Recap: The Walking Dead, Season 2 Episode 4 — Cherokee Rose

Watching The Walking Dead this week, I was overcome with an urge to write a recap of the episode. This is probably because The Walking Dead is currently balancing on the fence between quality dramatic television and paint-drying dullness, so a viewer has to fill in the entertainment blanks on her own. Episode four is a weird place to start recapping, I know, but we’ll see how this goes.

 

Previously on AMC’s The Walking Dead: Carl got shot, Sophia wandered off, people looked for her, Shane shot a good guy to save his own ass, Carl was OK, Shane shaved his head.

Pastoral countryside. There is an old barn. Near the farmhouse, everyone is gathering firewood or something near when up drives a caravan that consists of Darryl on his motorcycle, plus a car and the RV. At Carl’s bedside, Hershel assures Lori and Rick that Carl’s fever has gone down. Carl regains consciousness; asks about Sophia. Rick lies and says she’s fine.

Everyone greets the newly-arrived caravan. Dale asks after Carl, and the Grimeses report that he’s fine, thanks to Hershel and, of course, Shane, who heroically retrieved the needed supplies. Carol, T-Dawg, et al. are relieved; Shane is guilty in the corner.

There is a funeral for Otis. It turns out they weren’t gathering firewood earlier; they were gathering stones, which they have put in a huge pile, presumably as a cairn to substitute for the fact that they don’t have Otis’s body (given that Shane left him to be torn apart by zombies in one of the worst death scenarios possible).

Hershel is the ersatz preacher now, with the funeral God talk. Shane is flashing back to Otis’s death, and then everyone insists that he say a few words because he was with Otis at the end. Still flashing back, Shane concocts a complete fiction about Otis offering to take up the rear and dying as a result. The strains of Bear McCreary’s Ominous String Orchestra rise as Shane puts a final stone on Otis’s cairn.

Title credits. Which I think are quite eerie and cool, actually.

Hershel, Rick, Andrea, Shane, Darryl and Maggie conference over the hood of a truck. They’re discussing the Search for Sophia. Hershel says that Shane and Rick are not fit to search, due to Shane’s busted ankle and Rick’s having given pints and pints of blood to Carl. The gun issue comes up again; Hershel doesn’t want guns on his property. Rick says they’ll respect that, and he and Shane put their handguns on the hood of the truck. Shane asks what they should do if they find Sophia and she’s a zombie; Andrea says that they do what needs to be done. Hershel and Maggie share A Foreshadowing Look. Honestly, this whole  scene is super boring and processy, and ends with Maggie wanting to go into town for antibiotics. Rick suggests that Maggie take Glenn, their “Go to Town” expert. (This is also foreshadowing.)

Lori and Shane talk outside the RV. Shane asks Lori if she meant it when she told him he could stay, and not skulk off like a psychotic almost-rapist should. Lori says she did mean it, and looks like she immediately regrets saying it.

Maggie approaches Glenn, who is tongue-tied but rescued by Dale, who asks Maggie for some fanservice exposition regarding the farm’s water and electricity supply (wells and generators, got it?) Although I guess it’s not totally fanservice because the well does figure in later.

Andrea storms over to Shane to get mad about giving up their guns. Which is weird because she’s spent the last couple episodes being mad that she doesn’t even have a gun. While I cut Andrea a lot of slack for being obsessed with guns after having to shoot her zombified sister’s brains out, I still wish that Show Andrea was more like Book Andrea. Of course, in the early issues of the book, the characters spent a lot less time talking about their feelings and Rick was handing out guns like candy. Anyway, apparently Shane wants to clean the guns before he gives them up (I guess putting his handgun on the hood of the truck was just for show? Because he still has guns) so he shows Andrea a thing or two about that, and they bond or something.

Rick is hanging out with his hat on the porch. He sees Darryl on his way out to search for Sophia, and says something about setting up a proper search or whatever and then says some stuff that sounds a lot like trying to talk Darryl out of searching for Sophia, saying “you don’t owe us anything,” to which Darryl replies with what has become characteristic magnanimity, “My other plans fell through.” Or wait. Was that supposed to be a threat? To do with his handless brother running around Atlanta? Ugh, I don’t even know.

Darryl tromps off, and Hershel appears. Rick offers to have his people set up camp over by the barn if they’re getting in the way in and around the huge farmhouse. Hershel says no, DO NOT GO NEAR THE BARN. (I wonder why?) Hershel wants them to stay close to the house. In the same breath, he informs Rick that the RV gang will have to be on their way once Carl is better and Sophia is found. I guess the message is, stay close so that I can more easily kick you out later?

Glenn is looking through binoculars for some reason. He sees Maggie approach on horseback, leading an additional horse. He says “Hello, farmer’s daughter,” so that we in the audience can for sure know that he has a boner for her. Lori kills said boner by appearing in his line of sight and handing him a list, with instructions to be very “discreet” about a certain item. Which, when pressed, she says can be found in the feminine hygiene section of the drugstore. Gee, I wonder what it could be?

T-Dawg and Dale are working on the well in the field. T-Dawg says he takes back all that stuff he said about him and Dale being weak and the rest of the group not caring about them. Because he and Dale are bros now, Dale assures him it’s cool. T-Dawg asks if there’s “a snowball’s chance” of finding Sophia. Seriously, these people talk about Sophia a lot, but currently Darryl is the only one actually looking for her.

Anyway, they’re pumping water, and Dale goes over to check out the well, which is covered by a wooden circular cover with a huge hole in it. T-Dawg is about to take a drink of the water he’s pumped when Dale stops him. Next we see the whole gang coming over to check it out. Surprise! There’s a disgusting bloated zombie in the well!

Commercial.

Andrea, Lori, Shane, Glenn, Dale, T-Dawg and Maggie stand over the well and weigh their options. They don’t want to shoot it because that would contaminate the well. Guys, I’m pretty sure once there’s a dead thing in your well, it’s contaminated. But OK. So they want to get it out of the well instead.

Rick and Hershel are off somewhere looking at a map and talking about where Sophia might have gone. Hershel gets Rick to take a moment and enjoy the pastoral view. Then there’s a boring talk about whether Rick believes in God.

Let’s go back to the zombies. The magnificent seven have tried to bait the zombie with a canned ham tied to a rope. Riiight. ‘Cause the zombie was totally going to grab the canned ham and climb up the rope in the hopes of finding more canned ham? They decide they need live bait, and as soon as the idea is tabled, everyone looks at Glenn. Clearly, he is confused as I am as to why he’s always the obvious choice.

Sure enough, they tie him to a rope and try to lower him down into the well, and of course that means that he almost gets dropped into the waiting arms of the watery undead. But he survives. And there’s a twist! He’s eager to go back down and try again! It’s unclear whether this is fuelled by Glenn’s near-death adrenaline rush or his boner for Maggie.

Darryl is Sophia-hunting. He comes across a farmhouse that appears to have been abandoned long before the apocalypse. Inside, he finds a recently-opened can of sardines and a pile of pillows and blankets in a closet. Outside, he calls Sophia’s name, but finds only pretty white flowers, which he studies intently.

Back to the zombie in the well. Apparently Glenn succeeded in getting the rope around the zombie’s neck, and they are now all pulling it out of the well, with the additional help of a horse. It works until the corpse gets stuck on the edge of the well, causing it to split at the waist in spectacularly gory fashion, with the lower half tumbling back into the well and the upper half, still animated and growling and oozing maggots, on the grassy ground level. Before anyone can get a word in, T-Dawg takes a hatchet to the zombie’s head; Maggie turns away in disgust, and Glenn notices. I’ll leave the last word on this scene to T-Dawg: “Good thing we didn’t do anything stupid like shoot it.” Yep.

Commercial.

Back on the highway, Carol stands, forlorn, next to a late-model two-door, where a collection of food and water has been left on the hood and a message has been inscribed in white block letters on the windshield “SOPHIA STAY HERE WE WILL COME EVERY DAY.” Aw. Andrea and Shane are with her, and Andrea promises they’ll come again tomorrow and then she and Shane start in on the platitudes but Carol is really not interested in hearing it.

Shane, Carol and Andrea are walking through a field toward a fence, presumably talking about a defense perimeter or something. Andrea asks “when she can carry.” Shane is, I should mention, carrying a rifle. Shane says he’s not worried about Andrea killing herself. Then he launches into a speech about the stuff she really needs to know if she wants to carry a gun. Paper targets are easy, he says, but assailants who are trying to kill you are different. He says fear can cripple you but you can’t let it. Andrea asks how you do that. Shane, in psychopathic fashion, says you turn off a switch — “the one that makes you scared, or angry or sympathetic,” because there’s always someone else who depends on you, and taking a man’s life is never easy. “Wait, what? I thought we were talking about zombies. You’re talking about killing dudes?” Andrea says. Ha, no she doesn’t. (Though, to her credit, Laurie Holden was playing that scene with more than was on the page.)

Glenn and Maggie sidle into a very old-timey looking town on horseback. Glenn is trying to be all macho, and not explicitly saying, “Hey, Maggie, did you see how macho I was back at the well?” but pretty close. He also says he knows it’s rough when you see a zombie get killed up close for the first time. They dismount and hit the drug store. Someone has left a very friendly sign saying “Take what you need.” While Maggie goes to look for antibiotics, Glenn fumbles through what’s left of the feminine hygiene section. He finds what he’s looking for, but in an effort to hide it when Maggie reappears, he holds up a package of condoms. This leads to a rather schticky back-and-forth that in turn leads to the good part. I maintain that since the beginning of the first season, this show has been seriously deficient in apocalyptic nookie. Sex is one of the few recreational activities left after the collapse of civilization, so it only make sense that people would be getting it on a lot more than they have been. Let Glenn and Maggie raise the standard for the rest of the cast of characters. They have my blessing. Of course, because this is AMC, we cut to commercial as soon as their shirts come off, because goodness knows, you can show a death-white, bloated, growling half-person with maggots flowing out of their exposed intestines and then have a main character crush that half-person’s skull with a sledgehammer, but you can’t show any titty. Say what you will about True Blood, at least it gives equal opportunity to sex and gore (and, OK, usually combines them, but that in a nutshell is the difference between AMC and HBO).

Back at the farm, Rick asks Hershel to reconsider making his crew leave (eventually). Not for him, he says, but FOR CARL. Because Rick is first and foremost a FATHER. Turns out Hershel had a horrible abusive father, but he notes that Rick is not one of those. He says there are “aspects” to the situation, but he’ll consider Rick’s request. Rick returns to Carl’s bedside, where Lori already is.

Maggie and Glenn are riding back to the farmhouse. Maggie tells Glenn that their tryst was “a one-time thing.” Right. Hershel asks if everything went OK, and Maggie says nothing happened. Lori bursts out of the house in a hurry looking to get the stuff she ordered from Glenn.

Darryl has returned to the farm and the RV, where Carol is stitching, having tidied up the place so it’s nice for Sophia’s return. He presents one of those white flowers in a beer-bottle vase. It’s a Cherokee Rose, he explains. On the Trail of Tears, he says, native Elders asked for a sign to give the mothers of missing and dead children hope. The roses grew where the mothers’ tears fell. Darryl says there are no flowers blooming for his (racist, presumably dead) brother, but this rose bloomed for Sophia. OK, we get it, Darryl is awesome. But I’m not quite sure what the point of Darryl’s uniform sensitivity and wonderfulness is — is it to play against our expectations that the brother of a racist dirtbag like Merle would turn out to be a great guy? I feel like it’s more effective when heroic characters are also flawed, but maybe I’m still too hung up on Battlestar Galactica. Or maybe Darryl is going to unleash a torrent of terror later in the season? (The question is, will it be before or after Shane does?)

Rick at Carl’s bedside. He tries to confess to his son that he lied about Sophia, but Carl says Lori already told him. Way to do the parenting heavy-lifting, Rick. Rick apologizes. He also says he truly believes they’ll find Sophia. Carl says, with no small amount of pride, that he’s like Rick because they’ve both been shot. Rick says now that Carl’s in the club, he gets to wear the sheriff’s hat. I Love You’s are said, and Carl goes back to sleep.

Rick is taking off his uniform as Lori watches from the doorway. He puts his badge and nametag (?) in a drawer. Lori helps him take off his shirt, touches his gunshot wound. “Are you putting them away?” she asks. Rick shuts the drawer. Lori mumbles something about Rick staying with Carl for a little longer.

Lori leaves the house and walks out past the tents and RV and into a field. she pulls out the pregnancy test she got from Glenn (the item was a pregnancy test, if you hadn’t figured that out by now). She squats to pee on the stick. It’s positive. She does the only thing a woman can do when faced with a positive pregnancy test during an apocalypse where she’s not even sure whether the father is her husband or his increasingly unstable best friend: she cries alone in the dark of the night.