I got around to watching Episode 4 last night. The reason why I didn’t get to watch it Monday night is twofold: I wasn’t in the mood to, and more importantly, my lovely wife wanted to play Assassin’s Creed. So when I got home last night, she asked if I planned on watching it, I nodded, and she told me that I’d better get my ass in gear so she could get back to assassinatin’. In other news, my wife is uber cool.

Overall, this episode felt really sluggish. Nothing really great seemed to happen, and for a while nothing awful did either. Thankfully, there was a dash of both as it progressed. The episode began with the funeral scene. I think. For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll go ahead and say it did. People were piling rocks to make a grave for Otis, only it’s not really a grave and more a memorial, since I don’t think anyone went back for his shambling corpse. I wondered if the pile of rocks was something they did for everyone that had died so far and they just added more to the top, because otherwise that is one serious fuckload of rocks if you’re not actually burying anything. I mean, it was like 5 feet high.

Anyway, people say nice things about Otis offscreen, prayers are said, then Shane is asked to say the Final Speech since he was with Otis when he got eaten. I’m sure that’s what Otis would have wanted, to have the guy that he knew for a couple of hours before shooting him in the leg and leaving him as live bait having the final word. And really, even if Shane hadn’t killed the dude, I’m sure no one would want to hear what he had to say. “Shane, would you like to say a few words? You were with him when he died.” “Sure. Otis got eaten by zombies. He was pretty slow, physically and mentally. His clothes are too big for me. That’s really all I know about him. And as a dude that just had this harrowing life-threatening experience and a bad ankle and obvious signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, I’d just like everyone to back the fuck up off of me for a little while. I didn’t see your lame asses going to Zombie High for stuff.” That’s what I would have said.

Carl is awake off and on. He serves no purpose in this episode. I may copy and paste that for use in each future episode’s review.

The search for Sophia goes on. Daryl goes off alone with some good lines about being better off alone anyway, and when Rick says something about moving on without them, Daryl responds with, “My other plans fell through.” I’d have been perfectly happy if he’d added “when you left my brother handcuffed in a city overrun by zombies and he had to hack his hand off with a rusty blunt saw blade to escape.” Daryl is by far the best character on the show. He’s the only one that exhibits growth and depth, like when he tells Sophia’s mom the story about the Cherokee Rose and shows a tender, empathic side. As my wife declared after the show, “If they kill off Daryl, I am never watching this fucking show ever again.” My gut says they kill him off at some point. I seriously believe he is the only survivor whose death would have emotional resonance. Who else would? Mopey? T-Dog? Stubblepate? Lori? Hell, I’d cheer if she died.

Anyway, I’m not going to bother going chronologically. I’ll just hit the scenes as I remember them. Daryl finds a house and pokes around and finds evidence of someone staying there recently, someone who was small enough to sleep in a pantry. Either that, or the prior owners left a blanket on the floor. Either way, it gives a hint to someone being alive and around. Poor dude is also down to one bolt for his crossbow. I have a bad feeling that this fact is foreshadowing.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, the old vet tells Rick to Pack Shit, Get Out when Carl is up and around. Rick looks confused and hurt. I can’t blame the old guy for that, especially since he’s keeping a DEEP DARK SECRET HIDDEN, but if Rick really wanted to settle in the area, my guess is that there is probably a neighboring farm they could take over if they wanted to. There is a little town a mile away, so it stands to reason that other farmhouses with wells and shit are around. They could stay close, relax, get fat and happy, do whatever. I honestly don’t have any idea what they plan to do otherwise. Seems like a nice place. Regardless, the old man’s words make Rick act like he’s been exiled from the land of Goshen and must walk the earth for forty days and forty nights. Dude, just take the house next door. What’s the old man gonna do about it?

Anyway. The old man tells the group that he doesn’t want guns around. As a show of acquiescence and thanks for saving his kid, Rick pulls his gun and sets it on the truck hood. Shane argues, then relents, placing his gun on the hood. A minute later, he picks it up and puts it in his holster. Subsequent shots show Rick’s is gone and presumably holstered as well. Apparently, that was good enough for the old man, even though the situation is no different than before. Rick and the old man also talk later about God but it doesn’t serve much purpose.

Oh, and Glen (Glenn? Glennn? Not sure how he spells it and don’t care enough to check) goes to town with Aragorn in both senses of the word. AMC got all racy and even showed sideboob. Edgy! I liked that scene, because of Glen’s awkwardness and discomfort and general perfection of the actual state a shy guy would be in that situation. It was well-acted and I was actually happy for Glen. Of course, Aragorn’s Fuck Me eyes, posture, words, and practically bent-over-and-begging act from before kinda let us know this was coming. Still, I liked it.

Besides getting a piece of ass, they’d gone to the pharmacy to get supplies, including something that Lori asked Glen in ALL SECRECY to get for her, which was obviously going to be a pregnancy test. Of course, if I were Lori and I needed someone to grab me a feminine hygiene style product, I’d have probably asked the chick who was going, especially since she doesn’t know any of the backstory of when who might have been sleeping with who, doesn’t know any of the Rick Group to blab to, would actually know what was being asked for and could probably be discreet, and don’t women like go to the bathroom together and shit and talk about secret things and do all that? I mean, sure, go ahead, ask the Possible Virgin who knows that you and Shane were close while she thought her husband was dead for a pregnancy test. I’m SURE he can keep a secret.

Lori also gets asked by Shane if she meant what she said about staying. She says she did. This is the same guy that attempted to rape her. This is what we in the real world call “Mixed Signals.” Don’t tell your rapist that you want them to stick around. That’s a free tip from me to you.

After the Gun Talk, Shane, Sophia’s mom (I swear no one has said her name for 3 episodes at least), and Mopey Blonde go tramping through the woods looking for the kid. Of course, in this scene Shane practically says, “Oh, and I shot Otis, by the way” in a weird and roundabout way. Still, I think he gets a pass for PTSD. Anyway, Shane has his shotgun. So far, so good. Then Blondie asks when she could get her gun back, and I’m confused. She had it last episode. Then, as they begin talking, I realize that THEY LEFT THEIR FUCKING PISTOLS BEHIND. Because of the old man. Whose farm they ARE NO LONGER ON. THEY ARE IN THE WOODS THAT HAVE ZOMBIES IN THEM AND LET THEIR GUNS BEHIND. What the fuck is the matter with these people? Did they decide that we didn’t yet have enough bitching from Mopey about her gun? These people are fucking stupid and deserve everything bad that could possibly happen to them. This was one of the parts of the show that made me just throw my hands in the air. Fucking stupid. But not as bad as the Well Scene.

OK. T-Dog and, uh, Old RV Guy chat with Aragorn about water. She says they have 5 wells. One is for the house and the other for the cattle I guess, and both are good for drinking. Which makes me think that the other 3 aren’t good for drinking. Why not? Clearly they are just holes dug in the same ground that fill with water. Anyway, whatever. The pair of Hey, We’re On This Show Too, But Mostly For Reaction Shots guys head to the well. They are pumping the handle, getting water, and Old RV Guy heads over to the wellcap, which is broken and sounds are coming from. There’s a zombie in the well! Only if Lassie had been around to warn them earlier. RV prevents T-Dog from drinking zombie-poop water, which I think is a damn fine idea.

Later, of course, the group of everyone-but-Lori-Rick-and-Carl-and-Daryl, plus Aragorn, gathers around the well. What to do? Shoot the zombie? NO! Can’t do that! Might contaminate the well!

…

Really?

…

OK, so we’ve got this corpse in the well. It’s moving, but it’s a corpse. And it’s been in there for a long fucking time, based on its bloating and oozing and all that shit. See, me personally – I’m not drinking out of that well. I’m not washing my hands in it. That well is fucking dead to me.

Everyone else, though, seems to be of the mind that if they can just get the zombie out of the well, then everything will be fine. These people are clearly desperate to die. I just can’t fathom this reasoning at all. It’s fucking month old Zombie Tea at this point. The dude’s guts have probably at least partially descended from its anus by now (enjoy your breakfast!) and all kinds of shit has probably leaked out of his other orifices and WHAT THE FUCK, PEOPLE. Are you serious?

They are! But they can’t lure him out with a canned ham. Uh, obvs, as Aragorn says with a look that conveys her belief that these people are batshit crazy, because otherwise the walking dead would be all about cupboards and not people. So they decide that they need Live Bait, and everyone looks at Glen. Now, I know it’s supposed to be a funny and cute little scene, where Glenn gets all like “Why me?” and does it anyway. Well, if I’m Glen, I say, FUCK YOU. Let’s find a fucking chicken or a goat or something. But of course he does it. Maybe he thinks it’ll impress Aragorn. Maybe it works, since she gives it up to him later in the store.

So near as I can tell, their plan is this: lower down Glen and he’ll hook a rope to it. Why Glenn needs to be really far fucking down the well to do it and why they need live bait at all seems a little confusing. If they are just going to try to hook a rope around its neck, then I would think it would be easier to do that when its arms aren’t flailing around trying to get live bait. If they are planning on using a big-ass hook, then that’s going to release all the zombie goo in the world. Let’s assume they are going with the Noose Method. And of course, they are doing all of this without notifying the homeowner, because fuck that guy who saved the kid’s life and gave everyone a hot shower and food.

It was at this point I turned to my wife and said, “This is the second-dumbest plan ever, behind Jeepers Creepers.” See, in Jeepers Creepers, a brother and sister improbably stop at a farm where a terrifying truck driver has apparently dumped a dead body down a corrugated tube. They go to the tube and try to look in, but can’t see down the long tube enough to make anything out. The brother comes up with this brilliant plan: he’s going to crawl head-first into the tube and rely on his 85-pound sister to hold his feet so he can get an amazing six feet closer to the bottom of this 50-foot shaft and “see something”. In a shocking turn of events, he falls down the tube. We saw that movie in the theater, and my wife almost stabbed me in the throat with a straw to get me to shut up about it. I was going off.

So, here we are with the second-worst plan ever. Why? Well, imagine you are being hauled up a well, without an overhead pulley system. You’re probably going to be worried about stuff like scrapes and skin peeling off and abrasions and possible horrible fucking gashes from the rocks and especially from the lip of the well, when you are about to be dragged across a nice hard 90 degrees of stone. Now, these people are trying to haul up a dead, bloated corpse. It’s moving, yes, but it’s still a rotting corpse. It’s not going to fend itself off from the rocks. It doesn’t give a fuck, much like a honey badger. It’s more than happy to get its skin scraped off. Long story short, Zombie Juice is going in that well. Of course, the zombie gets torn in half as they try to haul it across the lip of the well in a big No Shit moment. Bloated corpses are not notorious for their structural integrity. I am aware of this. I am not a police officer, or a nurse (like two of the people there). I have no medical training. I have merely picked this up by being alive in the TV age. I would expect that someone maybe thought about that fact.

But what bothers is that no one seems to think of anything. Ever. It’s just bop around and stumble into shit. They had all the time in the world to come up with a plan. They could have asked each other, “Would you drink out of that fucking well?” Apparently, they don’t. This is why I hate them. I imagine if Rick or Daryl were there, they might have asked, “What the fuck is wrong with you people?” But they didn’t. What a shit stupid scene. The zombie effect was good though.

The show ends with the Big Reveal: ZOMG Lori is pregnant! Who is the father? Is it Rick’s evil twin? Since Rick seemed to grow an inch of stubble overnight that qualifies as Suspicious Facial Hair. It’s a big-ole soap opera reveal. And incidentally, why didn’t Lori just use the frickin’ bathroom instead of wandering out directly through a field of tents to squat in an open field? Maybe she didn’t like the wallpaper inside.

All I know is this: if she tells Shane she’s pregnant and it might be his, she is the dumbest fucking person on Earth. I might mentally check out on that one.