Thank you for checking out Comic Booked for our full episode reviews of The Walking Dead Season Two. This installment, we are on the home stretch to the end of this season, with Episode Nine.
Last episode, Rick and his crew dealt with the fallout of Shane opening the barn where they found a large group of walkers including Sophia, Carol’s young daughter. Hershel had given up hope and headed to the bar to start drinking again after years of sobriety. Glenn and Rick went to retrieve him after Beth collapses and becomes catatonic. At the bar, the three are introduced to some new “friends” Dave and Tony. This friendship is short-lived as Rick, in evaluating the men as a threat to his group and Hershel’s family, shoots both men. They had mentioned they had buddies back at camp, so let’s see who comes looking for them.
Season Two: Episode Nine – Triggerfinger
If you remember last episode, Lori had left the farm to go and get Rick and Hershel. On the way there, while not watching the road, she hit a walker, freaked out, and flipped her car over, and in the process was knocked unconscious. “Triggerfinger” picks up with Lori upside down in the car as a storm is approaching. Oh, and there is a walker trying to get her through the glass of the windshield. Lori wakes up and is obviously afraid, seeing the walker licking the glass like a fat kid in a donut shop trying to get into the pastry case.
Back in town, we pick up from the end of last episode. Rick just killed Dave and Tony. They were crude and lacked manners and would not take no for an answer. At this point, Rick is sick of his leadership being questioned and knew that the only way to protect the group was to remove this problem. Glenn is visibly shaken up, but it seems that Hershel condones the shooting, partly because it was self defense and partly because it was to protect the group. His nod says it all.
Rick takes the time to go through the dead men’s pockets, and as they head for the door they see lights from a car. All three hide inside the bar listening. It sounds like three men, calling for Dave and Tony. One of the men says he heard shots. In this case, I think they would all rather deal with a horde of walkers than the unknown men outside the doors.
At the car, Lori is still struggling to get out of the vehicle while the walker is struggling to get in and eat Lori. Through a small hole in the windshield, the walker pushes its head in, shaving skin right off its face, making an even more frightening situation out of things as this grotesque bloody thing gnashes and growls. The creature grabs her hair and she reaches for the closest thing, the turn signal handle on the side of the steering wheel. Many people where I live do not even know what this thing is for, let alone how to use it, but Lori grabs it, breaks it off, and stabs it in the creature’s eyeball, shutting it down.
Emerging from the overturned car, Lori pauses to catch her breath and almost meets her end at the hands of another walker. She slips out of the heavy jacket she was wearing and falls over. Grabbing a hubcap, she smacks the walker upside the head stunning it for just a few seconds. She sees the gun she dropped inside the car, dives for it, turns, and shoots the walker in the head. But, did that sound just serve to seal her fate by attracting more?
At the farm, everyone is worried. Shane decides the best thing to do is head out first thing in the morning. The rest of the groups is sitting down to dinner. No one knows where Lori is, since she told no one she was leaving.
In the bar, Glenn, Rick, and Hershel are careful to make little noise. They decide to try to run out the back, get to the cars, but before they can the other three men come back to check out the bar. Glenn slides across the floor just in time to push the door shut, but the men know that someone is in there.
After a bit of silence and indecision, Rick finally speaks up. “They drew on us.” After some back and forth with the men outside, Rick asks if they can just call this what it was “Wrong place, Wrong…”
He is cut off by a shotgun blast through the window above his head. So much for a peaceful resolution. Several shots are fired from both sides, then quiet.
Carol comes out to Daryl’s fire to tell him that the others aren’t back yet and Lori is missing too. It is clear that Carol cares for Daryl, but he resists at every turn. He will not take part in any search. Shane takes off to look for Lori. He finds her upside down car but Lori is nowhere to be found.
In town, Glenn heads out the back door of the bat into a storeroom. A creepy place, made more creepy by the silence and darkness. As he nears the rear of the building, he hears the men outside stumbling around as they make their way to the back door from the outside. Glenn takes a shot at them through the window. Hershel heads back to Glenn and tells him to run for the car while he covers. As soon as Glenn exits the building, one of the guys shoots at him. Hershel takes him down, but Glenn falls behind the dumpster and Hershel is worried that he might have been hit.
As Rick runs to the dumpster, he finds Glenn unhurt but so sacred he probably needs a change of pants. Rick wants them to try for the car but the sniper on top of the pharmacy has them pinned down. Just then the third guy, in a white pickup truck, pulls up and yells that they have to go because there are “roamers” all over the place. The guy jumps down off the roof to a lower roof, bounces and rolls down, then all we hear is screaming. The guy in the truck takes off and leaves him.
Rick runs to the other side of the street to see what happened to the guy while Glenn goes to get Hershel just in time to see the guy that Hershel shot getting his face eaten off by a pack of walkers. I was going to say hungry walkers, but what other kind is there, right?
Rick finds the sniper laying on a dumpster with his leg impaled on a fence post. Very nasty. Hershel does not see a way to remove the leg without tearing it up and thinks that it is better to just shoot him and leave. They decide to cut off the lower leg and at least save the guy’s life. The walkers are coming and as hard as Hershel worked to get the guy off the fence he could not. Finally, as it looks like they will just have to leave him, Rick grabs his leg and just wrenches it up off the gate.
Shane comes across Lori on the road walking and stops to pick her up. She will not go back because she wants to go get Rick. Shane lies and tells her that everyone is back safe and sound. She is so happy and gets in the car to go with him.
Carol goes out to talk to Daryl and once again he lays in to her. He says that all she had to do was keep an eye on her daughter and that now she is just afraid because she is alone. He tells her to leave him alone and when he lunges at her, she flinches, as she probably had done so many times waiting for Ed’s blows to land, but Daryl does not put a hand on her.
As Shane pulls in to the drive of the farm, Lori gets out and asks after Rick. When she finds out that they are not back yet, she goes after Shane, but he says he just wanted to make sure she and the baby were alright. That is, the baby that no one else knew about until now. Thanks, Shane. Carl is stunned that his mother would be pregnant and not tell him. Dale takes her in the house to make sure she is okay. Shane just wants to explain himself, but it seems more like he was trying to convince her that he was dedicated to her. She wants Rick there to protect them.
Lori says, “I told Rick.” Meaning that she told him about the fact that she was sleeping with Shane after she thought he was dead. Shane does not take that well and asks if she told him it was a mistake. Lori nods. Shane will not believe that. At this point, I would say that Shane has slipped over the edge of sanity. He wanted that family and felt like it was real, but Lori will not admit that. She felt like all hope was lost and that was what she had to hold on to.
Morning comes to the Green farm. Beth is still catatonic but starting to get dehydrated, so Patricia plans to start an I.V. in order to get some fluids into her. Maggie begins to tell a story about when she came home from school one Sunday and she went out riding. Beth started unpacking Maggie’s thing as soon as they get home from church. She found Maggie’s birth control pills and ran outside and threw them in the pond. Maggie go back and they proceeded to screaming at each other, then Shawn, their brother, came out. In the end, they’re all covered in mud and Beth tells Hershel that they were just swimming. She ends with “Glenn’s a good guy.”
As Shane, Andrea, T-Dog, and Daryl are preparing to go search for Rick and Hershel, they see the dust trail and the truck barreling down the road. They have a passenger, and this just adds to the confusion. Hershel asks Patricia to prepare the shed for surgery so they can help this guy. T-Dog points at the truck and says “Who the hell is that?” Glenn says, “That’s Randall.”
Now, the group argues over what to do with Randall. They understand that there were more guys and they want Randall gone, but not sent back to his group. What if he tells them where they are? What if they come looking. Rick says that he was blindfolded the whole way there and, once he can walk, they will take him back to a crossroads, give him a canteen, and let him go.
Shane thinks this is ridiculous and starts to storm out, once again bad mouthing Rick’s decision and questioning his leadership. Hershel proceeds to put him in his place. “This is my farm and I wanted you gone. Rick talked me out of it, but you just keep your mouth shut.” It is clear that Shane does not appreciate being talked to like this, but someone had to shut him up. Andrea goes after him, Carol tries to talk to Daryl, and Maggie tries to talk to Glenn. Glenn tells her that they had a rough time in town, he was afraid and he froze. He can’t accept that she loves him. He could not take the fact that she would be hurt if she lost him. He feels like loving her will weaken him and he will be selfish when he needs to do more for the group.
Andrea tries to give Shane a pep talk. “Your presentation leaves a lot to be desired.” They both feel like leaving Randall alive will bring on a war, but how do they go about stopping it?
Lori can see that Shane is dangerous and wants to make sure that Rick knows that. She tells Rick that she thinks that Shane killed Otis not just to save Carl but because he loves her. Rick tries to explain what he did, killing those men, to protect the family. Lori whispers in his ear that Shane is dangerous and they need to be protected from him. The look on Rick’s face is one of fierce determination as the screen fades and the music rises.
How will the group deal with Randall and Shane? What is the next threat? Walkers? The group of men? Or something more insidious?
another really good episode.