Since I was on vacation, I didn’t get a chance to watch this episode til last night, so it’s not timely or anything, but whatever. Suck it up. I’ll be catching up with Episode 6 tomorrow, then Episode 7 Thursday, then we’ll be all caught up and everything and YAY.

My general impressions of this episode were boredom, followed by a serious WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE moment, then pretty much nothing after that. This episode seemed mostly to be about people talking and making faces at each other, interspersed with shooting friends in the head. I’ll be going over the episode in as much detail as I can handle, in no particular order. So I won’t be doing a moment-by-moment run-through but will instead, as usual, go with the major themes in the episode.

Oh, and try to stay awake.

The episode begins with a flashback showing how Lori hooked up with the chick with the shaved head. Oh, not “hooked up” like, you know, the horizontal kind’ve way, but more like met up. And I will not pursue that line any more. I’ve already erased three sentences. Suffice it to say that Lori and What’s-Her-Face are not exactly people I’d want to see hooking up. Anyway, Shane and Lori watch them napalm a city I can only imagine is supposed to be Atlanta. You get to see Shane do his weird sideways lope as he moves along. I have no idea what this scene is supposed to show us. That these people met somewhere and that Shane isn’t Carl’s dad? Yeah, we figured that one out already, thanks.

Back in the present, Rick has decided to get serious about this search, so he has grids set up for people to search through. T-Dog (criminy, what a name), some kid I don’t remember seeing before from the farm who doesn’t matter, Shane, Daryl, and Rick are going to split up and go look. There may have been other people there, but if they were they didn’t do anything so who cares.

Shane and Rick are searching the same grid, because I’d want the two supposed best shots together rather than one going with the 17-year-old no one knows. Rick basically complains that Shane doesn’t talk enough anymore, that he’s all quiet, and Rick doesn’t understand why. I dunno, me, I could see people acting kind’ve odd after a zombie plague has destroyed civilization and sent the survivors scurrying around scrounging for water and eating squirrels and all that shit. Maybe a little quiet, a little melancholy, you know. I’d be OK with that. Rick, though, wants Shane to talk about girls he banged in high school. So, OK. I’m beginning to think Rick has feelings for Shane of a forbidden nature. Who knows, maybe Carl isn’t Lori’s baby after all!

Anyway, Shane decides to tell Rick that he’s fucking this shit all up, that they need to concentrate on survival and not on chasing after dumb-ass little girls that insist on running deep into the woods. Rick looks appalled and defends himself weakly. I think the show is trying to show Shane as too hard-edged, too survive-at-all-costs, and Rick presents the soft side that shows empathy for fellow human beings amid a world gone mad, that it’s possible to still be compassionate and manage to survive.

Shane is absolutely fucking right.

I completely side with his position. Looking for this girl has gotten Rick’s own son shot and nearly killed and Daryl ends up stabbed with his own crossbow bolt and then shot in the head by one of his “friends”. Plus, poor ole Otis got eaten. All over a little girl. So they’re already down one whole person, Shane is due for a breakdown for what he did to Otis (justified), and Daryl is hallucinating and pissed. Good job, Sheriff. Shane and Rick end up all pissy with one another and wander into someone else’s grid. Since they’re so busy spatting, they could’ve walked past the dumb kid they’re looking for and not seen her.

Back on the farm, Glenn runs up to Lori and says, “You’re pregnant!” First off, what the fuck is this dumb ass’ problem. Did he root around until he found her pregnancy test results? Is he apparently just assuming that because a woman wants a pregnancy test that she’s automatically pregnant? Maybe he thinks that’s wear babies come from altogether. Then he asks Lori all incredulously if she’s told Rick yet. Again, WTF Glen? What is your basic fucking problem? Remember how she asked you to be fucking discrete yesterday? That doesn’t mean you get a voice in how the woman handles her shit.

In general, Glen was horrible this episode. After getting all up in Lori’s grille, he goes to bitch at Dale (that’s the old guy) about women and how they’re all acting weird. Dale gets this creepy look on his face. “How is Lori acting weird?” he asks, looking like someone who feeds off of gossip and shit. I mean, he looks weird. He asks it about everyone. Then he finds out that Glen banged Aragorn FarmChick and asks him, “What were you thinking?!”

Let me lay it down like this for you, you old fuck. Maybe you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a working penis, but this is generally how it goes down. Glen’s a twenty-something dude. He rides around with 1) an emotionally unstable chick married to the group leader, 2) an emotionally unstable shaved-head chick with a dumb kid, and 3) an emotionally unstable chick who seems suicidal and generally bitchy. Then he runs into a 22-year-old who’s pretty and is Down To Fuck. What the fuck more do you need, old man? “Her father won’t approve.” Oh really. Well, as far as I can tell that old asshole doesn’t carry a gun and his opinion means jack-all, so fuck off and go back to your trailer and do what old people do like smell weird and collect old newspapers. Christ, I hate Dale.

Anyway, Glen tries too hard with AFC and she just smirks and disses him, then she passes him a note under the dinner table saying that she’s again DTF. Glen writes his reply and might as well have walked over to the other table and asked someone out loud to pass this note about a hookup to the other table. I mean, he’s about as discrete as a turd in a water glass. By the time this episode ends, Glen goes from being one of my favorite characters to someone who I can’t even respect.

So anyway, Daryl is all on his own doing his thing. He takes a horse without permission, because why not, he’s Fuckin’ Daryl and the rest of the dumbasses on this show aren’t worth talking to, and goes to scout a ridge. But oh no! He chose Nervous Nellie, who throws him from her back so he falls down a ridge and into a creek where he gets stabbed by his own bolt basically through the kidney. He finds Sophie’s doll, ties it to his belt, or maybe he does that a little later, who cares since it doesn’t matter, tries to scale the ridge, slides down again. He passes out, has a dream sequence where Merle shows up and calls him a pussy and shakes him to get up. Daryl wakes up to see that he is being shaken, but it’s a zombie chomping through the soft flesh of his leg.

Actually, the zombie isn’t. It’s chewing on the tip of Daryl’s boot. So he’s lying there unconscious, a zombie comes, and Daryl is saved because it goes after the tip of his boot. I really struggle with what to say here. I get it, zombies are dumb, but they generally seem to notice the difference between Food and Not Food. Boots are Not Food, or else they’d all be at Payless goin’ wild. But instead of biting him ANYWHERE ELSE, he goes for the boot. I hated that fucking scene. I mean, really hated it. Zombies are dumb, BUT I’M NOT. Jesus Christ. It kind’ve makes the zombies seem less dangerous. Apparently, you can take a nap, and they’ll just try to nibble on your steel-tips until you wake up.

Anyway, Daryl kills the zombie using AMC’s new favorite device of Close Up Head Smashing Fun, which was cool the first time but is getting a little old. Another zombie comes along and Daryl has to push the bolt out through his skin, load the crossbow, and kill it before it attacks his shirt collar or something. He does, because he’s Fuckin’ Daryl. Then he scales the cliff thingy while Merle taunts him in another hallucination, but not before eating raw squirrel and stringing the zombie ears on a necklace. Gotta love Fuckin’ Daryl.

The girls decide to cook dinner for the people who helped them. This is a plot point, I guess. I think the writers just don’t know what to do with females. I can picture them sitting around asking each other what they think girls do in the real world, and came up with this list:

1. Be pregnant.
2. Do laundry.
3. Cook meals.
4. Have sex, then act all weird, then want sex again.
5. Do incredibly stupid and fucking irrational things that no human being would ever do in real life.

I believe this is true, because we get all 5 of those things in this very episode! Old Man Higgins doesn’t like this dinner nonsense and tells AFC to steer clear of Glen. It’s like a slow episode of the fucking Waltons.

So Rick gets back and whines to Lori that Shane was mean. Lori kind’ve indicates that, yeah, Shane has a bit of a point. Rick then asks her, “If it was Carl out there, would you want me to keep looking?!” She looks at him like he’s a fucking moron, and says, “Duh, yes, fuckhead, because that’s my son. The dumb-ass girl isn’t. So, yes.” That’s a paraphrase. Rick stomps away and Shane shows up and tells Lori that he wants to survive and that he’d do everything in the world to save her and Carl. Like, something one would expect the husband/father to say. I’m still not sure if the writers expect me to dislike Shane and like Rick, because that isn’t happening.

The Old Man accosts Rick about taking the kid and his horse on his expedition without permission. Rick hems and haws and says he thought it was OK, that he thought someone else cleared it. He expected a 17-year-old and Daryl to be responsible. That’s an impossibility for a 17-year-old, and do you think Fuckin’ Daryl gives a fuck? He don’t. Then Old Man Higgins drops the line everyone watching agrees with wholeheartedly: “It’s a wonder you all have survived this long.” Amen, Old Dude, amen.

AFC didn’t read Glen’s return note until hours later, of course, because why would she? It was just SO IMPORTANT she had to pass the note while everyone was in the same room, but can’t be bothered to check his answer. Whatever. Of course he’s going to the barn, which is pitch fucking silent until he shines his flashlight down on the 20-or-so zombies milling around in it in the Big Reveal. Old Man Higgins keeps zombies in his barn. AFC runs up and tells Glen that he can’t tell anyone. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Wrong person for that, sweetie. Anyway, zombies in the barn, and I can’t bring myself to give a shit.

But back to Daryl. I saved this for last because I like to do that with The Dumbest Plot Point of the Week. So Daryl comes staggering back. Andrea (AKA Mopey Blonde Chick. I finally remembered her name) is on watch with a rifle. She seems him staggering along and assumes he’s a walker, so she screams out WALKER. Everyone comes running. “Then she says, “I’m gonna shoot it!” Everyone is like, no, we got this. Rick tells her not to. Shane and T-Dog and Rick go running up. Maybe Glen goes, it doesn’t matter. They stop and see it’s Daryl. ZOMG is he dead?!?! He talks. YAY! He’s OK, just bleeding internally and beat to shit and with the girl’s doll. So Andrea, the dumb fucking moron, decides that since everyone is now gathered together, she’s gonna shoot.

She. Waits. Until. Everyone. Is. Next. To. The. Zombie. To. Shoot.

What the fuck? How fucking dumb can you be? Were you trying to add style points for increased difficulty? Dale is telling her not to shoot, because, fucking duh, she doesn’t have to AND there are 3 other people she could accidentally shoot. She does anyway. She shoots Fuckin’ Daryl in the head. Of course, he’s Fuckin’ Daryl, and you have to do better than that since his skull is harder than diamond and he eats zombie ears as snacks. He passes out and they put him in bed and he’s acting pissy because, well, his friends shot him in the head. Justified. Sophie’s Mom brings him dinner and tells him he’s cool and just as good as Shane and Rick. High praise there. He’s Fuckin’ Daryl. Rick is a bitch and Shane is, well, he’s cool, but he ain’t Daryl. Of course, Andrea is feeling bad about shooting him, but Dale makes a joke and everyone’s like fuck it, water under the bridge. She put 4 people’s lives in completely needless danger of her own free will, disobeying a direct order from their leader, and no one gives a shit. I would have beaten her fucking bloody and tossed her in the well.

And that’s it. One day passes in slow and boring fashion, people talky talky, zombies in the barn, they shoot Daryl, who found a doll. At this pace, in Season 14 a month will have passed. Criminy.