The Half Time of the Walking Dead

Well we have reached the half season finale of "The Walking Dead," and it pretty much worked. If there is a problem that both the first season and the second season so far share it's that they tend to have a good beginning episode and a good ending but then pad the middle. The second season is far worse in the respect than the first with its aimless human wanderings. Because of this, this episode seemed to move almost too fast. Some of the fights between characters seemed amped up from 4 to 8 without a real justification for the amplification. Still, after all the hunting for Sophia walkathons I'm going to take this episode with a grin.

It all starts when Glenn, world's WORST secret keeper, let's the cat out that Hershel has a barn of zombies. Our crew is not happy. I can understand this, besides not wanting to have a horde of zombie part, because of their adventures in Atlanta with the CDC. It must feel like deja vu. They find a place of safety then find out the fellow running the place is coo coo for koo koo puffs. So, I can see how the tension is a lot more than what it might have been otherwise.

Ol' St. Rick though thinks he can talk this all out. So he goes over to Hershel for a little chit chat. Hershel doesn't want none of it, and wants them off his land. This is a reasonable position. Unfortunately, Rick has learned some things about post apocalypse living and basically says they are staying short of a gun battle. Instead, he offers to try to find a way their two groups can live together. Hershel doesn't want to change his belief systems and instead challenges Rick to basically walk a mile in his shoes. All this means that soon enough they are fishing zombies out of the creek to put in the barn.

Meanwhile, Shane is getting on everyone's nerves. Shane's acting like he has just a combination of PCP, cocaine and skunk musk. He's a wired dude and he's basically going around saying "See? See? I was right!" Unfortunately, he's not getting much love. Specially from Lori he basically tells him to take a hike and the baby is most definitely not his. Dale is trying to hide guns from Shane and that didn't go over well.

Anyway, with everyone's tempers at edge it only took one little thing to spark it all off. Seeing Rick and Herschal bringing back zombies was it. I'm sure some in the group wondered if Rick had switched sides or something. Others might have seen it as Rick being his usual too good for this world self. In any event, it causes Shane's head to blow off like a cartoon character and he runs to the barn and basically starts the first human/zombie kent state.

The interesting thing is after a bit of hesitation everyone in Rick's group joins it. The mob has formed and it's an ugly thing even when it's doing something right like killing zombies. It's ugly because you have no idea how it's going to turn or twist. A few more words from Shane and those same good and not so good people might have started shooting Hershel's group or Rick. In any event, this was the moment that Shane might have been able the wrench back the group under his control.

Then came the punchline.

They finally found Sophia. It stopped them all as if they were hit on the head with a baseball bat. You can see the conflicting emotions move on their faces as they were rooted to the spot. Finally, it was Rick, who did the hard thing.

In the next episode there's going to be some hard explaining to do. Hershel and his group knew that they were looking for a little girl, and they just got in a little girl zombie. That wouldn't seem to take a lot of mental math to put the twos together and get the four. So then they will have to explain why they kept mum on it.

Should be interesting.