The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 12: Better Angels

Joe Chiarenzelli is an editor on The Gadfly Press who cares way too much about television. 

Sarah Baver is a senior at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. When she isn't watching The Walking Dead she is assessing zombies of the philosophical kind in her honors thesis The Existential Zombie. Her research involves augmenting the philosophical zombie thought experiment by placing it within the existential framework of Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus in order to illustrate the relationship between the subjective experience that comprises the phenomenal mind and the ability to make meaningful existence by way of one’s own free choice. 

Joe:

Sarah, firstly I have to get out of the way that opening montage scene. It was a perfect juxtaposition of the sentimentality and brutality of human nature. On one hand we have a beautiful burial and oration about Dale and see how his death has made his point better than he was able to in life. On the other we have Shane and some other folks (including a useful T-Dog , what is the world coming to?) just pounding the unliving shit out of some zombies. Besides thematically resonating, the special effects on the zombie beating were downright disgusting. Everyone I watched this episode with was peeking through their fingers each time someone raised their various farm implement to brain one of them. But, onto the content.

Watching this episode and last week's have made me immensely energized about just what the hell is going to happen next. With the death of Dale, and now the death of Shane, the group's whole moral spectrum has been upended. These were the two characters who were the moral extremes of the group, with everyone else falling somewhere in between. The plodding nature of the farm plot has been ramped up insanely. Originally I viewed the farm as a safe haven which our survivors could retreat to in between forays into town for supplies, which I viewed as a cop out. But now we can see that the farm only served that purpose temporarily. What I think is that the relative safety of the farm served to ramp up intragroup tension by having removed the main threat from outside forces, with these past two episodes releasing the tension. It’s also interesting how both Shane and Dale ultimately move to their moral poles right before they die, Shane attempting to kill Rick and Dale playing the advocate for Randall.

Now that these two characters are removed, and with the ending of this episode, I think we are headed towards a more group vs. zombies set of circumstances rather than an intragroup antagonism situation. We see all sorts of signs of this in fact. The mutual bonding between Glenn and Andrea over the RV clearly lacks subtlety but I think that this type of character interaction is natural and fitting for how those two have been growing. What do you think?

Sarah:

Joe, as you have highlighted, this episode and last week’s episode have had us witness the deaths of two of the most polarizing characters, Shane and Dale, respectively. Originally I thought to simplify their two extremes as presenting a narrative of evil versus good, but upon a closer analysis I realize that to do so would be to miss the nuances of these characters and the influence their deaths will have on others as the show progresses. Shane is not wholly evil – the dialogue between Lori and Shane in last night’s episode demonstrated the compassion and love Shane is capable of harboring and the good that can be wrought from it, e.g., being responsible for keeping Lori and Carl alive during the first month of the epidemic. While Shane is not wholly evil, the events that followed his conversation with Lori revealed just how off-kilt his moral compass is. Furthermore, it exhibited the chaotic, impulsive nature of Shane’s actions. Perhaps if he had been more methodical with executing his plan to use Randall’s escape as a way to frame Rick’s death he would have been successful. But his plan quickly unraveled as both Daryl and Rick pieced everything together.

The culmination of Daryl and Rick learning the true nature of Shane’s actions resulted in a two-fold series of events. First, Daryl and Glenn realized that Randall had transformed into a walker without being bitten; his cause of death was a broken neck. While Daryl and Glenn did not fully state the conclusion of this realization, it nonetheless served as the foundation of what Shane’s death demonstrated at the close of the episode – that you do not need to be bitten in order to turn; rather, as long as you die with no brain damage, you will reanimate. This is certainly a crucial plot development, but one that does not need to be elaborated on any further at this time. What does need to be discussed further are the scenes of Shane’s death and of Carl shooting Walker-Shane.

To return to an earlier point, Shane’s death scene demonstrated that he is not wholly evil. While lying on the ground bleeding out from the knife wound, Shane’s expression revealed a man plagued with regret. He was forced to confront the gravity of his actions through the realization that his death was imminent. The scene was crushing and raw, and I don’t think we will see Rick grapple with its devastation until next season.

The scene in which Carl shoots Walker-Shane is as close as the series could have come to recreating the scene in the graphic novel that depicts Shane’s death. The television series, however, diverged significantly from the graphic novel in terms of the implications on Carl’s character development by having him shoot Walker-Shane instead of  living Shane (as he does in the graphic novel). This plot line seems to allow Carl to maintain a sharp distinction between what he will do to walkers and what he will do to the living. The way the plot has been structured leads me to think that Carl would not have shot living Shane. But, the fact that Carl was the one to put Walker-Shane down nevertheless marks a profound shift in Carl’s character development – he has made a 180 from his line of thinking at the beginning of the episode in which he exclaimed he would not need a gun because he wasn’t going to kill any walkers. Not only has Carl now killed a walker, but he has also killed a walker who was once one of his closest friends and role models.

A final note I want to touch upon is the depiction of Daryl as the figure between the moral poles of Shane and Dale. Daryl seems to possess the moral instinct of Dale while still maintaining the survivalist instinct of Shane. Dale’s comment to Shane that he was made for this new world could also be applied to Daryl, but with a caveat: that Daryl represents what it means to be human in this new world (i.e., one that challenges our conception of what it means to be human by presenting the contrast of the reanimated dead) and not what it means to simply survive. 

Joe:

Sarah, it’s interesting to me that you peg Shane’s emotions as compassion. I’ve actually had this discussion several times with people, I think that Shane’s seeming compassion, while legitimate and true, is in fact part of a larger emotional set that subsumes it. From my perspective, the course of the show has detailed how Shane is someone that enjoys the newfound freedom afforded him by the breakdown of civilization. Any pull he had on Lori and Carl was because he helped them immediately in the aftermath of the virus and this forced their dependence on him, whether on purpose or by circumstance. Then when that status was disrupted by the return of his partner he worked to undermine the group and the Grimes’ family for his personal advantage. I'm not saying he is a bad character per se, but I just think he wasn't motivated by love so much as a thirst for power and his id. While that could arguably be called compassion, I think compassion is a secondary characteristic to his basal power thirst.

Even though I think that is the nature of Shane’s motivation, it is still relatively obvious that Shane is unsure whether or not he wants to kill Rick. He delayed and delayed shooting Rick for a long conversation, which reeks of hesitation to me. But I think you’re right in thinking that his face while he lay dying was the face of a man who didn’t realize what his actions had set in motion. I also think you’re right about Rick’s reaction being delayed until the next season, primarily due to the next episodes seeming devotion to full on zombie antics. In my opinion, the only way that Rick was ever going to kill someone was by doing what Shane did, backing him into a corner. The look on his face immediately after he stabs Shane is only intensified when he sees that Carl has witnessed his actions.

A fascinating element of Carl shooting zombie Shane rather than how it played in the comic books, is whether or not Carl would have shot Shane if he had arrived before Rick stabbed him. Both, Rick and Shane had strong moments with Carl in the episode and I’m not entirely sure who he would have sided with if he had gotten there moments earlier? The father who is a bit of a bummer or the “uncle” who was clearly better at currying favor with Carl?

Some final things that I found interesting were around the periphery of all of this. Am I right in thinking that the zombie’s rising if an individual does not die via bite was what Dr. Jenner told Rick as he was leaving the CDC? If that was not the information he gave to Rick, then I have to wonder when this new paradigm of zombification emerged. However, I am pretty sure that is what Jenner said. But if that’s true, why has Rick kept this information from the rest of the group, particularly Glenn who he seems to trust more than anyone else. Another thing, where on earth did this showdown with Shane take place, close enough to the farm that Carl can show up their randomly, but far enough away that they are near a horde of zombies not previously spotted?

T-Dog watch: I counted four or five lines this episode give or take the atrociously stereotypically scripted, though seemingly obligate to this show’s writers, “Aw, hell no!”

Sarah:

Joe, your assessment of Shane is not one I had considered, and you make a convincing case for reading what seem as acts of compassion as expressions of his desire for power, or more specifically, his desire to have someone become totally dependent upon him.

I think you’re also right in stating that the only way Rick is going to kill another person is if that person backs him into a corner. We saw this same element play out in the bar scene a few episodes back as well. Related to Rick’s behavior in the bar scene, I think the fact that Rick double-tapped the overweight side-kick by shooting him in the head after he was already dead gives weight to the argument that what Dr. Jenner whispered into Rick’s ear before the CDC explosion was that everyone is already infected and so long as you die with your brain intact, you will reanimate. I had originally thought that Dr. Jenner told Rick either that information about the virus or that Lori was pregnant, which is information he could have gained from the blood test (the tests seem now to have served as further evidence to Dr. Jenner’s theory on the virus). The fact that Rick was surprised to learn Lori was pregnant in an earlier episode meant that Dr. Jenner had not already told him. This, coupled with the double-tapping at the bar, leads me to think that Dr. Jenner told Rick everyone is already infected. But this still leaves the question you raised about why Rick has not disclosed this information to anyone, especially Glenn unanswered.

And I think that the showdown between Rick and Shane took place close to the farmhouse, which allowed Carl to see that something was going on through his binoculars. I haven’t figured out why Shane would have led Rick to a spot so close to the farmhouse, but perhaps it was further evidence of how hesitant Shane was to go through with his plan to kill Rick. Perhaps he was unconsciously (or consciously) hoping he would get caught.

Also, what was up with those walker visions during Shane’s transformation? Was that from Rick’s perspective or Shane’s? If the former, was it Rick contemplating what was about to happen to his former best friend? If it was the latter, is that something all people experience as they begin to reanimate? If so, what does that mean for how the virus impacts a person’s level of consciousness/awareness? 

Do you think these visions were a look into the mind of a man becoming a zombie or something like Rick viewing himself as acting like a feral walker? What are your thought's on Sunday night's episode? Leave them in the comments.