Remembering the Dead – Season Two, Episode 9 – “Triggerfinger”
Hey! Another week, another installment of our favorite zombie television serial. I’m going to be doing this week’s article a little bit differently, and hopefully it’ll make it Remembering the Dead little easier for you guys to digest. It’s an experiment, see? Rather than a “wall of text summarizing exactly what you just watched,” I’ll be a tad more focused on the actually important things that happened this week.
And what a week it was!
Let’s start with the events in town. Something that’s very small but important is the fact that Glenn and Rick check the pockets of the now very dead Tony and Dave, taking their ammo. It’s obvious to us that this is a logical and good idea, but it’s showing us that our “Good Guys” are living in that same harsh world that Shane has been describing this entire time. It’s not the ideal thing for our heroes to be doing, but it does serve as a sort of mathematical proof that Rick can do what he needs to survive without turning into… well… Shane. In fact that’s what many of the events of the town serve to reinforce!
Rick doesn’t want to have to cause any more violence than he has to, admitting to the Philly Survivors the fact that he killed their two scouts. Somehow, he doesn’t expect them to shoot back. But that’s another example right there – he wants to try to end a violent situation without violence.
Randall – the young man with a leg condition – is another wonderful example. Leaving him there is not only the easy, safe thing to do, it’s kind of a good idea. He can prove to be nothing but a liability to the group, but Rick still makes the final say in whether or not to save him, when Glenn and Hershel have all but left him for dead.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Rick and Shane are two sides of the same coin. They react differently to the situations they’re put in, but they both have similar goals.
We see some interesting stuff from Hershel as well here. He proves that he can shoot, and aside from that he shows a whole new side of himself. We can see that he’s being forced to accept Glenn as a comrade, an equal, and on some level, a son. He’s not ready to do any of that. He’s especially not ready to give Maggie up, (She is happy that Glenn is back alive when they return, running up and hugging him.) and we’re surely only an episode or two away from that relationship boiling over into a confrontation.
Oh, and Hershel is straight up gangsta. That was good to learn too.
Glenn is having a completely different set of problems – he says everything that’s bothering him later in the episode when he talks to Maggie. He feels like he completely failed Rick and Hershel when they needed him, but by failing them, he succeeded in protecting Maggie. Glenn is seeing it as a dishonor, but it really depends on what point of view you want to come at it.
Shane’s turning into monster again – what we’re seeing is him continuing to lose his emotional ties to the group, leading him to not give a shit what anyone else thinks about him. He keeps trying to get Lori back to him, using every dirty trick in the book, despite what she tells him. This time it was a pretty clear “fuck off,” but will he get the hint? Shane’s been going through these cycles of rejection that come to a head when he does something monstrous. (Otis, the Barn) We’re getting to another one of those peaks – next week should be interesting.
Shane also breaks the news to Carl that Lori is pregnant. Carl is excited, but doesn’t quite understand – they never had “the talk,” apparently, before the apocalypse. This is that same piece of “home” that we saw last week when Glenn was asking Rick for advice on girls.
And Lori….well. Lori.
Listen, Lori, we’ve got to talk.
You’re turning into a crazy, crazy bitch.
Oh, wait, you already knew that, didn’t you.
In the past two episodes her character has taken a huge turn. You might have been wondering what she was doing going into town to get Rick in the first place. Well, my best guess is this. Since seeing Shane take action with the zombies in the barn, she’s seeing that Shane really is willing to do anything to get what he wants. Whether it’s because he’s impulsive or just driven, she knows that what Shane wants is her, Carl and the baby, and she’s afraid of what will happen when Rick isn’t around to protect her.
This is understandable! She doesn’t want to get spirited away, or to have Shane go off and shoot Rick just so he can claim a whole new family for himself. However, the way she goes about it is a bit scary. She’s told Rick that it’s either him or Shane, fighting over her, their son, and unborn child. Rick sees nothing as more important than his family – Lori knows this, and she’s pushing the exact buttons that will set him off.
The thing is that Lori might actually be right. To be entirely honest, she might be seeing the entire situation more clearly than anyone else on the farm. Dale’s got a similar outlook, but he’s too far outside of the situation, everyone still sees him as the crazy old man. Lori is the only one who can affect the outcome of what happens when Rick and Shane’s confrontation comes to a head.
But damn, she turned into the devil on Rick’s shoulder pretty quickly.
Beth, (the daughter that isn’t Maggie,) will also be something to keep remembering. I know they’re forgettable, (I have to force myself to remember Beth’s name and her boyfriend wasn’t even in this episode.) but she isn’t in a comatose state because she got scared. Something obviously happened when her mother’s walker attacked her – is the disease airborne? Did she get blood on her? Only time will tell…
Mascott is best known for watching all of Netflix’s 135 episodes of ‘How I Met Your Mother‘ in one incredibly depressing marathon, and insists that you do the same because it’s the best show on televis-I MEAN ZOMBIES. You can email him here, or follow him on Twitter.
