OK. We last left the Grimes’ Gang after the Zombie Barn Massacre on Herschel’s farm. You remember, the one where Herschel conveniently forgot to mention that him and his boys had rounded up a pre-teen girl very similar to the one that everyone was looking for and freaking out about? Right. THAT one.
So we’re back and everyone is still freaking out.
Angst Factor
Oh it is HIGH, you guys. Why? BECAUSE. The direction is now indefinite. Before everyone knew a few things: Sophia needed to be found. That was the true north. Having that definition meant that Glen and Maggie could hook up, that Shane could be functionally psychotic and Lori could be pissed about a litany of things. But now? Chaos theory. There’s a bunch of dead zombies in front of a barn, everyone fired their weapons, OUR PETS HEADS ARE FALLING OFF. It’s just a very angsty situation all around.
This also gave us the best Head Slap Scene…
Head Slap Scene
One of Herschel’s family (daughter? niece?) goes to purvey the dead for some strange reason. Always a great idea by the way. Let’s go sort through the minefield of dead zombies. I’m sure all the amateur shooters nailed every single one of them in the head. BUT WAIT YOU GUYS! They did NOT and one ripe looking lady zombie guns for the throat.It takes an entire village to raise a baby AND to remove the zombies rotten hands from the girl’s neck. T Bone / Dawg even stomps on her face but she’s like “LOL, Didn’t hurt because you are the worst at zombie apocalypses.” Finally Andrea has to step in with a heavy contender for zombie kill of the week with some kind of farm tool to the head.

Later, Maggie and Glen have a DTR when he asks her if she knew about Sophia. She makes huge bug eyes and doesn’t answer the question and we assume this is a no and that it’s ok for Glen to keep loving her. Ok phew. I already saw The Vow once this weekend. I’d hate to have to experience all this star-crossedness AGAIN.

How Many Stupid Faces Did Carl Make?

Oh, like a trillion. Especially when he was talking to Lori about how good it was to waylay all the dead zombies in the barn.

He was all like, “I know this is going to sound like I’m becoming a cold human in response to all the horror in the world, but I’m glad I just watched our former family and friends all get faces full of bullets. They DESERVED it because if you don’t start none, there won’t BE none and they definitely started some. If my face didn’t look so stupid all the time, I would have done it all myself.”

The State of Shane’s Soul
It’s breaking badly. Shane believes that the barn massacre was justified and it kind of was. He didn’t need to celebrate it like he did and put it on his Facebook wall, but it needed doing. HOWEVER, Shane is overlooking the importance of community in a world filled by walkers.

Clearly, he is working himself into a lather about opposing Rick on everything and methinks that there will be a confrontation sooner rather than later with Rick and this probably won’t end well for Shane.

But luckily for Shane, he did come away with a consolation prize.

Sweat Stain of the Week

There were some heavy contenders, but Shane is far and away the best. Why? Because he kills the zombies AND burns them and the only help he gets is from Andrea picking up torn off arms and T-Bone/Dawg, whom we know is useless because he can’t even walk through a parking lot without getting his arm ripped open.

Later, Shane stomps off to go “do whut needs a doin” and notices Dale leering at him like a pedophile from the back of a Dodge Stratus. This leads to Shane getting pissed because of all the judgment Dale is heaping on him with his crazy eyes.

Status of Dale’s Wild Eyes

Basically, anytime Shane is around, Dale’s eyes go into full blown, “I’m looking at a talking elephant mode,” so this episode included a lot of that, even though most of Dale’s wildeyeness occurred from long distance. But basically all that happens is that Shane yells at Dale for doing nothing but growing huge eyebrows.
Carol says some depressing things about Sophia and then Herschel does some things the make us think he’s about to begin cross-dressing, but then he picks up a flask and thinks better of it, I guess?
Then Carol picks some flowers and get’s PISSED either because she JUST remembered she hates flowers or because flowers symbolize false hope.
After that, Andrea and T-Bone / Dawg argue with Dale that they should have shot all the zombies and Lori gets pissed because everyone is arguing.

Glen and Maggie have more of a DTR and I’m worried that this is going to be another half-season storyline that drags on. Should they be together? Shouldn’t they? Maybe? Then, the same girl who tried to loot the dead zombies from the barn passes out, probably out of boredom from Glen and Maggie’s conversation.

Everyone discovers that Herschel is gone and that they could use his help with the girl who passed out. They go to Herschel’s room and Shane spots a flask leading he and Rick deduce that Herschel is at the town bar. WHOA guys. That is some seriously incredible deductive capabilities. Rick surmises that he must go fetch Herschel and this, naturally, pisses Lori off.
Lori and Dale hang out and Dale reiterates his theory of exactly what happened with Otis. Clearly, the zombie apocalypse makes your powers of deduction absolutely unbelievable. This is incredible.Back from commercial and Glen and Rick take a phallic car ride that talks about Glen’s relationship with Maggie and we find out that Glen loves her. (Cue woo noise from the audience).

The girl who passed out is still passed out. This pisses Lori off so she tries to send Darryl after Rick and Glen and Herschel. I have no idea why this seemed like a good idea. Isn’t this what Rick is doing? I’m so confused. What would Darryl say when he caught up to them?
“Hey Herschel. They need you at the farm.”
“Ok. Rick and Glen just told me that.”
“Ok. Well see you back there.”Also, I could be wrong, but did Herschel have ice in his drink? And why does Rick still carry his walkie?

Lori decides to go for a drive to fetch Rick (seriously am I missing the need for a 3rd retriever?) and while driving she sees a stray walker, which pisses her off so she hits it. Not really, she accidentally hits it, but after doing so, she speeds up and flips her car ending up in a ditch, which you can be sure, pisses her off, but not too bad because she did get ZOMBIE KILL OF THE WEEK from it…

Back at the bar, Rick and Herschel share passionate speeches about things like life, hope and nutella. And just as Herschel seems prepared to go back to the farm to help his daughter/niece HE GUESSES, two strangers enter the bar. (One of who was one of my favorite characters from Terriers, BTW. Such a good show.) This, invariably, leads to the scene of the episode.
Best Scene of The Episode
Rick and the crew drink with the strangers. The strangers want to join up but Rick says no. Soon, we can feel the malevolence rising and Rick, even though he’s in a cross fire, wastes BOTH of the yankees.
 
The episode ends with Glenn being nervous, Herschel is so drunk that he’s trying to play Dude Looks Like a Ladyon the jukebox and Lori being pissed that Rick hasn’t deductively figured out that she’s in a ditch.

What were your favorite moments?