Tonight’s episode was pretty good, and then it made me as angry as I’ve ever been at a TV show. A hate formed inside me for a character so white hot, that I couldn’t think rationally. I blacked out for the entire ensuing commercial break.
I’m sure you know at what point and at what character this rage was directed at; Andrea shooting Darryl.
Not only has Andrea been a real shit of a character ever since her sister died. Not only is Darryl my favorite character in the show, and not by a small margin. Not only had he just emerged triuphantly from a forrest crucible of character develepment; no, that wasn’t enough. The writers decided to make Andrea shoot him in the most excruciatingly dickhead way they could. First, she appointed herself lookout, wisely replacing the negligent Dale. So that was defensible. But she’s going to waste a bullet and make noise that can be heard for miles, when they’ve impressed upon us this entire season that doing both is phenomenally stupid? And not in a moment of panic, no, she just wanted to show the boys that her gun penis was as long and girthy as theirs.
And it’s not like she was even sure what she was shooting at. She new Darryl could be in the woods. Or Sophia. And she’s shooting blind into a group of her allies at what she’s not even completely sure is a zombie?
RAAAAAHHRRR! GRAAAH! *spittle* NRRAAAYAHH!
Okay, I think I’ve got it out of me. The thing that really pisses me off? It’s pointless from a storytelling standpoint. Darryl wasn’t hurt. And Andrea felt bad, sure, but the show wasted no time in assuaging her guilt with a scene with Dale played off as a joke. I feel like these writers are both clueless and have no balls. As pissed as I would have been, it would have been interesting to kill Darryl and force Andrea to deal with that and also put us, as the audience, on notice that no one in this show is safe, at any time. I would have hated this, but I would have respected it. I don’t understand how what happened served the characters or plot; it was just like a joke they played on us over a commercial break.
It’s too bad because up until then, I really dug the episode. I like the flashback sequences of the early stages of the outbreak. I really liked Darryl’s solo ride over the backwoods, his personal struggle with delusion-Merle, his display of uber-badass in slaying the walkers, taking their ears, and eating a raw tree-rat, and the various Darryl wisdom he delivered throughout the episode. “You believe in blood sucking dogs? / You believe in the dead walking around eating people?” “Yeah, well people in hell want slurpies.” “You got half way up, stop being a pussy.”It also gave us some nice artistic flourishes, like the broken doll found at the same place that broken rag doll Darryl ends up after his tumble. I even liked the way they revealed Herschel’s terrible secret.
But goddamn if any of that mattered because of Andrea. I need another 24 hours to process, because right now I’m sure that it’s just a shitty writing choice. Maybe it’s brilliant; because after all it’s been since season four of The Wire that I’ve felt this strong of an emotion in connection to a TV show.
Other thoughts…
- Rick and Shane bullshitting about high school went on a touch too long, didn’t it?
- 11 condoms. 11 minutes Maggie will never get back. Ouch. I guess it really was that bad. Even when Maggie relents and goes all Jr. High on Glenn passing notes under the table, Glenn can’t help being a smug douche about it. Lord almighty.
- Ed strikes me as a real “Soldier of Fortune” magazine type wanker.
- For someone who is self described at being terrible at lying, the lies Glenn is being entrusted with are starting to mount up. Reminds me of the episode of Friends where Joey has to keep the secret of Monica and Chandler being a couple.
- I liked the interactions between Merle and Darryl. It is really good writing, using sparse screen time to get across the depth and complexity of Darryl and Merle’s relationship while simultaneously showing us how different the two brothers are.
- Hershel seems to be rethinking his decision about the group this episode, and I think Rick is right there with him.
- I don’t like Carol buttering Darryl up. No, please, no. Let’s just not go here.
So that’s what I thought! How about you? Send us your take via email, Facebook, or Twitter. We’ll read as much as we can on air during our podcast, which records and is released Tuesday evening. Be looking for an article or two from Jim this week, as well as my weekly Survival Review which comes out Friday. Don’t forget, if you like what we do, please help support us through our Amazon affiliate link, amazon.baldmove.com. By using it, you get the same great deals and pricing through Amazon, and we get a tiny percentage of your purchase to help us keep the bandwidth flowing. See you Tuesday evening for the podcast!