Dark Brown Waffles

Credit where credit is due: the show finally got something right. That something - when Sofia shambled out of the barn, desperate for “Braaaaaaaaaaainnnnns!” - was a moment of watching the show that made me say to myself that all of the crap that has come along with the show was worth it. 

Except, it isn’t really worth it. In fact, much of the show is a steaming pile of nonsense. Tonight’s episode was no exception. (See: Daryl and Carol inexplicably making up, Dale’s plan to throw away the group’s guns, the repeatedly made claims that Hershel must not understand what the zombies truly are, the idea that Carl is being made to do math problems, etc.) But the show did, finally, mercifully, get it right. The final scene in which the barn’s walkers were unmercifully put down by the group accomplished something:

-It made Shane appear briefly like a reasonable human being. After all, these are blood-thirsty zombies. They’re not family anymore. He was right to shoot one repeatedly in the abdomen as a way of showing their lifelessness. 

-It gave Rick an opportunity to disconnect entirely from the life he had once lead, as he shot Sophia through the head, ending her brain-starved life.

-It allowed Hershel see the zombies for what they were, not as his family, but as ghouls.

-It let the group use up a huge amount of ammunition, which actually is a bad thing, since we had been lead to believe at one point that ammunition was at a premium. Wait, scrap this one. 

-It gave one woman one opportunity at badassery, even if it was Andrea. This will hopefully deflect, if only briefly, the relatively potent criticism that women on this show exist only to act as wet blankets or food preparers. 

-It showed Carl that heroic rhetoric aside, the people he thinks he cares about that disappear into the woods are almost certainly zombified.

To be extra fair to the show, it also got another scene right, albeit in a hamfisted way. It has been evident throughout the show, since his introduction in the first episode, that Glenn was a capable character. It was only in tonight’s show though that any personality emerged, in this case, a relatively fearless attitude in which he explained what was important to him: honesty. We already knew he was bad at lying, but when he snapped at Maggie, a more nuanced character suddenly appeared, if his “snapping” was only a mechanism to let him communicate that he cared about her.

Sidenote: The more I watch the show, the more I think I am meant to believe that the zombie illness spread from person to person via bites. Which means that literally millions of people got bitten and then got away from their attackers. Sophia clearly did. That’s how she ended up in the barn with half of her collarbone missing. But how did she get away? Anytime we’ve seen zombies attack, they’ve consumed their victims voraciously. We know how Andrea’s sister briefly survived; she was saved by other humans. But Sophia? She was what, 12? She was attacked and got away? Really? 

I know it unlikely that the transmission issue will ever be substantively discussed or explored, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to believe that millions of people were getting bit, then escaping, only to zombify later and spread the infection further as walkers. That’s too convoluted.