The Walking Dead - The Day After

“Better Angels”

Shane, Andrea, Darryl & T-Dog are in a fast-moving truck.  We hear Rick voice over about Dale’s life, personality, etc. and see everyone at his funeral.  Andrea gets a walker with a big pitchfork and it goes up through the chin and into the skull. Then Shane lets loose on a walker's skull with a shovel. It’s all sorts of violent.

So apparently Hershel has done a total 180 and has invited everyone to come live in the house.  It’s gonna be like this big, slightly scary slumber party!  I wonder whose bra they’ll freeze first.  Rick gives everyone jobs and Shane’s being all pissy about Rick asserting himself.  Carl confides in Shane about finding Darryl’s gun and why he thinks Dale’s death was his fault. Shane tries to get him to keep the gun but Carl resists.

Everyone is getting settled in the house and Maggie offers to bunk up with Glenn, but having a new respect for Hershel, Glenn passes and elects to sleep in with the men-folk.  Hershel very generously offers his bedroom to Rick, Lori and Carl and I’m loving this new Hershel.  I bet he would have been ok with Maggie and Glenn cohabitating.

Lori and Shane are talking about this and that.  Apparently it took Dale’s rather gruesome death for Lori to realize all this is very real.  She gets all choked up about not knowing her baby’s daddy (where’s Maury when you need him?).  She then reminisces about how she and Shane first got together and how he saved her and Carl when all the zombie stuff first went down.  WHAT IS SHE DOING?!?!  She’s just reigniting all the feelings he has for her.  She apologizes for all he’s been through, etc. and I see this all going very badly. 

Shane urges Rick to talk to Carl about the run-in with the muddy, swamp walker and the gun and other fatherly things.  Rick is kind of hands off with Carl but maybe because he feels responsible for everyone else.  Shane does have a point but oddly I don’t think Rick resents him for it. Rick joins Carl who is on lookout duty in the barn.  Rick gives him the gun (uh, shouldn’t someone check with Darryl?) and assures him Dale’s death wasn’t his fault.  Then Rick gives him the ‘putting aside childish things’ speech one often gives during a zombie apocalypse.  Carl accepts the gun and puts aside being a kid because Rick is just plum tired of it all. 

Randall’s been spending the past few days slowly scraping the flesh from his wrists away so he can get out of his handcuffs.  Shane joins him for a chat but says nothing and since Randall is blindfolded and gagged he can’t see Shane’s little flip out.  He’s really getting scarier than the walkers.  T-Dog, who has gotten a bit more screen time this episode, goes to get Randall and sees his spot unoccupied. "Aw hell no!"

Shane has dragged Randall into the woods and gets a little information from him about his group under the guise of Shane wanting to join up with them.  They start walking and after checking to make sure no one is following, we presume that Shane kills him but there’s this giant tree in the way and that neck-snapping noise could have been a branch, right?  Shane is also pissed at the tree for being in the way and runs face first into it.  I feel an odd plan coming together now and I can’t wait to see how it plays out. 

Shane returns to the farm with some story about Randall escaping and he, Glenn, Darryl and Rick go into the woods to find him.  Darryl is skeptical that Randall overpowered Shane and that’s only the first part of the story that Darryl is able to call BS about.  Back at the house Carl watches for any sort of movement from the woods.  Darryl should really be on CSI or some show on Discovery called Hillbilly Trackers because he rocks.  He even spots the bloody bit of tree where Shane face-butted it.  Darryl notices that there was a fight and in my head I can hear Prince Humperdink from Princess Bride agreeing with his assessment of the scuffle.  A walker pops out and gets the jump on Glenn but no worries they’ve got him under control.  Wait!  Is that Randall?  Uh, didn’t Shane kill him a few minutes ago?  Darryl wisely makes note of his broken neck and lack of bite marks.  Kinda like those two cops from the episode when they tried to get rid of Randall.  Uh, this thing airborne then?  Should I have already known that?

Rick and Shane are searching together and Rick figures out he’s lying about Randall’s escape.  They exit the woods into the clearing on the farm and Rick then realizes this is Shane’s set-up to kill Rick.  Shane’s got it all worked out and it’ll take Lori some time but she’ll come around eventually. Wow.  Rick won’t defend himself so Shane ups the crazy by taunting Rick into shooting him instead.  He even goes so far as to insult Lori and Carl.  Shane pulls out his gun again and Rick is trying to surrender his and work it all out.  He tries to talk him down and inches ever closer to Shane while doing so.  He finally gets right up on him and plunges his knife into Shane who gets off one shot but I don’t think it hit anything but grass.  Rick yells at a dying Shane for forcing him to do this and then cries over what used to be his best friend.  I really wanted it to be Carl to kill Shane (if you’ve read the books you know how it went down there).  The screen goes black and then there are flashes of trippy walker images, then Rick grieving and more walker images.  Huh.  Carl finds them and raises his gun.  Rick thinks he’s about to shoot him and is oblivious to the now re-animated Shane behind him.  Carl lets off a perfect shot to the head and no more Shane.  

Oh and there are TONS of walkers off in the woods.  Damn.

So here's the deal (thanks, Kate!):

Apparently they're all affected with the virus and when you die, you pop back up unless you died from a head wound (like Dale did).  So now I'm thinking back to others who have died on the show and did they all receive a bullet (or two) to the head?