The Walking Dead: Episode 5 "Wildfire"

OK, pretty eventful episode this week. Let's go right to the "spoilers"

Well, Andrea's sister woke up, and BOY was she pissed. Could she have waited another second or two to pull the trigger? Yeah, put a bullet in your zombie sister's head when you're hugging her......with your head right next to hers. When she pulled the gun up to Amy's head, I figured that she was going to go all "zombie murder/suicide" and check out herself.

But Carol? She obviously got into the whole "dispose of the remains of your loved ones before they come back". She was a little tentaive on her first swing, but she really got into it as she realized that Ed wasn't going to get up off the ground and hit her back. As the Dixie Chicks would say...."Goodbye Ed".

Jim was just starting to be an interesting character, so OBVIOUSLY it was his turn to become Zombie Chow. I can sympathize with them trying to get him to safety and a possible cure at the CDC, but just leaving him sitting against a tree by the highway? Sure, they wanted to respect his dignity, but why leave an extra zombie around to chomp down on the next human that walks by? What if Morgan and his son run into Jim following Rick's radio directions? If I learned anything from watching "Saving Private Ryan", its that all Nazis AND Zombies should be executed instead of releasing them into the wild. Dale's got a hunting rifle with a scope, he could have opened a window on the RV and put a slug in Jim's brain before they pulled away and left him there.

And speaking of Dale, he really got a lot of screen time this week. Apparently, they figured that Glenn's had enough development and they're going to try to flesh out Dale a little. That scene with Dale and Shane in the woods was hellaciously creepy. I like Dale. He seems like a guy I'd like to go fishing & drinking beer with. His conversation with Andrea was some of the best interpersonal dialog that they've had since episode one.

Shane? I've been trying to be sympathetic to the man, but he's starting to creep me out. When he takes aim at Rick in the woods and keeps him in his sights before deciding not to kill him, you start to think that maybe, just maybe, Shane is thinking that a dead Rick means an instant family for Shane. I think we've all heard the spoiler on how this ends (at least in the written version), but even if we didn't they're doing all they can to put a neon freakin' target on Shane's back.

The CDC scientist is going to be an intriguing part of next week's story, me thinks. I was cleaning up the basement while trying to watch the end of the episode, but I could swear that I heard him tell his camcorder that the loss of the tissue samples in the lab sterilization was a big setback because all other zombie tissue was "necrotic dead tissue". Now, if you're into foreshadowing, you might think that a doctor who needs tissue from a newly infected person who hasn't "died" and reanimated yet might just view any new people coming into his laboratory as lab rats instead of allies.

I'm not saying that it's going to happen (I haven't read the source material, after all), but that's where my money would be bet if this were a sporting event. Which doesn't say much, if you've been following my NFL picks.

posted by Russ from Winterset at 01:10 AM

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