Last new episode until February. I really hope the shit finally hits the fan re the zombies in the barn and that it happens at the begining of the episode rather than the end. Hopefully Sophia will show up; alive, dead, or undead. I don’t care which I just want this plot point resolved.
Ohhhh, fuck.
Well, they don’t have to look for Sophie anymore
Kind of poignant, actually, after Shane going on about how the Walkers aren’t people.
Whoa.
Nailed it.
That was a hell of a thing. All of it.
I’m not liking this season as much as the first, in general, but this episode had my attention.
Brilliant episode!, it’s clear all the navel gazing interpersonal whiny crap I was griping about was simply building up to this jaw-dropping ending, BRAVO!
Shane is definitely the voice of reason in this one, pity he had to be pushed to the breaking point and conclusively PROVE to the namby-pamby pantywaists that the old world is DEAD and that emotional ties to the reanimated corpses of freinds and family will get them KILLED, so the only thing to do is strike first, strike hard, and do not stop until the threat has ended
I figured Sophie was dead from day 2, just wasn’t expecting her to be in Zombie Depot™ (in hindsight, I probably should have, though)
Looks like the most levelheaded members of the group are Shane, Daryl, and Glenn, gotta imagine Rick staring down Zombie Sophie would have thoroughly crushed his hopes, staring at his failure lurching hungrily towards him
Hopefully, him putting a .357 in her head will also represent him finally abandoning his naive hope of “things are going to get better”, it’s the Zompocalypse, it ain’t gonna’ get better, only worse
Pretty much a given that Our Motley Crew (or is it Crue? 
) is going to have to leave Otis’s farm now, wonder if Maggie will leave with them…
…then again, they currently DO have Herschel outgunned and outnumbered, they could simply take over the farm… that would be the tactically prudent thing to do at the moment
…assuming the gunplay hasn’t drawn more Walkers, that is…
Funny you should say this, since Shane froze like a dear in headlights at the sight of zombie Sofia, while it was navel-gazing Rick who stepped up and did for her.
Shane’s an asshole, who just happened to be right about “New World, New Rules.” But he’s also a near-amoral borderline sociopath; under his leadership, it would be a nightmare “Lifeboat Rules” kind of group.
Rick knows it’s “New World, New Rules,” but only as far as Walkers are concerned; when it comes to people, he’s still a human being, and was trying to play the patient diplomat to bring Herschel around so the Motley Crew could stay, before Shane forced the situation.
Basically, it boils down to “Us vs. Them.” For Shane, “Us” is anyone who he deems useful. For Rick, “Us” is still anyone with a pulse.
I think Rick will still believe that things can get better, but only if people pull together to make it so.
Wha…huh???
Shane is clearly being made out to be the bad guy - and a dangerous loose cannon at that. He jealously covets Rick’s wife and son, is already claiming that Lori’s baby is his, and is just generally an all-around lying, self-serving, bully.
His meltdown at the barn just exposed what an irrational dick he really was…contemptuously deriding Hirsch for holding onto the past by screaming “they are NOT people!” until Sophie finally lumbers out. Yeah, it’s real easy to dismiss some strangers’ relatives as being walking targets, but when a little girl you have emotional ties to is one of the walkers, oh well that’s another story. Quite conspicuously, Rick had to put down Sophie…even Shane couldn’t bear to do it.
Glenn was right about Shane - he deserves to live in a world of walking dead. He’s violent, possessive & short-sighted. He’s basically a wild animal already.
Wow. That was good. Very good!
My first thought was: Glen ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more, but love conquers all, I guess.
That was brilliant writing. Just when we thought the resolution was going one way, they throw a curve ball and take it into an entirely new direction. Very well executed. No gimmicks, just good, old fashioned plot development.
Can’t wait for Feb.
Shane and Rick moved a bit closer to a balance that will benefit the group, at least for awhile. Maybe now Shane will have some respect for Rick, and Rick won’t be so hard on Shane.
I didn’t like Carl behaving like an adult. Sorry, but the kid gets no say, end of the world or not. Didn’t like Lori wasting time on school work either. Things aren’t nearly settled enough for that. There’s real work to be done.
Loved Glen’s explanation to Maggie, and that she understood. Didn’t like Andrea being coy with Dale. Didn’t like Dale hiding the guns. Rick’s discussion with Herschel was too broad. Tell him what happened with Andrea’s sister, for pete’s sake.
Shane may not be the nicest guy, in fact, as you state, he’s an asshole, a rapey, posessive, borderline psychotic, possibly sociopathic loose cannon, but you have to admit, when it comes to dealing with the Walkers, he’s also right
Walkers are simply reanimated dead flesh, the person that used to inhabit the body is long gone, what is left behind is simply the “wrapper”, the consciousness has left, there is no way to “cure” a Walker, other than with a headshot that destroys the brain
when walkers are encountered, any emotional ties the living have had with them is a liability, it’s understandable, after all, you don’t want to admit to yourself that the rotting, reanimated corpse of your loved one staggering towards you is dead, you hold to the hope that they’re just “sick” and can be cured, but in TWD-verse, once the body dies and reanimates, there is no more loved one, just a meat-puppet intent on eating you
destroy it before it destroys you, this is a rule in TWD-verse that cannot be ignored, Shane is one of the survivors that completely understands this, there can be no sentimentality when dealing with walkers
THIS is what I was referring to when I called Shane “the voice of reason”, nothing more, his other malicious character traits make him a repellent, hateful, self-centered sociopathic jerk of a man, but he’s right about dealing with the zombies, sentimentality can get you killed, or worse…
I think the writers are handling the dichotomy pretty well. We viewers want to see what’s going on in the rest of the world – we don’t want them to settle down.
Sorta like in The Stand. The good guys could have hung out at Mother Abigail’s farm or in Boulder, but if some of them hadn’t gone to Vegas, we would have stopped reading. 
I’d like to see Lori and Carl and Dale stay on the farm but I doubt the writers would do that. I think it makes sense though. The group should split up. Lori’s a bone of contention between Shane and Rick, and Carl is a liability on the road.
Dale can make sure that Herschel doesn’t collect any more Walkers, and the farm can be a safe haven, a base of operations. What’s the range of walkie-talkies? If they had some way to communicate, I can see some of them staying behind.
That. Was. Awesome.
I truly didn’t expect Sophia to actually be IN the barn, and I have zero respect and understanding for the farm family, who KNEW the group was looking for a lost girl, KNEW he had one in the barn, and kept that information from them. That, in my opinion, makes them giant dicks and not just a befuddled old man and his patient offspring.
I think the showdown at the Zombie Corral illustrated how easy it is for everybody to go on and on about how everybody else’s zombies are shambling cannibal death, but how hard it is to recognize that when it’s your own loved ones cruising toward your throat.
I think perhaps now everybody might have a better understanding of why Herschel and the other farm people kept their dead. Doesn’t fix the fact that the group just slaughtered the family’s kin in front of their own eyes. And again, it doesn’t fix the fact that the farm people knew Sophia was in the barn.
Wonder how this’ll change the group’s desire to stay on the farm? I can’t imagine them feeling comfortable with wanting to share space with people who allowed them to go out looking for a girl they were hiding all along.
He probably thought he was doing them a favor, keeping Sophia alive while he searched for a cure. Between a rock and a hard place, that’s where Herschel was. Maggie must not have known Sophia was there. Do you think she would have told Glenn about Sophia?
But when did they catch Sophia? How long did they search for Sophia before they found the farm?
To be fair they may not have known it was Sophia. They didn’t know the name of the one guy from the creek but they would have taken him into the barn.
On the other hand, they did know the group was looking for a young girl, who would have been a recent acquisition for the barn, so they should have tried to put two and two together.
I can see it either way.
I didn’t really see Carl acting like an adult. He expressed an opinion/desire, which was OK. No one really seemed to take it as an actual vote - his mom agrees with him, and Shane was just playing along with him because it fit his world view (if we stay, we have to make things safe/do what needs to be done).
If I followed it right, the only ones who knew for sure that they had a little girl were Otis and Herschel, since they apparently were the ones that brought them in. I’m not sure on the timeline (especially since we don’t know when Sophia was turned) - but Herschel could have easily brought her in himself (Otis likely being dead before Sophia was brought to the barn)- and there was no way he was telling the guests - he knew he needed to keep his barn a secret.
I liked Herschel’s last scenes - the new world has crashed into his farm, and he is (at least temporarily) a broken man.
Finally - what is the story with Sophia? The walkers eat what they catch - so I guess maybe she got bit and got away from just one or two? I know it’s a needs of the plot bit (and I loved her coming out of the barn) - but it seems like a hole to me.
I had the same thought when people thought Otis was going to come back to the farm as a walker - he was zombie chow. Even if he reanimated, there weren’t going to be enough parts attached to let him walk.
Hershel said that when one wandered onto the farm, Otis would get it into the barn, now they have to since Otis is dead. It’s not clear that Hershel knew exactly who was in the barn. Otis could have gotten Sophia in the barn and not talked to Hershel before his death.
With regard to whether or not the rest of the farm knew about Sophia, Patricia was shown in one scene feeding chickens to the walkers in the barn, and that was after Otis was dead. She didn’t see a little girl in there? I call shenanigans.
Young Farm Dude With Straw Hat (don’t know his name) said to Herschel “It happened again,” which implied to me that at least HE knew that walkers were getting trapped in that area, having seen it before. That leads me to believe he could know about Little Orphan Zombie in the barn.
So, Herschel, perhaps Otis (although Sophia may have turned after he was eaten), Patricia from seeing the zombies from above, maybe young dude. I would like to think that Maggie wasn’t such a loser that she’d keep it from Glenn, but she did keep the existence of the Zombie Depot from him, so…
I don’t know. I just can’t work up any support or love for a group of people who would let another group of people keep going out doing dangerous searches without saying “hey, there’s a pint-sized cannibal in the barn, maybe it’s yours?”
She’s a mother who wants to create a normal life for her kid. Makes total sense.