Episode Title: Triggerfinger
Original Airdate: 2-19-2012
An unconscious Lori wakes up in the crashed car to a Walker desperately trying to get to her. After taking it and another one out, she continues to head to town, on foot, to find Rick. Once everyone back at the farm realizes they haven’t seen her in hours, Shane goes out to find her. When he catches up to her, he lies about Rick having returned safely to the farm in order to get her in the car to go back. When she realizes what he did, she gets angry and he lets slip the secret of her pregnancy in front of everyone, including Carl.
Back at the bar, Rick, Hershel and Glenn are on their way out the door when they hear others looking for the recently deceased Tony and Dave. Glenn sits in front of the door to keep it from being opened, and though Rick tries to explain the situation and keep anyone else from dying, the strangers open fire on the bar. Eventually the three make it out the back door, but all the gunfire has raised the alarm to a swarm of Walkers. The strangers finally decide to flee, but as one is jumping from a roof, his leg becomes impaled on a wrought iron fence and he gets left behind. Hershel believes they should mercy kill him to save themselves, but Rick insists they bring him along because he’s just a kid, despite the fact he just tried to kill them all.
I’m not really sure what the writers were trying to achieve with Lori at this point. She had become tolerable before the mid-season finale, but, as I noted last week, this act of selfish idiocy knocked her back down the ladder. Perhaps they were trying to win her fans by showing how tough she can be, by having her take out two Walkers post car crash (and pregnant!), but staying her dumb butt on the farm would have been a lot more practical. And there is the eternal tug-of-war she has of appreciating Shane’s help, only to hate him five seconds later. It’s all very one-dimensional for a character who could have had so many fascinating layers, but was lost due to poor writing.
Then there is the Randall issue. Rick’s insistence that they save a guy who had mere moments before tried to kill them, and who was traveling with companions whom Rick had a bad enough feeling about he unceremoniously shot them down, never sat well with me. But it was all just a plot device to drag out three more episodes as we watch the group argue and tear itself apart over Randall’s eventual fate. I understand why it was added, but not the initial set-up of the situation. And in this instance, Rick’s characterization is called into question (not as badly as his poor decision making in the second half of Season 5, though).
As the Group’s days on the farm dragged on, the writing clearly began to wane as well. And instead of adding depth to the characters, it feels more like excuse after excuse to keep everyone there until the finale. Thankfully it is a shorter season.
Channel: Superhero 