only real character-building on the show right now. Yet even though the show has been applying a nice steady pace to this arc, something about the way that Shane suddenly flipped out about Randall didn't sit right with me. Obviously characters who are destined for mental breaks will have to flip out about something eventually, but Shane's theory about the rest of Randall's party tracking him down seemed too far-fetched, even for a crazy person.
It helps of course that Shane's breakdown comes in part thanks to Lori's pregnancy, and the somewhat scary news that Shane thinks that the baby is his, and he's becoming a possessive, controlling asshole because of it. I recognize that there is the very real possibility that it actually is Shane's baby that Lori is carrying, but either way, Shane's becoming a legitimate threat for the first time, now that there actually seems to be someone in the group to whom he means true harm.
It was a shocking way to end an episode that started with an equally tense beginning, but that doesn't make the muddled middle all the better. And The Walking Dead is going to need to do better than good beginnings and endings if it hopes to keep it's large audience for a long period of time.
Meanwhile, back on the farm, the story slowed down about as much as we expect it to, as the episode seeks to continue to deal with all those various layers of anger that seem to exist between everybody all of a sudden. While I said last week that I was excited to see the show try it's hand at something a bit more complex, I also said that the show continues to be hampered by A) the arguments not being couched in developed characters and B) nothing actually happening because of these argument. That continued to be the case tonight, as we mostly got rehashes of what we saw last week without anything new happening. Sure, Lori hears about Dale's hunch that Shane killed Otis, and Carol becomes the second person to see Daryl regressing to his former misanthropic self, but those developments don't really mean anything.
But since this is nothing really new for the show, I can mostly shrug it off at this point; it's hard to be disappointed in a show that keeps making the same mistakes over and over. The real trouble then comes when these two plotlines come together, and not just because the episode gave more time over to people just standing around the farm, doing nothing. No, it was how these two plotlines were brought together that really bugged me – that is, through the introduction of Randall. After seeing the three guys kill men from the other party in order to protect their hideaway on Herschel's farm, Randall and his conveniently timed injury showing up feel like the product of the writers suddenly realizing that they might be making their characters fall out of the morally good category. (Because if there's one thing that goes against the AMC brand, it's moral ambiguity.) So while it would have been rational for Rick just to shoot Randall, we instead had to go through a whole song and dance where they end up saving his life.
Again, the scene with Randall in town weren't that troubling because, you know, zombies. But I was greatly perturbed by what this ended up leading to, that is Shane's sudden going off about how Rick bringing Randall back to the farm will only endanger the rest of the group. Now, the show has been slowly building to some sort of emotional break for the character, which I agree with since it's the only real character-building on the show right now. Yet even though the show has been applying a nice steady pace to this arc, something about the way that Shane suddenly flipped out about Randall didn't sit right with me. Obviously characters who are destined for mental breaks will have to flip out about something eventually, but Shane's theory about the rest of Randall's party tracking him down seemed too far-fetched, even for a crazy person.
It helps of course that Shane's breakdown comes in part thanks to Lori's pregnancy, and the somewhat scary news that Shane thinks that the baby is his, and he's becoming a possessive, controlling asshole because of it. I recognize that there is the very real possibility that it actually is Shane's baby that Lori is carrying, but either way, Shane's becoming a legitimate threat for the first time, now that there actually seems to be someone in the group to whom he means true harm.
It was a shocking way to end an episode that started with an equally tense beginning, but that doesn't make the muddled middle all the better. And The Walking Dead is going to need to do better than good beginnings and endings if it hopes to keep it's large audience for a long period of time.
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