The Walking Dead’ Season 2, Ep. 5: You can’t piss on hospitality

• AMC
• Cockblocked.

Poor Daryl. Thrown off a horse. Impaled on an arrow. Chewed on by a zombie. Shot in the face by a stupid, probably-menstruating woman everyone knew shouldn’t have a gun. And, pack your suitcases, because Ol’ Dar’s being taken on an all-expenses-paid guilt trip by a hallucination of his dickhole brother Merle (who is NOT as real as a chupacabra, no matter what he says).

Hey, at least he got a pretty cool necklace out of the deal?

And, actually, there was guilt-a-plenty this episode (which, was the best so far this season, right?), between Rick trying to make Shane feel bad for being realistic, Dale trying to make Glenn feel bad for sexing Maggie, and Hershel trying to make Rick feel bad for being alive — which I’d argue is kind of for good reason. “Rick’s people” are rapidly wearing out their welcome at the Mister Hershel, DVM Homestead, where they’re forever doing annoying things like stealing horses, shooting each other, and stumbling upon barns surreptitiously filled with lots of zombies.

BUT LET’S NOT GET AHEAD OF OURSELVES.

The episode begins in a flashback to Lori, Shane and Carl (and lots of people who were alive at the time, but probably aren’t anymore) stuck in standstill traffic during the mass exodus from Atlanta. They’ve made friends with another little dysfunctional family of three, Bald Mom, Sophia and Caricature of an Abusive A-Hole Dad. Sophia says to Carl, “Your dad’s nice,” and Carl’s, like, he’s not my dad and he’s not even that nice, but of course you’d think he is since your father is literally the worst person in the world. Lori and Shane walk to a wooded area from which Atlanta’s skyline is visible, and they’re just in time to see military helicopters indiscriminately drop napalm on the city.

My thoughts: Seems like witnessing omething like that would really inform a person’s worldview in a very specific way, i.e. in a way that’s obviously caused a major shift in Shane’s worldview. Rick pretty much slept through the wholesale decimation of society and has only really seen the aftermath, which, granted, is also pretty ugly. BUT, I think that maybe Rick’s a worse leader for it? It’s like he was able to retain more of his humanness — his empathy, etc. — but it seems like perhaps it’s better NOT to have those human qualities for survival’s sake. OK, I’m done.

HEY. Is this show called “The Walking Dead” or “The Walking Boners?” Because I think Glenn over here’s confused. Got a little action, now in his brain it’s all vag, all the time. How lucky for him that he’s LITERALLY one of the last men on Earth.

Rick and Shane are in the woods also being very male and Freud-y, totin’ around phallic symbols and jawing about sex. Shane has a chuckle about banging the girls volleyball coach when they were in high school, and Rick’s, like, “I don’t know no sex,” and Shane’s, like, “WHY ARE WE STILL LOOKING FOR SOPHIA?” And it’s a great question! Shane says, “Survival, Rick. It means making hard decisions.” He accuses Rick for worrying too much about looking for cats in trees, and Rick’s like, “Um, Sophia isn’t a cat in a tree,” and Shane says, ” STOP TWISTING MY WORDS,” even though he definitely just called Sophia a cat in a tree. Still, he’s making a lot more sense than Rick. “Sophia only matters to the degree that she don’t drag the rest of us down,” Shane says. There’s already been SO much dragging.