556: "What Lies Ahead" (TWD S2E1 Rewatch)

[00:00:00] The Last of Us, Podcastica, The Last of Us, The Last of Us, The Last of Us, The Last of

[00:00:49] Us, a podcast dedicated to the show. Jason Hey Zed Heads, welcome to the podcast. I'm Jason. Lucy And I'm Lucy. Jason In case you didn't know. And this is The Cast of Us, episode 556.

[00:01:06] Lucy And this episode we're covering The Walking Dead, season two premiere, episode one, What Lies Ahead.

[00:01:13] Jason Moving on to season two. And we have a plan for season two, which is we will cover the first seven episodes weekly up until you know who comes out of the barn. And then that will take us to January 30th. If everything goes to plan, then I'm thinking I actually haven't double checked this with you. But the next week we'll do Return of the Living Dead.

[00:01:41] Lucy Perfect. Jason Which you have not seen. We did One Cut of the Dead last time. If you didn't listen to us or watch that, highly recommend it. Definitely watch past the 37 minute mark because everything kind of changes at that point.

[00:01:54] Jason Then The Ones Who Live premieres Sunday, February 25th. So we will do a couple one or two episodes in there on the Rick and Michonne series to get ready for it kind of like we did with the Daryl show. Like favorite Rick and Michonne moments or something like that. Yeah, yeah.

[00:02:14] Lucy Well, they've both been out of it for a little bit. So yeah.

[00:02:38] Jason Yeah, they're super fun. Really fun. I'd forgotten how good of a season opener this is. The season openers, I was thinking about season openers in general in The Walking Dead and there's always from this one onwards there's always this like huge set piece with Zeds of some description. And this is probably one of the more low key ones with the herd compared to what we see in later seasons where people are like...

[00:03:30] for her all of what's happening right now.

[00:03:33] So I loved it. And I forgot how much they cram in in this episode. Like there's, I forgot we get all the way up to Carl being shot. I thought we Yeah, I don't know. I forgot that was all one episode. It's a lot.

[00:03:44] Yeah, and it was going to be two but they cram two into one, which we'll talk about later. But that's why it was a little bit longer. But um, I you know, as I've said, season two is not my favorite. It's towards the bottom. So I'm going to try to not have that be my filter as much as I can like, Oh, yeah, let's see if we can hit on season two. I'm trying to keep an open mind.

[00:04:07] I did find it a pleasure to watch this episode, mostly because it's really fun to see T-Dog and Dale and you know, the characters who've died in early versions of the characters who went on longer, because they changed over time. The ones who lived or at least lived for a while.

[00:04:23] Lived for a bit longer.

[00:04:26] I did find myself annoyed at people's attitudes in this episode, their decisions or behaviors. And I'm like, there is a part of me that's like, Is it fun to see a show where I'm just annoyed at so many things? I mean, there's a lot that was awesome too. And it is. I mean, the answer to that question I just asked isn't necessarily no, I mean, you Walking Dead is about struggling with things and sometimes making the wrong decision.

[00:04:52] I also watching it this time, feel like I'm a lot clearer on the importance of the episode in the context of where the series is right now. And so it was kind of cool to see it in a new light, which has been the case with with pretty much all the episodes so far. So it made it probably better now than it has been for me.

[00:05:15] So what's your first point? Andrea invents the term herd. Yeah, that's right. Which I thought was really cool. I'd forgotten that at all. Like I suspected there's more stuff now that I've totally forgotten about than there was in season one.

[00:05:34] She sort of offhand says like, you know, that kind of herd and Shane's like, Yeah, yeah, that's Trex. Yeah, that's good. Really into it. So I just thought I'd give Andrea props for that. And more broadly, the herd as a whole. It's nothing compared to what we see in later seasons. But its impact is so profound. And the way that they film it so that it just builds and builds. And it starts with Rick seeing that one walker.

[00:06:00] Then there's another and then all of a sudden, they're overwhelmed.

[00:06:04] I heard and it was silent too. There was no music. And I, you know, I love the music in this episode. So I'm like, what was I smoking when I thought it wasn't that good early on because I really dug it. Yeah, you just see one through like the rifle scope, and then two and then a whole and you start to hear the eerie music then where it had been silence. So it really worked well.

[00:06:24] Such good use of silence as well in terms of the characters not saying or doing much. And then yes, I mean, in theory, hiding under cars actually a really easy way to get away from zombies. I was like, you know, people should do more of this. This actually works really well. But the beats within it. T-dogs arm getting sliced. Oh my god, every time, every time I'm like, I have to close my eyes. I can't look at this. This is so upsetting.

[00:06:50] And it's one of the many things that we see in seasons one, two and three where you realize that like things that would not have been insurmountable pre apocalypse can suddenly become really dangerous, like a deep cut that may go septic as we may find out in later episodes.

[00:07:07] So much blood. I mean, it was just like much. I guess they were continuing on with this guy's a klutz, right? Because he dropped the key. And now he's just squatting down. And he's or something and he's like, Oh, wow. Amazing. I acting from irony. Yes, he's a great actor in my opinion.

[00:07:29] So good. And I feel like Andrea gets her proper. I didn't know it's almost like Jamie Lee Curtis and Halloween or any of the final girls. She's so good. Very good. Yes. And that moment where she looks up and clocks what's happening out the window. Oh, my God.

[00:07:45] I love that because we see them first. They're all walking by us. She's trying to fumble with this gun. And then she kind of catches it out of her peripheral vision. Oh, yeah. And I just the the features that they have come in is so creepy. He's creepy. He always is one of my favorites of The Walking Dead. This RV zombie.

[00:08:07] And then coming back to it now like, Oh, yeah, I remember this guy. I'd actually forgotten he was in this episode. But I think that guy, I think I heard he was became kind of a diva after that. So they stopped having him on. I'm not sure that could just be her saying. He's a great zombie.

[00:08:22] Deserved diva-ness because he's an outstanding zombie. If there was an Emmy for best zombie in The Walking Dead, I would definitely put him up for it. And I want him to come up and be like, rawr rawr rawr when he gives speech.

[00:08:35] I also love the way that Andrea like is so angry at Dale still when she looks up at him and he's up there and she's just looking at him. She's not scared. She's furious because she's like, this is what I didn't want to have to live through. And I find myself sympathizing with her more this episode than I have in previous ones in this encounter particularly.

[00:08:56] But the just the tension of it, you know, she's going to drop a bit of the gun. You know, something is going to happen. My only department of suspension of disbelief is that she makes a lot of noise in the RV and I feel like the other Zeds might have heard it.

[00:09:11] Oh yeah, that's right. Because it was a big deal. Rick didn't want to shoot the zombies because more would follow. And now here's...

[00:09:20] And then of course we think the herd is cleared and Sophia gets chased away with, I think probably the worst written bit of dialogue, which is when Carol just goes, Laurie, there's two walkers after my baby. Which I just find, I was like, Carol, we have eyes. We can see that.

[00:09:36] But it's a great bait and switch of like, oh, we're fine. Oh, wait, no, we're fucking not. And Sophia's acting like any little girl would, I guess, or any little kid would and runs away. But it's heartbreaking.

[00:09:50] She screamed, you know, and I thought, of course, of Sam, because he screamed in Alexandria. And that's what got people killed. But it wasn't quite as bad with Sophia because the zombie had already seen her and was coming after her.

[00:10:11] And I thought Madison Lentz was great. She's such a little cutie. And I think it adds, it was never planned this way. But the fact she looks so much like her brother, I don't know, because obviously her brother played Henry and her other brother played younger Henry. It's just something in it that made it really emotional. So yeah, the herd as a whole, I thought was fantastic. Really enjoyed it.

[00:10:35] Yeah, I did too. I mean, really, when so they see a couple, and then they see a whole bunch. And I'm like, okay, the thing to do isn't to say get under the cars is to say run. Let's go this way. They're all coming from that direction. Let's go the other direction. You know, but then there would be no drama. And that's just the thing with the show is it's not realistic that in a lot of scenes,

[00:11:05] it's not realistic that in a lot of situations that slow, dumb creatures would be a threat. And so they have to kind of flub things a little bit to make them a threat. And once they were under the cars and the zombies were shambling by it was super, you know, tense and creepy and great. But in the first place, they should have just ran away. You know, I mean, well, actually, that kind of plays into my point about Sophia. So I'll save it. But that's what I was thinking at this point.

[00:11:35] Also, I kind of wondered and I think I remember wondering this when I first watched it too. There's all these cars stopped. And there's dead people in a lot of the cars. And I'm like, how'd that happen? Like, they like, oh, traffic jam. Let's just sit there. Let's just sit here until it clears up.

[00:11:51] But I agree with you. I was a bit like, I have no thought about this. But why has this happened? Like, what is the story of this traffic jam?

[00:12:07] And I don't know if they really thought about it. You know, I think they're just like, let's have corpses in cars. It'll be cool.

[00:12:13] Yeah, like if the cars had been burned out, like it'd been fireball. But I mean, props as well. First appearance of the Hyundai this season was sponsored by Hyundai, if I remember correctly. And the very slightly like roughed up Hyundai that Shane is trying to fix. It's like, oh, the featured car of the season. So I'll be tracking the progress.

[00:12:34] Yeah. And I think there was somebody on set going, it can't look too bad. A little bit is fine. It could be a little dirty. But it has to function. Quick, we only have about 10 minutes until they get here. Let's run.

[00:12:48] And also, Darryl shivs one through the back of the head with a screwdriver. And I think that's the first time we see anything like that. I think right where they've always been shot before. I guess. Well, we saw Darryl slice one's head off and I think we saw maybe Morgan whack one or something. But I don't know if we've ever seen one just stabbed in the head until now.

[00:13:14] And Andrea does one through the eye as well. That's right. And then Darryl, there's this moment because you're still a bit wary of Darryl where you're not sure what he's doing with T-Dog. But then you realize he's protecting him by throwing the zombie on him.

[00:13:27] Yeah, it wasn't even a zombie. It was just a corpse.

[00:13:30] Yeah, throwing a corpse on him. And then Darryl, the one that lands on Darryl and is basically like kissing him always makes me laugh because I'm like, oh, that's really horrible because you can't even shake your head to move around. But Darryl saves the day. He saves T-Dog's ass.

[00:13:45] And that's Darryl Dixon ingenuity, which has really been in the series from the very beginning. But we just see another instance of it here. Definitely. Thinking quick. All right. My first one is long, but it's Rick's leadership and losing Sophia. Oh, interesting. Okay.

[00:14:06] So, I mean, because this is really the lens I saw this episode through. So far in the show, I think I would say that it's Rick's story more than anyone else's, that he's the protagonist. It starts off with him and we follow him on his journey to find his family and then lead the group that they're with. And it's about him making decisions and seeing those consequences. I mean, everyone has stories, but it feels like he's the protagonist to me.

[00:14:33] Absolutely. I would say Rick is up until he leaves the protagonist.

[00:14:37] Yeah. I mean, less so as it goes along. There's more, but yeah, he's like the main guy. And the setting for this first season two episode, I think is really that Rick has had a failure of leadership and enough that people's belief in him as a leader and his belief in himself may have been tested at least, you know?

[00:15:00] So throughout season one, he was more or less confident in his feeling that he should lead and in all his decisions as reckless as some of them were like going back to the city to get Merle who had been antagonistic and a danger to his group was at least debatable. But he insisted. Marching into the Vatos headquarters ready for a gunfight was downright reckless and I think stupid, but he got lucky in that one.

[00:15:27] Things weren't as they seemed that they were good guys. So up until then, everything was working for him and his decisions ended up working out for everyone more or less. I mean, you could argue that if he hadn't chosen to go back and get Merle and he and Darrell and Glenn and T-Dog were at the camp when the zombies attacked that maybe more people would have been saved, but we don't know for sure. And the Zeds kind of caught everyone who was there off guard, including Shane. So I don't know.

[00:15:55] I guess we just kind of don't know. Right? Amy still would have had to go to the bathroom. So he still would have been hydrated.

[00:16:03] Yeah. So, so then the last decision was the big argument with Shane over whether to go to the CDC or Fort Benning and the CDC ended up being pretty much a dead end. And as Rick tells Morgan on the radio at the beginning of this episode, they lost Jackie. He says, I tried to do everything right. Keep people safe. I tried Morgan, our group smaller. Now we lost another day before last. It was her choice. I won't say a blamer, but she lost faith.

[00:16:33] And I think that's important because she's not talking about faith in God, but just faith that maybe they can survive or that it's even worth trying to survive. And he says, I'm trying hard not to lose faith. I can't if I do the others, my wife, my son, but then he doesn't finish. But I think he means they could die or at least fall into despair like Jackie did.

[00:16:53] I completely agree. I laughed at the editing. I know what they were getting at when Rick says my wife and they immediately cut to Shane, but it was quite funny because it really did make it look like Shane was his wife. And I was like, yeah, that guy, they love each other. He could have cut to his actual wife, but you know, there we go. There's a deep love.

[00:17:14] Deep love.

[00:17:44] So now in this first season two episode, they're trying the option that Rick argued against to go to Fort Benning. And I think that's kind of a tacit admission that his way was maybe not the right way, you know? And so I think he's starting to doubt himself and maybe the group's confidence in him isn't as high as it was, or at least there's potential for that. So with all that as a backdrop comes this thing with Sophia, which I'll just talk through, jump in if you have anything to say, but they're hiding under the carpet.

[00:18:14] And they're in their own cars as the herd passes through. Things get quiet. She goes to get out, but then the zombie sees her. Then it drops down and grabs at her and under another car, Lori's holding her hand over Carol's mouth. I'm like, what? Like, they'll hear us like you need to get out and fucking do something right. You're like, don't hold her back.

[00:18:37] And then she runs down the roadside and Sophia and Rick follows and Carol tries to follow, but Lori's holding her back and going, shh, shh, shh. And I'm like, hmm, I don't know, Lori, like maybe Carol should help her daughter. Like maybe, maybe if Carol had gone down there. Yeah. Like maybe they wouldn't have left. I don't think Carol would have left Sophia under a tree. Carol then again could have just been eaten by a zombie immediately. So I don't know, but it's worth a shot.

[00:19:07] More children would have been saved. More children would have survived the apocalypse at that. It's the old trolley problem. Do you let Sophia die or Sam? Lizzie, Mika.

[00:19:26] So then the Zeds are chasing, the two Zeds are chasing Rick and Sophia through the woods. They're faster here than they are later in the series. I didn't remember that. I thought they were already getting slow, but no. Fast. So I'm like, have her climb a tree. Have her climb a tree!

[00:19:42] I had not thought. I was like, she's a kid. She could climb a fucking tree. And they're like, no, no, hide here, hide here. I'm like, hide underneath where they can get you. Jesus Christ. Seriously. So then Sophia says, shoot them. And he goes, no, those walkers on the road would hear it. Then it wouldn't just be two, it'd be hundreds. I'm like, the road's kind of far away.

[00:20:01] Then he tells her to hide under this tree root and he'll draw them away. And he says, listen, they don't get winded. I do. I can only deal with them one at a time. I wouldn't be able to protect you. So he's afraid that he'd be fighting off one of these while the other attacks her. And he says, this is how we both survive. You understand? And she nods. And then we never see her again.

[00:20:22] She doesn't lip in stay put. He's like, stay put. And she leaves it two seconds then is like, I'm out. Yeah, he goes, if I don't make it back, run back to the highway. But then she left right away. I bet Sam would have stayed there.

[00:20:35] I, you know, Henry would have. I don't know, Henry would have been like, no, I'll fight with you, man.

[00:20:41] I was torn about this because part of me was like, FFS, Sophia, stay under the goddamn tree. Another part of me was like, she's a little girl. She wants to get back to her mom.

[00:20:52] Absolutely. I don't blame her. I don't blame her. I mean, it's because I feel like watching these shows, we get mad at people who don't do the smartest thing. But I think 99% of us would fuck up somehow because we're just like, freaked out.

[00:21:09] I want to go to my mom. It's just I think it seemed what they should have done. It seemed dumb to me that Rick didn't just run with Sophia. And there's a lot of trees around.

[00:21:20] So I would say just shoot these two zombies, then that would draw at least some of the Zeds off the road. But then they could start moving in parallel with the road for a bit and then go up further down.

[00:21:32] The Zeds would move straight to the gunshot sounds and wouldn't see them moving in parallel because of all the trees. So that's what Richard's done. I mean, I always ask myself if Rick had Carl there, would he have left him under a tree? I don't think so.

[00:21:46] He would have carried him on his shoulders or something, you know, or just had him run with him. So that seemed really stupid. But I think in part, that's the writer struggling with how to make the zombies seem incredible threat, as I said before. And I was trying to really zero in on what they were going for and what they were what Rick was thinking. I think the idea is if Rick didn't kill the walkers that they would just be following him and Sophia forever.

[00:22:13] I think it was him having to carry her as well. I think if I'm carrying you, I will get winded.

[00:22:18] But I read that in a deleted scene, Shane reveals to Rick that despite their slow gait, the walkers don't seem to tire. Quote, knowledge that informs Rick's fateful decision to temporarily leave Sophia. So I think he thought they'd have outlasted Rick and Sophia. And that, you know, since he can only kill one at a time, the other would attack. And I think, you know, if he uses gun, he'd draw more and they're out in the open.

[00:22:43] So if you if they notice you, then you can't hide from them. You can't run away because they will just chase you forever. And you can't kill them all because there's too many. And I think except for that one with Andrea and the two with Sophia, none of the other zombies saw anyone. So I think at least in this moment, the writers are thinking, yeah, if the zombies see them out in the open like this, they'll just chase them down forever. I think that's what they were thinking because they're fast enough.

[00:23:10] I think one saw T-Dog and that's why Daryl got involved or was about to see T-Dog before.

[00:23:17] Yeah, but they were. Yeah, they you're right. It doesn't make sense that they didn't hear Andrea. But I think that that was the point of them not actually catching the zombies attention except for those couple that were isolated, because the idea is if they had saw them all out here, if the zombies saw them, then they would just chase them forever. But it's still like doesn't quite pass muster with me. I don't know. They could have ran until they found a place to.

[00:23:45] I don't know. Part of me is like it is the first kind of big herd they've seen. So maybe that's Rick's feeling overwhelmed by that, but he definitely makes a kind of muddled decision.

[00:23:57] Yeah, I think he fucked up. Really. I think don't leave a little girl here. You take keep her with you and figure something else out. I mean, really just shoot the two zombies run up behind the tree cover trees and go further down the road. Like seems simple enough to me. And I think actually the writers wanted us to question his decision.

[00:24:21] Well, she does.

[00:24:23] Yeah, everyone does. And that's the point. So he comes back without this little girl. He has to explain himself. Carol's pissed, of course. How could you just leave her out there to begin with? He goes, those two walkers were on us. I had to draw them off. It was her best chance. Shane says, sound like you didn't have a choice, Carol. But I think Shane is just being loyal, reflexively loyal, you know, trying to keep the cohesiveness of the group. If I was Carol, I would be rageful at this point.

[00:24:47] I would feel like Carol, though. She's never does anything. I mean, she's upset, but she still hasn't discovered her power yet. So yet to become the fool, Carol.

[00:24:59] Rick said, yeah, not even close. And Rick says it was the only choice I could make. And Shane says, I'm sure nobody doubts that, which is his way of saying, oh, everyone doubt that.

[00:25:09] And we're meant to be questioning Rick's decision making here. And he's questioning himself. And the group is questioning him. Laurie tells Carol to stop blaming Rick for what happened, which she knows because of the look on Carol's face. I'm like, don't, don't just leave Carol alone. Her daughter's lost. Like, don't scold her while her daughter's missing because your husband left her.

[00:25:35] But Laurie's standing up for Rick, which is nice. You know, she says you all look to him and then you blame him when he's not perfect. So that just points more to that. That's the crux of this episode, that it's a questioning of Rick's leadership. Then Rick questions himself. He's in church. He's praying. He says, I guess, you know, I'm not much of a believer, which is not the best way to start off a prayer, I would say.

[00:25:56] And also, yeah. Yeah, I thought it was interesting that he admitted that because I've kind of been toying with how religious the characters in The Walking Dead are at this point. But yeah, it's interesting.

[00:26:07] And I guess, I mean, I joke that it's not the best way, but I mean… But it isn't. I mean, it's like, so I don't believe in you, but also could you help me out?

[00:26:14] But he's being honest. So that's probably better than trying to hide something from God. Well, the Bible does tell us that.

[00:26:22] I mean, if you are actually making like, maybe God's real. Let me talk to him. Then you're not gonna be like, maybe he won't notice if I just flip the truth a little. If he's real…

[00:26:32] It's a one way bet. If he's real, then you're talking to him. If he's not, then you've not lost anything, I guess. Apart from Sophia.

[00:26:39] So he says, I could use a little something to help keep us going. Some kind of acknowledgement, some indication. I'm doing the right thing. This is showing he needs a sign. He's not… He's having a crisis of belief in himself.

[00:26:53] So then Carl sees this deer and slowly edges up to it. And there's this like magical ethereal music, hopeful. And so I think Rick is thinking, this is my sign. And he's right. But it's not the kind of sign he thought because then blam, Carl gets shot. And that's like The Walking Dead being its cruel self.

[00:27:12] We know these vatos watching the elderly people were intended to be killed. We know Carl gets shot. Sophia's in the barn. The show's about raking people over the coals and testing them. But Rick really asked for a sign. And this is the sign he got. And yet he kept on making decisions. So that does show he's not much of a believer, I guess, because he's like, whatever.

[00:27:34] He's like, I mean, it was literally my son got shot while looking at an innocent virginal deer. But it's fine. I think it was fine. I don't think it was a sign. I think it's okay. Yeah, no. I'm still waiting for my sign.

[00:27:46] Siri, play Ace of Base. I saw the sign. He does. I remember it. I think it's in season four because I said he decides to keep plowing forward and be the leader. Sorry, my Siri started talking. Stop it! Play Ace of Base. I saw the sign.

[00:28:09] Show me a sign. No, go away. I don't want you to do that, Siri. When my son was shot walking up to a deer. I was like, who's talking? What's happening?

[00:28:20] So about like plowing forward, keeping as the leader. I brought to mind in season four, he does say I'm not leading anymore. I'm gonna be a farmer and let you guys lead. But anyway, for now.

[00:28:33] But then everyone's like, are you sure, Rick? Are you sure you don't want to be the leader? And I'm like...

[00:28:38] Just let him be a farmer. So I'm like, what does this do for the series? Like having him, having the guy who's the protagonist, suddenly we're all questioning his decisions and so is he.

[00:28:50] I think it's good for the series. It puts things on a shakier ground. It makes you afraid of what else can go wrong and how bad can it get? And it can get worse. We'll see.

[00:28:59] It's also interesting to see the hero tested and how he deals with it. He reminds me of Peter Parker at this point. He's still a classic hero, but he's tortured about his decisions, has self-doubt, but still determined and always wants to protect people and do what he thinks is right.

[00:29:14] That's not Rick. Over time, he gets calloused, less compassionate to strangers, less trusting, more tribal, still protecting the ones he cares about, but that circle goes smaller. So anyway, I think this is a pretty key turning point in Rick's character, which is what I meant at the beginning when I said how this episode is important in the context of the series and that made me appreciate it more than I did before.

[00:29:44] Do you think her coming? Well, we'll talk about her coming out when she comes out.

[00:29:47] Yeah, but I think after that, every decision he makes, he's probably like, is this going to be another Sophia in the barn kind of a thing? You know, it really went. This is a crux. He really Sophia'd the barn with that one.

[00:30:04] And it's also, yeah, of course, the first of Carol's misfortune with kids.

[00:30:13] Yeah, it is. Next point is Laurie in this episode who I did not care for in this episode. This is the start of when I think they start writing Laurie quite poorly or she starts acting really shitily. I'm never sure which one it is.

[00:30:34] Her first strike is when she's like, I don't know how I feel about this. When they're getting supplies from the car. I know. Do you understand what's happening here? It might be icky, but we need to survive.

[00:30:50] And then she's so judgmental of Carol picking up that fucking top. And I'm just like, this woman has been beaten for God knows how long by this horrific man who only died within the last week. She's picking up a t-shirt, Laurie. She's hardly dancing on the graves.

[00:31:05] Finding a little joy.

[00:31:07] And I'm just like, okay. So that annoyed me. And then with Shane, both Shane and Laurie are pretty crap to Carl in this episode. Like Carl is kind of on the short end of everyone's rage. And Laurie does comment later that she dragged that she feels they dragged Carl into it by creating this kind of fake little family unit while Rick wasn't there.

[00:31:31] And when, well, two things. When Shane says like, Carl's like, look at this cool stuff I found. And Shane's like, you need to go keep working or whatever. And then Laurie says, you crushed him. And I'm like, oh, wow. I'm like crushing my kids a lot if that's crushing. I mean, it's not nice.

[00:31:50] It's an arsenal. Very often when somebody comes up to me with something and I'm like, I'm busy right now. Okay. Go away little girl.

[00:32:01] Oh, and then the other thing is when, you know, I hope I'm not stepping on something. But when she's like, Shane says he's going to leave and she's like, you're kind of like, oh, well, you like created a bond with Carl and now you're going to leave or whatever. She's like arguing against it. It's going to be hard. I'm like, things are hard sometimes. But sometimes that's just how it is, you know?

[00:32:27] This is the bit where Laurie crosses the line into unsympathetic for me is I think at the end of season one, you get a real sense that Shane was a mistake. She does love Rick. Shane sexually assaults her, which is horrible. It's pretty clear where the line in the sand is at that point.

[00:32:45] However, this episode they start to play with the idea that Laurie doesn't want Shane to leave, which leads you to ask why doesn't she want Shane to leave? Because that would actually solve all her problems that are only going to get worse when she finds out that she's pregnant. And that's where I start to feel like this feels like, I don't know. I don't know if it's the writing or the character choices, but it starts to feel icky and I don't like it because it makes me not like anyone left in the situation.

[00:33:11] And yeah, I wonder, I mean, if I'm being sympathetic to Laurie, I would be like, if he leaves, she's going to have to explain to Rick why he left and Rick will go and find him or won't understand why or blah, blah, blah. But that is not how they play it. They play it as there's something in her that doesn't want him to go.

[00:33:30] And that to me is a weird choice, both in terms of the show and that particular character. I don't think she's given him mixed signals in season one after Rick comes back. I don't think there's anything about that that's unclear. But now it starts to feel a bit like, oh, there might be some mixed signals here. What is that all about?

[00:33:52] Now you're making me want to go back and watch because I didn't get that. I think I thought the reason why they showed first Shane dismissing Carl was to kind of show that the reason why Laurie is resistant to Shane leaving is because she doesn't want it to hurt Carl.

[00:34:11] See, I read it as she's using Carl as a cover.

[00:34:15] OK, I don't know. Like that makes me want to go watch again. But I'm just saying what I got out of it is I mean, she says she's like calls him on what happened at the CDC and he says, what do you think that was a mistake? One that I admit to. I have a few mistakes under my belt, Laurie. So do you. I'm like, fuck you, dude. What's her mistake?

[00:34:37] Like she got with you and you told her her husband was dead. Like he's that was a total douchebag on his move. And I have full sympathy for her in this moment. And to me, I think the way I read it and I'm not saying you're wrong. I want to go back and watch again. But was that OK when you did that or, you know, Rick came back and that meant we were through and then you did that. And that really just meant I don't like you like that anymore. But I do see that you're important to this group and to my son. So I'm not so sure you should leave. That's how I took it.

[00:35:07] Yeah, see, I'm interested to see where it goes in the next couple of episodes, because I remember this being something that bugged me at the time. And I'm wondering, am I either retroactively reading into it or am I picking up on it earlier than I was?

[00:35:17] Right. If she's like flirting with him next time, then we'll see. Yeah, if she's like got her clothes off and is like lying in his bed like, Shane, I just don't think you should leave. Then I'll be like, I don't think this is about Carl. I don't know.

[00:35:30] I don't know. Maybe. However, I did like Laurie's scene in the woods where she calls Andrea out on being sulky and calls Carol out on blaming Rick for everything. I thought she laid down the law quite well. And I was like, oh.

[00:35:44] Even though Carol's daughter's missing, you think it's OK?

[00:35:48] I think it was. Yeah, I think she was the way she handled Andrea was great. The way she handled Carol was harsh. But the way she caught the group dynamic of stop fucking doubting Rick, but also looking to him at the same time was all over well done.

[00:36:07] I'll just say if any of you listening is hanging out with me and one of you takes my son into the woods and then comes back empty handed, maybe don't scold me for a little while. Or have your significant other scold me. Oh, damn it. OK.

[00:36:25] I agree about Andrea. Yeah, right. And also on this subject, I do. I think it's to Shane's credit that he's leaving the group because I thought. It's the best decision.

[00:36:36] Yeah, I thought, you know, you need to let go of your whatever jealousy of Rick or your attachment to Laurie. And if you if he can't, which clearly he can't, then he needs to GTFO. I'm trying to remember what. Yeah, why didn't you leave?

[00:36:52] It must be the pregnancy reveal. Really? That happened. I think so.

[00:36:57] Because I don't feel like they were. Yeah, maybe you're right. But I really thought we were just sort of giggling at the idea that it might be Shane's and that it wasn't until Rick said so later on that we really were like, OK, I guess.

[00:37:11] Shane always believed it was his. He did. OK. Yeah, he was always like, yeah, this is 100p. It's mine. Little baby with his massive ears and grumpy face. That's exactly how you phrased it. I'm quoting directly. Yeah, look at her ears.

[00:37:27] Yeah, no, I think I'm pretty sure I would be happy to put some money on it being the pregnancy that is the ultimate thing that gets him to stay. Because I think he did. There was a long time about whether or not to go in that switches it.

[00:37:41] Yeah. Interesting. OK, my turn. Yeah. So, Andrea. Yeah. So we see Shane cleaning her gun and she's like, that looks complicated, which I'm like, maybe just say, can you show me how to do that? But she's oh man, I'm a girl. I could never touch a gun.

[00:38:07] I felt like she was playing Demir because it's not really her character either. You know, I think she's starting to get the horn for Shane at this point. Yeah, that's probably a little flirty. He's the only eligible. It's that or Daryl.

[00:38:18] And I mean, a lot of women, men who listen to this podcast would be like, you made the wrong decision, love. But at this point, because she ends up can see what she's having a fling with him later. And yeah, maybe it started here in the Hyundai.

[00:38:30] Hyundai. Oh, sorry. Maybe they think that would increase sales. Yeah. I was thinking about that when I was watching this episode. I was like, roomy enough for you to hook up with this random person from your zombie apocalypse group in. I thought it was a Jeep.

[00:38:40] Maybe it wasn't in the Hyundai because maybe does Lori Total it's I don't know. No, they would never let Lori Total the Hyundai. Make her the ultimate villain. She tagged the Hyundai. So anyway, I'm going to go ahead and end this episode.

[00:38:50] So anyway, I thought her being interested in the gun after I watched it, I was like, oh, she just wanted it. So she can kill herself. But then she already had it because it was her gun. So she could have.

[00:39:01] But but I really think it's all about choice. She just wants the choice. And I think that's the thing. I think people are going to be like, well, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure. You're not going to be able to do it.

[00:39:13] You're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. She just wants the choice. After the herd passes through, Dale takes the gun because he doesn't want her to shoot herself, which is not not cool at all.

[00:39:29] I do get where he's coming from, though. I think it's not his heart is in the right place. I would say I know not everyone would agree with that. That's what I say. I also feel angry on her behalf. So I'm like, I can see both sides.

[00:39:44] It's the kind of muddled thinking you do when someone you love is in great distress. It doesn't necessarily. And also, if you handed her the gun and she just went, thanks, boom, then I'd be like, man, maybe the thinking wasn't so muddled.

[00:39:56] Maybe it was right on the nose. So I don't know. It's tough, tough call for me. But but I think he should be talking to her about it. Like she says, do you think I'm just going to shoot myself as soon as I'm like, well, what are you?

[00:40:12] Let's talk. Where is your head at right now? Not I mean, they don't really talk it out. He he she's pissed about what happened in the CDC. I didn't want your blood on my hands. And that's the only reason I left that building.

[00:40:25] She's saying she didn't want to let Dale die. But that's the same reason why he stayed there. He didn't want to let her die or and also because he made the choice. He didn't want to live without her.

[00:40:34] So I feel like she's being a little bit too like holier than thou here for me. Yeah, that's my very angry. That's my I mean, again, I know not everyone agrees with what I'm saying. This just where I land on all of this.

[00:40:48] I always felt for Dale a little bit here and I do even more now. And I rewatched episode six of season one and saw that, hey, Dale had made his choice to. And so you you could have allowed him to make that choice and sat there with him.

[00:41:04] Mm hmm. But it does like it seems like she wants to kill herself, but then she asks to go away with Shane, which is one of those things I totally forgot about. It makes sense. Like, I don't know. I can't relate to that.

[00:41:22] And I was like, a couple of thoughts occurred to me. One was that I kind of wished they'd explored Shane and Andrea together a bit more because I sort of feel like, yeah, it might not have been the worst. And yeah, it's not the stupidest idea. Yeah.

[00:41:36] And there is part of Andrea that is like, if I have to live in this world, I want to learn to protect myself. And I think that's completely fair. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, I admire her for that. She's doing that before any of the other women.

[00:41:48] She's like, you know, I want to I want to learn shooting and cleaning guns. And she says, I'm not asking you to go steady. I'm asking for a ride and chance to start over somewhere else.

[00:41:58] Maybe we'll sleep together every once in a while, but, you know, it won't mean anything. No, I'm just kidding. When she said I'm asking for a ride, I was like, oh, girl, you're contradicting yourself. Yeah, you are. But Lucy. I know. Sorry.

[00:42:14] But then I'm like, OK, you want to start over, then that means you maybe are OK with having a chance. Maybe maybe, you know, she if not, Dale says, I think she should be grateful, which you don't ever want to hear that.

[00:42:30] But at least understanding, you know, like, OK, yeah, maybe you had a point because I'm actually thinking about starting over now. And if I had killed myself, I wouldn't be in this position. I have a really good thing going.

[00:42:44] And then I'm also wondering why Shane is resisting letting her come with him, because it's like, oh, you just want to be alone. You know, maybe you would want some company and not be bored. But maybe it's just that, oh, you're annoying.

[00:42:58] Maybe he just doesn't want to say that, you know, I don't know. Shane saw it before we all did. Maybe so.

[00:43:06] I also think this is a bit of a stretch, but it's a little bit ironic that Dale kinds of he's like all moralistic about not wanting her to kill herself.

[00:43:15] But he ends up kind of being the one to do himself in not the character, but Jeffrey Duhemann, who asked to leave the show, which then got Dale killed. So on a metal level, Dale killed himself. Very true. Dale did kill himself.

[00:43:29] And just on the subject of suicide, I guess that's why they had this guy in the tent who did kill himself. Yeah. And that's just like, I believe that if a zombie apocalypse happened, a lot of that's going to happen early on for sure.

[00:43:43] I think so. I think people want to feel like they're in control of their own destinies.

[00:43:49] We spoke a lot about this. If people are interested in hearing more about this very complicated and nuanced topic, we did talk about it a lot in relation to The Last of Us earlier this year. And the zombie apocalypse brings up interesting aspects to the debate, I think.

[00:44:08] For sure. Absolutely. All right. Anything else? Yeah. I just kind of like Andrea and Shane. Why not? You know, I had Andrea's encounter with the Zed, but I covered that when I spoke about The Herd. It was so good.

[00:44:26] Laurie Holden would be a great final girl or final woman in a horror film. I don't know, there's something about her. She's just played that so well. Let's talk about the one scene that I could not watch on a repeat viewing, which was the zombie autopsy. Gross!

[00:44:44] We watch the episodes twice for this pod usually. And the first time I watched it and I was like, oh no. The stomach lining.

[00:44:53] Unless it's to do with eyes, my gross out level is quite high. I'm like, oh, I'll watch gross videos of earwax on YouTube and stuff like that. I'll do gross stuff. But this, I could not watch a second time.

[00:45:08] We'll have an earwax YouTube link in the show notes for anyone who's interested. I will. I'll leave some good ones. Let me know if you prefer a wet wax or dry wax because they're different. Brown or yellow.

[00:45:20] One of Peter's most hated moments was the night a mutual friend and I realized that we both enjoyed those kind of videos and then went off on tangent.

[00:45:26] And he and my friend Ian, who's the other person's partner, were just looking at each other like you just got to let them get out of their system. There's just no point.

[00:45:35] I couldn't watch it a second time. It's so unrelenting, like it's grim and they do not cut away from the scene. They just stick with it. And just this like slurry coming out of the stomach. It's so revolting. Absolutely grim.

[00:45:53] Also, I've never quite understood the point of when they do this. Because I know it's to check because we see it again in season three where Rick disembowels a Zed to see if it's eaten Laurie. Like I never quite understood what that was kind of all about.

[00:46:08] Yeah, I think they're just looking for any of Sophia's body parts in there, I guess. I would have gotten down there so quick. Anyway, I don't know that much about digestion.

[00:46:17] I think that's the idea. Even if it might not actually make sense. I think that's the point of this.

[00:46:23] Great Daryl moment when he's like, has had a woodchuck for lunch. I just I couldn't bring myself to watch it again. It was wonderful prosthetics, wonderful gross out material, but I couldn't bring myself to do it twice. I don't blame you. That grossed me out too.

[00:46:40] It was really fucking gross, but great Daryl moment. And there are some really good they're getting more of a sense of who Daryl is. I think in this this episode in this season.

[00:46:48] He has some good quick lines. One was asking Rick, do you want a lesson in tracking or do you want us to find that girl? You can see that Rick is he talks about I've delegated this task to Daryl.

[00:47:03] Maintaining the illusion that there is some kind of workflow structure to this whole shambles. However, it shows that faith in Daryl is growing. Absolutely. And I like that. Yeah, he's he's getting more jobs. He talks he's good with Carol. He says hunting in the dark is no good.

[00:47:22] Even in that moment, he volunteers to disembowel the Zed when Rick was about to do it, which just shows I think that he's on board with them now and that the relationship of Rick and Daryl is they're forming a bond, you know, mutual respect.

[00:47:41] Yeah. So we'll probably talk about this in other points as well, but there are some deleted scenes for this episode because it was two episodes that merged into one. And in one of them, Daryl is really harsh with Sophia like he yells at her or something.

[00:47:56] There's something that he does that you really I don't think it seems like the Daryl that we know throughout the show.

[00:48:04] So I'm really glad it got cut. I'm also glad it got cut because it makes this almost it's almost a redemption arc for Daryl, though he didn't really do anything that bad in the search for Sophia.

[00:48:14] Like that's how he proves his quality to the group. That's how he proves his loyalty, I guess, in a way, because he continues to look for Sophia while everyone else is distracted.

[00:48:23] He tells Carol the story of the Cherokee Rose. He keeps going like it's important to him to do that. So I was glad that that got cut and that we just kind of see this.

[00:48:33] So, yeah, longer point zombie autopsy, shorter point. It was nice to see some Daryl, even if it was with his arm in like shit slurry.

[00:48:44] Not good. Also, two zombies in this episode looked really like Dwight. One in the car and the one that they autopsy. I was like, that's really weird. They look like Austin Amelio. So maybe he cameoed.

[00:49:00] I just the grossness of this scene and but I just feel like Greg Nicotero, who's in charge of all the effects and everything. He just gets such a joy out of creating these effects, you know, and I'm sure all that blood spurting from T-Dog 2 was like, look at that, you know, and they do such a good job at it.

[00:49:28] And I think I think that was kind of the fatal error made with Abraham and Glenn showing too much, too much of it because I felt like they probably had that same glee like look, his eyeballs popping out.

[00:49:43] And it's like, well, we all really care for that person. We didn't want to have to see that. Now we're not going to watch anymore.

[00:49:51] We're just fucking grossed out by it. That's horrible. It's one thing to see it with a zombie. It's another thing to see it with a character who you adore.

[00:50:01] And most horror movies, you don't really get to feel as attached to the characters like as you do on an ongoing show. And so the gore is more palatable, I guess, if you're a horror movie fan. But Walking Dead, A, it brings in a lot of people who weren't horror movie fans, but B, we like the characters more. So they need to sort of feel that out. And I think they did after that, you know, they didn't.

[00:50:28] They had to correct quite severely at that point, I think. So but anyway, my point is next point has to do with Daryl too. And it's racism and stereotypes. Fun! Fun, fun, fun! So Daryl's motorcycle has a stylized SS on it, featured prominently here.

[00:50:50] Now, is it Daryl's motorcycle or is it Merle's motorcycle?

[00:50:54] Well, it's Daryl's now. He's riding it. And it's the SS, but it's Merle's. That's why it's on there. You're right. Yeah. So that's for people who don't know, that's Germanic runes, but infamously used by the Schukstaffel. I'm probably saying that wrong, which is a paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

[00:51:18] There's also a skull on the motorcycle, which is called a Totenkopf, which means death head, death's head. And that's a symbol of a faction of the SS. And neo-Nazis and other white supremacists sometimes use that symbol. So I'm like, wow, maybe you should scratch those off or something.

[00:51:41] Have you heard of stickers? You could put a nice flower sticker over it. That'd be nice.

[00:51:46] And I wonder if early on when they featured this, what were they thinking? But I think racism is still a part of Daryl's story very intentionally in the show. We got a review on iTunes from someone who likes the podcast. It was actually a five star review, but asks us to, quote, please stop saying everything is racist.

[00:52:10] And my answer to that is, everything is racist. Everything in the world is racist. No, I'm joking. Obviously not everything in the world is racist.

[00:52:18] No, and we're not. We're of course not saying it is. We're just talking about the themes of the show. Racism is one of those themes. So we will talk about it while it's a theme. And it clearly is with what they're the lines they're choosing to give Daryl right now. If you don't see that, then I think you're not paying close enough attention. That's my opinion.

[00:52:38] Well, he called him short round in this episode.

[00:53:00] That's what I was getting to. Yeah. So, but I mean, he seems like a kind of guy who's never gotten to know anyone outside his own people, you know, white people and from his area and just thinks about people who aren't like him in terms of stereotypes.

[00:53:16] And, and he's also got Merle who is clearly a raging racist as his role model. And I think that's what the writers intended or they wouldn't have written those lines for him with the do rag thing with T-dog goes right along with that, you know, just focusing on racial stereotypes. That's the only point I'm making about him really.

[00:53:33] And so I think he has these tendencies to focus on that at first, but then he gets to know people beyond the stereotypes and he changes. Read us himself said in an interview when you first see Daryl, he's such an angry guy. He basically would have turned into his brother, but he's found a sense of self worth through these people that he never would have hung out with before that that tracks.

[00:53:57] And Daryl's story is one of self improvement. He learns to overcome the prejudices he has. Like it's actually quite an optimistic story in that sense. Like he checks his, he checks his bias and a lot of us could do with doing that. Absolutely. We're all biased. Fucking hell. Yeah. You can't escape being biased, but you can try to be aware of it and look deeper with people.

[00:54:23] So yeah, he called Glenn short round, which is the Asian character from Indiana Jones and the temple of doom more stereotyping. But the thing is, I think in most cases, uh, and here's where some people I think we'll just say it doesn't matter, Jason, but Daryl's not being derogatory. That makes a difference to me. Um, I think Glenn is actually okay with him too, but he is. There's a, at least a bit of talking down to someone when you say, Hey, short round, but also,

[00:54:53] friends tease each other as a sign of affection too. And I think Daryl does like Glenn. Um, I think we saw in season one, he grew to respect him. It'd be interesting to see what would happen if Glenn said, okay, redneck, you know, would Daryl just be like right on. We're, we're now we're just vibing with each other or whatever. Like, what'd you call me? You know, I think it would be bro and down honestly, but I don't know. I'm not, I mean, I don't think it's good to do that. And I, I'm glad Daryl, I can't remember when he, I, uh, I don't know.

[00:55:23] I was actually surprised to hear him call him short round in season two. I thought he was past that at this point, but he does get past it. He doesn't keep using those terms and I'm glad. And I think he's a better person for it. But my, my point, my, one of my points is also that he's just, I think he's just trying to vibe at this point. I don't think he's trying to put anybody down, you know?

[00:55:42] And he called Lori, what is it? Olive oil? Yeah. I think it is Merle's because I think so too. Yeah. It's confirmed later. Something that happens in the next episode confirms that, but yeah. He says like stay away from my brother's bike or something like that to somebody.

[00:56:45] Or he finds his chlamydia medication. Um, so I had a point about talking to God because I think it's interesting that churches actually recur in the walking dead. A lot of the characters address God and Jesus in this episode.

[00:57:08] Darryl, another classic Darryl moment talks to JC when he refers to Jesus Christ. Um, Rick has that excellent soliloquy where he's talking to God as well. Wait, wait, wait. What did Darryl say?

[00:57:20] Uh, he looks up and says, hang on, I'm looking through my notes. Hey JC, taking requests?

[00:57:26] Oh, cause we, in the Darryl show there's his lack of belief is addressed. Right? Doesn't he say he pretty much doesn't. Right. And so here I think that would actually go along with that because it's just a quip.

[00:57:39] Yeah. Hey JC, you taking requests? I found, so just as I had questions about the, how people got in that roadblock, I also have questions about those three zombies in the church. They were great.

[00:57:52] Did they die sitting down? Did they go and sit down? They worked so well, especially the former guy with the grin. Yes, just like looking over his shoulder. He was creepy.

[00:58:01] So good. Yeah, I think it's still, you could say, and I don't know if this is what the writers had in mind, but early on in the walking dead, the zombies still had like sense memory of their previous lives, like Morgan's wife trying to open the door. So maybe these were just churchgoers, you know, shambled back to the church.

[00:58:17] So on the board outside the church, there is a reference to a Bible verse and that Bible verse is Revelation 16, 17. It's a Bible verse that describes the wrath of God during the apocalypse.

[00:58:29] I will not read the full thing because it is quite long, but within this verse, they talk about three impure spirits that looked like frogs.

[00:58:39] They came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet.

[00:58:44] And some people online think that it's very interesting that there are also three zombies within the church, given that that is the verse that is being quoted outside.

[00:58:52] I quite like that. I don't know if it's deliberate or not. I think three is just a neat number to have.

[00:58:57] But I have quite an affection for and shows when the Bible verse that they're referring to or something that needs translated is actually relevant to the scene that's happening there.

[00:59:07] Sure. And I could see how the people making up the zombies and everything would just put more into it and enjoy it more if they could relate it to.

[00:59:16] When I was in a play in college, we had a lot of backstory going on just to make it more fun for ourselves that no one would ever notice that was watching, you know.

[00:59:26] It's great. I love it. And within the church, churches become important later in The Walking Dead. So I was trying to think about all the things that we see that happen in churches.

[00:59:36] So there's this. This is probably the first time that we see people within a kind of proper consecrated church area. It becomes important again between seasons four and five.

[00:59:47] I'm sorry, after the season five opener where the group are hiding in a church while they're waiting to figure out what to do with the termites. They're all hiding out within a church. They also find Father Gabriel. Four walls and a roof. Four walls and a roof.

[01:00:05] Father Gabriel's journey is often about the finding of communities where he then establishes churches for people to worship. And then leaves them outside. Closes the door firmly, locks it and just kicks back.

[01:00:20] And the most recent one I can think of is in season 10 where no season 11, sorry, where we lose Alden in a church where which has been almost fully abandoned to the extent that I want to go back and see if it's the same set as this one only wrecked because it's a similar kind of size and shape.

[01:00:41] So if anyone has any other thoughts about the use of churches in The Walking Dead, I'd be really interested to know because they're always quite interesting set pieces for people to kind of perform. I think about Gabriel in the Commonwealth to addressing all of his people.

[01:01:00] And I think there was a theme of even though there's different classes, we're all here together in this place just sort of trying to make everyone look at people as equal or something. Yep. Yeah. All right. Anything else? Oh, and Carol talks to God. Sorry. Yeah.

[01:01:20] So Carol talks to God. We find out that Ed is a disgusting pedophile, which is hinted at in season one, but is not.

[01:01:26] But what I found interesting is Carol is praying for safe passage and talking about the punishment for herself for the things that she's done and wished for and haven't happened. And Laurie is actually framed behind her.

[01:01:39] And I'm a bit like, wonder if Laurie is thinking about things she's done that she maybe shouldn't have done or did for the wrong reasons. Yeah, I like that as well.

[01:01:47] Seeing Carol in that position where she's talking to God because I think it's safe to say Carol maybe moves away from that more religious path as the seasons go on. But it was an interesting moment.

[01:01:57] It's also a great device for a writer to have a character talk to God because. Sure. All of them the way they do in this episode, Rick included. That goes into my point, evolution of characters. Particularly with Carol praying here. She's wanting.

[01:02:13] She's asking for forgiveness for Ed's death and thinking or being afraid that losing Sophia could be punishment for that. Yeah, she says, you know, and yeah, she says, I prayed for Ed to be punished for laying his hands on me and for looking at his own daughter.

[01:02:29] So that suggests she at least sense that Ed had those designs on Sophia. But as far as she knows, nothing physical ever happened, which doesn't mean it never did. You know, where she was trying her best to keep separated. Pretend. Yeah.

[01:02:44] But anyway, the point is like she's sitting here feeling guilty and it's it's so weird to see her that way. Because she's so different, I would say later on, you know. And I don't know.

[01:02:59] I guess she always does have guilt, but she just seems more like for lack of a better word, kind of whiny. I mean, she's had it rough. So I'm not saying. Yeah, just like she's broken. Yeah. Like, oh, God, you know why? Why did I do this?

[01:03:14] Like and. There's two walkers after my baby. Yeah. She's like yielding to, you know, when people say something to interrupt her, she doesn't come back in. And she ends up being so powerful and aggressive.

[01:03:28] And it makes me think how most of the characters are a lot different in some ways than they become. Rick is compassionate and moralistic. He ends up at times cruel and cynically pragmatic, like killing the saviors in their sleep.

[01:03:42] You know, this Rick would never do anything like that. Oh, God, can you imagine? But the impressive thing is the behavior tracks, you know, he's at his core wanting to protect.

[01:03:53] And that changes to being having been hurt so much or seen so much that he's just like, I will protect the people I care the most about at all costs. You know, that's how it's just like the termite. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Good point.

[01:04:10] Which makes just makes me feel even more every time I think about this. It was such a mistake to have Carl go in the series because at the core of it was Rick protecting at least Carl. Like if he couldn't save everyone, at least you could save Carl.

[01:04:25] He doesn't even like do enough to stick around. Stop dragging them for that. I played more of a show. Michonne's the one who left voluntarily. Rick got the ones who left. Yeah, that's what we'll be calling it. The ones who left.

[01:04:42] The ones who left to go to a day spa. So Glenn is a bit goofy and kind of beta. He actually didn't have a lot to do this episode. I mean, he's great already, but he becomes more serious and solid as the series goes along.

[01:04:59] His own man, you know. It was cute seeing him learn from Dale. Like flathead screwdrivers. Because I forgot that Dale and Glenn have kind of a sweet little bond where he really takes him under his wing. And there's that moment and him kind of cackling. Learn something.

[01:05:15] Yeah, learn something. And Glenn sort of cackling with Glee when Shane finds the water. I love that. It's cute. So sweet. Carl hasn't changed as much. He's like eager to be involved and kind of a seeker of adventure. And I think he chills out a bit.

[01:05:32] But I mean, he does go sneak into sanctuary to try to kill Negan. So he's always up for going out and doing something. Darryl is already really competent and effective.

[01:05:48] But as I said before, he's still thinking about people in terms of surface level stereotypes or at least expressing that. And I think that that goes away. He ends up losing all of that. But even now, even with that, I think he's still observant.

[01:06:00] He's judging people on what he actually sees versus those stereotypes. You know, he's not judging Glenn as some trinamon. He's like, this guy's a good guy, you know? So he's just using the language. But I think he's already changing. I think so.

[01:06:16] And so that all of that sort of makes me wonder how characters like Laurie, Shane, Dale, Andrea might have evolved if they'd had more time on the show. I always wanted more T-Dog, but I liked him from the start.

[01:06:29] But some of these characters who have had their annoying moments, I bet you any one of them, if not all of them, we could have come to love like we did Carol, you know, for example. You missed one development. Oh, what's that? CGI deer.

[01:06:45] Oh yeah, the deer got worse. The deer got worse. I was looking at it like, damn, this was the last good deer. This deer was great. What the fuck happened? I was like, wow, look at it. It was almost real. Yeah, you can't.

[01:06:56] If you're a fan of The Walking Dead, you can't see that deer and not think of that season seven deer. Awful. That's an episode I'm like dreading going back to. I'm like, all I remember is how bad that deer was.

[01:07:08] Maybe we'll love it because we have such low expectations for it. Not the deer. Maybe they'll have gone back and re-edited it. You know how they do that sometimes? You're like, oh, this isn't how I remember it. They should. I have to piggyback on that.

[01:07:24] One of my notes was, we talk so much about what if Shane had lived and what if X, Y and Z had happened. But what if Sophia had lived? Would Carol have done the things she did? Would she have still killed Karen and David?

[01:07:40] Would she be as cutthroat or is this the undoing of Carol? Is this the thing that catalyzes it all? Yeah, I don't think so. I think she would have been not exactly the same and maybe not even close.

[01:07:55] Yeah, it was just interesting to think about that because I hadn't looked at it that way. Like this thing that happens to her, this awful tragedy is also the catalyst for her power in a weird sort of way.

[01:08:08] But we've spoken a lot about her recklessness and where that power kind of comes from and the places it takes her. I mean, it's a superhero story. You know, Batman's parents got killed. It's like that. So that was one on my mind as well.

[01:08:24] Because this is Carol's bottom. This whole season is Carol's bottom. She spends a lot of it in the RV crying. It's not a strong Carol season, but she comes out of it. And in season three we begin to really see it more powerful. Yeah, and that makes sense.

[01:08:42] I feel like that's good that it took her a while to evolve into that. That she just didn't suddenly overnight change into another person. You know, I remember being pretty annoyed with her in season two a few times. And it's interesting because Dale…

[01:08:58] One of the things I'd forgotten about this is Dale lying about the radiator hose. And I remember we spoke a lot about Dale as the moral compass of the group.

[01:09:09] And he says to T-Dog that he wanted to delay the conversations about the needs of the many versus the few for as long as possible. It's almost as though he could see where it was going.

[01:09:23] And he and T-Dog have a talk about whether it's pantomime or bullshit to do that. So he's holding off as long as he can. And T-Dog says something like it must be a really tricky hose because he's lying about the hose not being fixed yet.

[01:09:36] I don't know. It's pretty presumptuous to say, oh if I don't lie to these people they're going to leave this child. I mean have you met those people? They're not staying now just because the RV doesn't work. They're like desperate to find her.

[01:09:54] Dale does like to meddle though. Yeah. So it was interesting. I'd kind of forgotten that Dale sort of occasionally takes these things upon himself. You too. I didn't remember that at all. So I have some notes and IMDB dive. Yeah. Let's go through our notes.

[01:10:13] Let's do notes. Where are you at with your notes? Okay. So when Rick said to Morgan on the phone, I mean on the radio, he's like the CDC was a dead end. I met a scientist there. He told me something.

[01:10:27] He told me Lori's pregnant Morgan. I need your help. He told me my wife, she's up the duff. We don't know why. I don't know if that's a US expression, but up the duff is a great Britishism for being pregnant. So Lori's up the duff. There we go.

[01:10:49] You learn something new every day. So Rick is telling him to be careful and maybe they'll see him in Fort Benning. But we know, as I said before that from clear that by the time Morgan turned on the radio, Rick had stopped leaving the messages.

[01:11:04] So I think this is the last one. It sounds really final. He says, maybe we'll see you in Fort Benning someday. Rick signing off. You must know that they're going out of range, huh? Or he's just giving up. He's just giving up.

[01:11:16] He's just like, well, you ain't answered me. So I guess we're done here Morgan. I mean, you had your chance buddy. Yeah, we're done now. We're done here.

[01:11:26] Hope he didn't die. I thought it was a little weird, odd, strange that Lori and Rick are all happy about this trip where baby Carl threw up and they had to call off the trip and take him to the doctor. It was great.

[01:11:40] It was the best trip. I'm like how bad were your other holidays? I know. What the hell?

[01:11:47] When Lori says, you know, when they first start scavenging all the cars, hey Carl, always within my sight. Okay. I'm like, oh, he will not always be within your sight. That's foreshadowing.

[01:11:58] He will not. That is wishful thinking. Also, where were you when he picked up the literal pile of axes? Like that's a good question. Right. That's it.

[01:12:07] That's you. I like that, at least on my copy, I was watching my old Blu-rays that Rick on the roof was quite bad CGI. It was quite cute anyway. What else going through my notes? Andy fucking Lincoln is giving it his all in this episode.

[01:12:28] He is physically and mentally always putting himself through the wringer. He always does. But this, like the sweat dripping off of him and he's running, he's like full force throwing himself into everything. And I'm just like, yeah, he is Rick. Like this is, I just, the thought of anyone else ever playing him is just abhorrent to me.

[01:12:47] And I think this episode, he just throws everything he has at it. And that's what made him such a good protagonist for the show.

[01:12:56] Yeah. And I just, since you, I mean, he, he's devoted and he would famously when they shoot two sides of a conversation, the actor on one side doesn't have to be there for the, when they're filming the other guy can be a director feeding him lines. But Andrew Lincoln would always be there just so they could react off of him.

[01:13:15] And he just set a tone for the show of putting, giving it your all and also just being kind to everybody and having a great atmosphere on set that continued even after he left the show. So we've probably talked about that a whole lot on this podcast, but I just want to mention it again that he really just, a lot of the vibe of the show permeated out from him and the community and everything to the walking dead family.

[01:13:40] I just thought, yeah. And this episode he's just going at it full pelt, which is just wonderful. Darryl's wearing blue. That's unusual. He's wearing a powder blue shirt that he has ripped the sleeves off of when they wake up the next day to go hunting again. Granted it will get filthy within like one day.

[01:13:56] I can't imagine current Darryl wearing anything like that. That's why I was like, oh, light blue. It's kind of Dale's fault that Carl gets shot because Dale talks Laurie and Rick into letting him join them. Yeah.

[01:14:13] Dale's like, oh, I don't see anything wrong with hanging out with you. And I'm like, well, I hope you feel really bad about that deal because he gets shot.

[01:14:21] Anything else in my notes? Well, I guess the shot of Carl being shot is very powerful. Little Chandler Riggs getting blasted back. Tiny, tiny Chandler Riggs looking just absolutely wrecked on the floor. He looks dead. Like you think he's dead. And that kind of panoramic shot from above like Rick in the tank is a really cool way to end the episode.

[01:14:46] I knew it would happen because it's in the comic. I'm pretty sure. So it wasn't quite as powerful as it would have been if I had known.

[01:14:55] I can't remember if I'd started the comics at this point or not. I don't think I had. I think this was the season where I started reading them. Yeah, it was brutal. Really brutal. And then I've got timeline and IMDB dive. So timeline wise, we are on day. The episode opens on day plus 66 with Morgan on the radio. Well, Rick on the radio to Morgan. At that point, Rick has been awake for one week.

[01:15:20] A lot has happened in that week. And the day that Carlos shot is day 67 since the first kind of outbreak is declared. So, yeah, just two days. It's moving slow. These first two seasons move very slow. But yeah, it's been good in the rewatch to do it without the big break between the two of them.

[01:15:39] Yeah, that was a long break. Only six episode first season and then a long time for two.

[01:15:46] Yeah. IMDB dive. An average car is too low to the ground for a person to squeeze under. So the production used soccer mom cars and redneck trucks instead. So that's a good fact. Hyundai famously you can squeeze under in a zombie apocalypse.

[01:16:01] If they hadn't done that, it would have been a different scene. Get under the car. Oh, crap.

[01:16:04] Oh, God. Jason's already mentioned the reason this episode is longer than most is because budget cuts forced two episodes to be condensed into one. Originally, season two was supposed to have 14 episodes with the first being miles behind us and the second episode. What lies ahead?

[01:16:21] Miles behind us was supposed to tell the story of how the group got out of Atlanta after fleeing the CDC. These are included as deleted scenes on the Blu-ray. Miles behind us was also going to feature the flashback we've spoken about showing the backstory of the army ranger played by Sam Whitworth.

[01:16:36] But I think so. Frank Darabont wanted to show that we saw the army and how that one zombie in the tank got there, but they didn't shoot that. But they did shoot two full episodes.

[01:16:56] Yeah. But the budget cuts made it so they didn't shoot the army stuff. And then there was conflict with AMC about Darabont's two episodes and they told him half of what he did was unusable. But I think there's speculation that they were just trying to start shit with him because he was just so tough to work with and they were trying to push him out or something like that.

[01:17:18] The start of the scene, the start of the episode where there's kind of voiceover. I wonder if that will be footage from the episode that didn't air because the other thing that you don't see is going to the Vatos and seeing that not that they've been overrun by zombies. I was wrong about that, that people have come and ransacked the place and shot people in the head.

[01:17:40] And there was speculation that maybe that was a setup for the governor and his group. Yeah. And ultimately I'm glad this episode shook out the way it did, but it's interesting to think about what it might have looked like with that first episode there.

[01:17:55] Well, there was also, which did get filmed, I think was Shane's Jeep tire gets punctured. He finds himself left behind. He goes on foot, runs from the walkers is rescued by the group. That's when he tells Rick that they don't ever tire, which supposedly informs why he left Sophia under the tree trunk. And then, yeah, they go to the Vatos, but their location has been overrun. Yeah.

[01:18:22] The scene where the group is hiding under the cars was shot in Georgia on Highway 20 during a heatwave, which it did look pretty fucking hot. This episode won an Emmy for outstanding prosthetic makeup for a series, miniseries, movie or a special.

[01:18:38] And yeah, I can see it. This is one of those ones where I'm like, someone's just written this in the cast and crew used peppermint soap to keep ticks and mosquitoes away. Do with that what you will. This episode starts the miles behind us story arc from the comics. It's the first appearance of Daryl Dixon's signature leather vest with the wing patches on the back.

[01:19:00] The fact that on INDB says since he is not wearing it when the group leaves the CDC, but is wearing it when they travel the highway, it is likely that he scavenged it in the Vatos nursing home. So I didn't even notice the origin story. The title of the episode comes from Rick saying 100 miles. That's what lies ahead. It's the fourth lowest rated season premiere of the series. When Rick is on the walkie talkie, you can see Grady Memorial in the background. The same hospital where Beth is taken in season five.

[01:19:29] Yeah. Although I don't know if because I think they filmed different locations at that same location. Yeah. So say that's Grady.

[01:19:39] The man in the tent that opted out has a badge that says no excuse for domestic violence, which is an ongoing storyline for Carol. There is the fact about three walkers I spoke about earlier. The person also adds that the church was thought to be a beacon from Sophia, but it wasn't. It was a false prophet because they're steeple.

[01:20:00] I also that to be fair, that line really made me laugh when they're like, maybe Sophia's ringing the bells. And I'm like, yeah, sure. She's a trained church bell ringer. That's something we've not seen until now. This is the last episode where Sophia is seen alive. She's not seen again until episode seven. Pretty much dead already where she walks out of Herschel's barn as a walker.

[01:20:19] In the comic, final fact, this episode is where Tyrese and his daughter, not his sister, are introduced in between leaving Atlanta and arriving at the Green family farm. In the TV show, Tyrese is not introduced until the season three midseason finale. Fun fact, Tyrese is the only character for whom creator Robert Kirkman envisaged a specific actor, Chad L Coleman.

[01:20:40] But I do think that Kirkman also visualized Henry Rollins for Negan, but didn't get him. So yeah, I think they actually Henry Rollins auditioned. But they liked JDM better. I think so. Yeah, man. Man. Okay, well, that's me. That's my bits.

[01:20:59] Cool. Okay, so I have a few other behind the scenes things. It was directed by Ernest Dickerson, who directed a lot of the early big episodes, including both the episodes that I was on the season two finale and the season three finale.

[01:21:15] Yeah. Although I did not interact with him much because a lot of the stuff with the zombies they left for the assistant director. I forgot her name, but he I mean, he got his start as a cinematographer and worked with Spike Lee on like do the right thing and Moe Betta Blues and a bunch of other Spike Lee movies.

[01:21:32] That's pretty cool. Big deal. Yeah. This was, I guess, the first episode where Norman Reedus appears in the opening credits.

[01:21:43] And it was the last episode produced by Darabont. So yeah, there was there was conflict with him about budget cuts and we talked about it on the podcast early on a lot.

[01:21:58] It seemed like he could be a real tough to work with yelling and stuff, but also that AMC was really tight with the budget. So it just was not a good match. It's ironic given how much it ended up making. How much it ended up making.

[01:22:18] No kidding. All right. So what about only on The Walking Dead? Only in The Walking Dead would you do a zombie autopsy to pull a woodchuck out of poop slurry?

[01:22:30] That's true. Poop slurry. I didn't have a good one, but I just said only in The Walking Dead would it be that when slow stupid monsters shamble up to you from way off in the distance in broad daylight all coming from the same direction, would you not just run away or maybe jog away in the other direction?

[01:22:47] Hop back in the car. Obvious threat to untold numbers of citizens. The people he kills get up and kill. Are they slow moving Chief? Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.

[01:23:48] So we have a new podcast out that I think will be especially interesting to this audience. And that's it's called Welcome to the Apocalypse. It's with Randy, who you've heard calling a lot. He was actually on the podcast last week with Kara when we were talking about One Cut of the Dead. Super talented guy. His friend Robert and Lucy's friend Jenny.

[01:24:15] It's an improv podcast. It's the first time that Podcastica has done anything like that. It's set, of course, in the apocalypse. Their first episode called Wake Up with an Explanation Point is up. It's quick. It's like a little less than 30 minutes and you can find it at podcastica.com. It's meant, you know, it's funny. It's improv, but he went all out with the special effects and everything. I think you guys will dig it. I hope you check it out and tell us what you think.

[01:24:43] I'm so excited.

[01:24:45] We had a bunch of Last of Us related news on last week's episode about One Cut of the Dead. But I'll go through it quickly because I just want to run through it with you. Max, formerly HBO Max says season two will not be on until 2025. I don't know if you know that.

[01:25:06] No, I didn't. Hopefully early 2025. There is a remastered version of the Last of Us Part Two, the game coming out next month with better graphics, more game modes and my favorite, an audio commentary with the creators and actors. You do that in a game?

[01:25:26] I don't know how, but when they had that with Portal and they had these little like waypoints that if you just went over and clicked a button, you could hear. That's really cool.

[01:25:37] Yeah, it's really cool. So it's $10 only if you already own the game because people are like, why? They're just money grubbers. But I'm like, yeah, 10 bucks. I'll get that. That's fine. Better than having to buy all from scratch.

[01:25:48] Yeah. And I think it's going to be 40 bucks if you haven't played it before, which is pretty good. So Pedro Pascal, the next item is being eyed to play Reed Richards in Marvel's upcoming Fantastic Four movie. I'm excited about that.

[01:26:03] I mean, there have only been at best mediocre non MCU Fantastic Four movies. So people who aren't into the comics just think why would you want to do a movie about them again? But I'm a longtime comic fan. I love them in the comics. If Marvel can capture the comic at its best, it'll be awesome. And I'm excited.

[01:26:22] And I think Pedro Pascal wouldn't be my first choice for that role. But he also wasn't my first choice for Joel and he totally killed it. So I think he's just a talented guy. Yeah.

[01:26:32] So that's all for that last item. Well, actually, it's some upsetting news from Ross Marquand. He posted this on Instagram. He says, Well, folks, I finally decided to listen to family, friends and fans. Countless people told me to get my nose checked over the past four years. And I always said I was too busy and couldn't possibly find the time, which is partially true. My schedule has been absolutely bonkers for longer than I can remember.

[01:26:59] But guess what? I let this problem fester and it grew into a cancer. I'm told this one, this was one of the quote better cancers to get, but left unchecked. It could have become much, much worse. I hesitate to share this because I'm usually a very private person.

[01:27:14] But I'm posting this to encourage all of you to prioritize your health, be that physical, mental or emotional. I clearly did not. And now I'm playing catch up. Hopefully I'll have many more days to learn and grow to be healthier, to be better. But nothing in this life is certain. Get yourself sorted. And please don't wait like I did lots of love to everyone for their kind words of support and encouragement. Happy holidays. And oh yeah, hashtag fuck cancer.

[01:27:39] Ross. Yeah, it sounds like he'll be fine. He had pictures of the scar where they took out, you know, piece of his nose with the tumor or whatever. Bless him. I'm sending all best wishes. Cancer's a fucking bitch, man. Yeah. Ross is such a good guy.

[01:28:01] Oh, he's great. All right, let's move on to some Lister Mones Grunts Grunts. Brad Holt says, Yeah, I love season two. Can't wait. Well, we're here, Brad. You don't have to wait any longer.

[01:28:17] Nope. Hope you didn't wait too long. Damien Vitali says one of my most anticipated premieres. Nice. Aaron stole Medea Rose. Medea Rose says I remember really liking this episode. This is motivating me to rewatch. Karen, I hope you did.

[01:28:34] I hope you did. Monica McGuire says beginning thoughts remind me why Morgan and Dwayne didn't go with Rick. Why didn't they just go the wrong way on the other side of the freeway to avoid the back of a vehicles? And also that RV was always breaking down. Couldn't they just find another one?

[01:28:52] I looked at looked back. The exchange between Rick and Morgan was Rick said, You sure you won't come along? And Morgan said a few more days by the end Dwayne will know how to shoot and I won't be so rusty.

[01:29:06] And so your first thought is, Oh, he wants to practice his shooting. But actually what he's saying, I think is he's trying to get the courage to shoot his wife, because we saw him do that next. And if it was on, you know, fear the walking dead, he would have given a big speech about his wife. But instead, he just said this offhanded thing. And it was much better that way.

[01:29:34] They trusted the audience to infer something. Bloody hell. Exactly. All right, I'm gonna intersperse the calls because we got a few first one is from Alma.

[01:29:45] Hey, you guys. I was just I just listened to the wildfire podcast. And I couldn't not go on without sending a shout out to Peter. He was a nice addition. And can I just tell you, Lucy, I would listen to your man talk all day. Please do.

[01:30:39] Anyways, it was nice having him along on the podcast this this week. Thanks, you guys for all you do. Alma you sweetheart. Can I get your number so that you can be like Peter, can you just call Alma with this?

[01:30:57] I don't want to listen to you speak. Yes, we are both Scottish, but Peter sometimes gets mistaken for being Irish, which I find quite funny. I could see that.

[01:31:07] Yeah, because we're from different bits of Scotland. So we sound slightly different. And I picked up more Canadian than I meant to when we lived there. So occasionally I slip into something a bit transatlantic. But thank you very much, Alma. It was lovely to meet you in San Francisco and we will meet again, I'm sure.

[01:31:24] I echo that. It's great to meet you.

[01:31:28] Randy Stevenson of Welcome to the Apocalypse says, I love that TD Dawg's injury has actual impact and consequences within the story. Getting injured in a world without readily available medical care raises the stakes for even small mistakes. Some unnamed spin off shows could have taken a note or two. Randy, what could you be talking about?

[01:31:47] Fraser. Yeah, that's it for sure.

[01:31:51] Megan Daly-Layman says it would be unthinkable in later seasons that any one of our characters couldn't easily handle the situation in the woods that led to Sophia's disappearance and ultimately her death. Rick really could have done better, but they were not yet even remotely adept at handling the Zeds. I mean, yeah, really what would have happened is he'd have had a knife and he just stabbed them both in the head. Doesn't he have a knife?

[01:32:15] Not yet. They haven't found the arsenal yet.

[01:32:18] Yeah, she goes on. Also remembering how Rick was basically responsible for Sophia's death, it seems a lot more shitty of him to have banished Carol from the group later after she killed sick people at the prison. I could not disagree with that more, but okay.

[01:32:37] I will agree to disagree. I'm gonna stay on the fence. He tried to do something good. Okay, we have another call and it's from Tiege. Tiege. He might have been when he came out of the RV after Shane and Laurie were arguing in front of the RV.

[01:33:23] The second question is deeper and darker, but as they were in the CDC and Jenner was gonna blow them all up, I looked at all of them that were escaping and thought like if they had seen the future would they have preferred?

[01:33:40] I don't really know how to phrase it without sounding supportive of blowing people up, which I'm not generally, but I look at Laurie, Andrea, they didn't live happy lives going forward.

[01:33:58] And I suppose we could focus on the positive times like at the prison before Carol started killing people over the flu, but just generally Jenner's argument of you're gonna leave and have a short, brutal, vicious life.

[01:34:14] I don't know. Anyway, thank you. I'm loving the rewatch. Thank you so much for doing it. It's a good point.

[01:34:24] No, I don't agree. Rick is still alive. He's still fighting to stay alive. He wants to be reunited with the people he cares about. If he succeeds, he'll go to the Commonwealth, which is a really nice place led by Ezekiel. So that's my thought on that.

[01:34:39] Yeah, but what about Laurie and Carl and Andrea? Andrea, none of them make good ends. So Laurie, like if right before she got…was she bitten in the prison? They just didn't kill her. Oh, because why? Because they had to cut Judith out.

[01:34:59] But I still don't think she would be saying, man, I wish I would have blown up the CDC because she's telling Carl you need to go on. Now if she knew what happened to Carl, well maybe then I could maybe see if she could see the future and know what happens to Carl.

[01:35:12] But I don't know. I think they all had moments of joy in there and none of them seemed like they were like, God, why is this life so awful? Why do I have to keep going? You know, they were all just…they had spirit to them going forward.

[01:35:34] All right, your turn. Oh, it's another Megan one. No. No, it's a repeat. Sorry. Okay. So you should be.

[01:35:44] Nick Archer says, I really needed these podcasts. Thank you for doing the rewatch. I haven't watched the episode in a little bit, but T-Dog's arm wound still haunts me. Darrell also stands out. And of course, all of the bodies in the cars that died from dehydration. I mean, they didn't reanimate. They must not have had the energy.

[01:36:01] The bottled water sure seems kind of rude in retrospect. Nick, you're not wrong. Overall, the episode was always a thrilling hour of TV. Plenty of great moments. We all remember watching this one for the first time. Looking forward to the podcast. Thanks, Nick.

[01:36:17] I mean, the water water. My first thought was, what? You're wasting the water. And I'm like, well, they probably don't have any way of transporting all that water. But… Also, it's a huge truck. Try to get that truck moving, maybe. I don't know. Yeah.

[01:36:32] Thanks, Nick. All right. Here is Gloria from Salem. Hi, Lucy and Jason. It's Gloria from Salem. This is for The Walking Dead Season 2, Episode 1. Wow. That herd of walkers really scared the shit out of me. I actually forgot about that scene. Until Laurie covered Carol's mouth.

[01:36:52] Oh, dear. You always think you're right. Keeping Andrea's gun like that? He had no right whatsoever. If it was me, I probably would have gone off on him. And then I would have been labeled an emotional woman. She just couldn't win.

[01:37:06] She was right, though. She's not his daughter, not his wife. She's a grown-ass woman who can make her own choices. Just like today. Older white men taking away a woman's choice. What an asswipe.

[01:37:19] You know, the church with the timer on its bells, you'd think there'd be a hell of a lot more walkers around it. Really funny when Daryl said, yo, JC, you taking requests? I almost thought he was going to answer them.

[01:37:32] Andrea overhearing Laurie and Shane talking. Do you think that may be why Shane had sex with her? Just to try to protect his secret, or are they just too horny consenting adults? Probably that.

[01:37:44] Carol broke my heart, seriously, praying in the church. She honestly thought her praying to punish Ed was her fault. Jesus Christ. That sweet moment between Kyle and the deer, so poignant. Then the shot. Holy shit.

[01:38:00] That's it for me. And last time you said you thought you'd hear a line or two of a song. Okay. I don't play an instrument, but I could do a little acapella for you. Okay.

[01:38:43] Can a child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? That's it for me. Ciao. Oh, Laurie, that was beautiful. Channeling some Stevie Nicks. Love it. And very Walking Dead appropriate.

[01:39:15] Yeah, that was great. It's interesting. Yeah. I'm like, why are we doing zombie sound? We should have had everyone sing. That was really nice. All right. Next is from Becky Fenner Anderson, who says, good morning.

[01:39:29] Good morning. Like the cold open with Rick talking to radio Morgan while the camera shows the abandoned city and the dead shows the bleakness of what the world is now.

[01:39:39] Liked how the intro music started off and built up to normal level was really cool. I didn't even notice that. I know it's his thing, but isn't Darryl's motorcycle a bit too loud for a zombie apocalypse? Yes. I agree with this.

[01:39:52] Sweet moment in the car with the kids talking about planning a trip in the future. Nice to give them a moment of normalcy, even though it won't even happen. Yeah, too bad.

[01:40:02] The constant ups and downs, how there's hope, then disappointment, getting into the CDC and the end result. Carl seeing the deer, then getting shot, etc. Yeah, totally pulling the rug out all the time.

[01:40:13] Being a southern girl, I know how that southern heat and humidity is. So I felt the joy and relief when Shane found the water and let it wash over him. Yeah, they were always talking about how it was torture filming that show because it's so hot in Georgia.

[01:40:27] There was a moment where Laurie Holden, as Andrea goes back into the RV and she just played I am too fucking hot very well. And I felt very sorry for her.

[01:40:36] She didn't have to act. Great acting from the group when they were hiding into the cars. Silly Andrea messing things up again and seriously shut up about having a dang gun. There's people on different sides of that issue. Loved it when Laurie put them all in their places while taking up for Rick.

[01:40:53] Poor T-dog. Beryl saving him was badass. Kudos with the quick thinking to cover them both up with the dead. When Carl found the bag of weapons, he looked like a kid on Christmas morning. Ah, the joys of growing up in the zombie apocalypse lol. Finding Carl less annoying this time around so far anyway. Yeah, I don't find him annoying at all so far.

[01:41:16] Found the church scenes with Carol and Rick interesting. Carol's prayer made me sad. I hate how she felt Sophia's disappearance was her fault and she was being punished then risk Rick asking for a sign even though he doesn't believe. I imagine facing what they are. It makes sense to look for something or someone to have faith in totally.

[01:41:34] Favorite quotes from the episode at the church. Darrell said you taking requests JC Shane talking to Rick as he leaves the church. Shane, you get what you need. Rick guess I'll find out. No. At the tent in the woods. Darrell said some guy did what Jenner said opted out. Ain't that what he called it? I feel like that was directed towards Andrea.

[01:41:57] Like what he's suggesting or something, I guess. Because she would know. I don't know. It felt pointed but I wasn't quite sure what the point he was getting at was. So thank you Becky. Here's a call from Val Leroy. I think this might be her first time calling it.

[01:42:17] Hey Jason and Lucy. This is Val from Belgium. My first time calling in and even my first time writing and so I've debated doing it since I found your podcast and I finally got to it. Nice. So this is my third rewatch. I was one of those who stopped watching after the first episode of season seven.

[01:42:41] I've never read the comics so I didn't know Negan was coming and I really couldn't handle it. Then in 2021 I got COVID and was bed bound for weeks. So I decided to try again from the beginning. I binged watched all of the seasons in two weeks. Oh my goodness. I can tell you I had some interesting zombie dreams.

[01:43:07] That's also the time I found your podcast and I listened to every single episode. I really like the format and how you discuss your favorite points. So here are some of the things I noticed rewatching the first episode of season two.

[01:43:22] I always liked when the music from the intro starts quietly and fades in. I never skipped the intro. When Shane is cleaning his gun in the RV and he's talking to Andrea, there's a plaque behind her that says, how about a nice cup of shut the hell up. And I thought that fit well with their discussion.

[01:43:47] And Dale wasn't doing a really good job being on the lookout for Zeds really. No.

[01:43:54] And when Andrea locked herself in the bathroom of the RV, when the Zed came in, she was frantically trying to put the gun back together. So what her idea was to shoot it and alarm all the other walkers. Not a great idea, Andrea.

[01:44:10] And then when she stabbed it, surely some of the Zed splatter got in her mouth as she was screaming so loud. Oh yeah. And then I laughed when Daryl put the dead Zed on top of him to hide. I mean, he basically made out with it.

[01:44:27] Later in the woods, when Daryl and Rick were searching for Sophia, this one Walker made a really impressive scream when it saw Rick. The dissection of it was pretty, pretty gruesome. I was happy I wasn't eating anything while watching that.

[01:44:45] I could go on, but this is getting long. So I'm looking forward to the rest of this rewatch. And as this is my first time calling in, here's my zombie sound. I'm pretty sure that's our first Belgian zombie. So that was...

[01:45:07] I love that. Oh, if I'll call in any time. I went to Belgium last year for the first time and it was amazing. It was really cool.

[01:45:18] I had one of the best holidays of my life in Belgium. I went with, like not Louis, I just didn't know what to expect. I'd never been to Belgium. We went for New Year and we had such a good time. It was great.

[01:45:32] All right. I have an email from Dina from Massachusetts. Dina says, Hello, Jason and Lucy. Season two is one of my favorite seasons and I'm not quite sure why it's so unpopular. It's not rushed. And so there is time for characters to reveal who they are as they sort themselves into roles and begin to bond as a new fragile family. And what a blast to know who they will become.

[01:45:54] It is popular, I think. You think? I'm with Dina. I think people don't like this season. Oh, really? Oh, I thought it was just me. Everyone's like it's the boring farm season.

[01:46:05] No, oh no. Most people I hear love it. Like look at all our listener emails. They're like, oh, I was very much looking forward to this one. I think most people like it. All the ones who hate it just don't want to hang in. Maybe that's true, yeah.

[01:46:18] My high school history teacher firmly believed that we should be taught history backwards from present to past. I've been rewatching episodes jumping around from season to season. I think Mr. Corvo was right. I'll see something that Carol does in season six and can trace it back to season one. It's great fun. He sounds like an awesome teacher.

[01:46:36] Chandra in the Facebook group talked about leadership styles. Hi, Chandra. I'm with you. My HR colleague and I have so-called meetings about work, but we are actually analysing leadership styles and how they shift over all the seasons. Oh my God, this needs to be an off-season episode.

[01:46:49] Morality is a huge theme in this season. Well, it always is in The Walking Dead, but here's where we really start to witness stances and that not everything is black and white.

[01:46:58] Dale trying to save Anne Frears life, noble, while at the same time taking her choice from her, sanctimonious. Shane in particular is fun to discuss because he's a bastard, but he's not always wrong. But hello, Laurie. Don't scavenge because it's the graveyard. Really? Okay then, sugar. Don't eat. Jeez.

[01:47:15] Then there's Darryl. I finally accepted the fact that I'm in love with a fictional character. I cannot fathom people who get tattoos of real people, kids, spouses, parents, celebrities, etc. So it is horrifying to me that I think I'm in the process of getting a Darryl tattoo. Is it menopause? My husband thinks I should just learn to shoot a crossbow and get a motorcycle as it's more practical. And I don't think it's a coincidence that he's always rewatched in that Portlandia episode about the Eddie Vedder tattoo.

[01:47:42] With the influence of Merle gone, there is a hint of the leader Darryl will become. Merle may have encouraged him to be racist, but one of his first acts is to put himself in danger to save a black man. Of course, he follows that by calling Glenn short round. One step forward. By the end of the main show, I think Darryl has taken bits and pieces from those he respects and to forge his own leadership style as we all do.

[01:48:04] Although they were together for a very short time, I think his style aligns with Deanna's. Who's Deanna? Sorry, that's just I have to anytime someone says Deanna. They are quiet, watching and assessing before taking action. The difference in the early years is that Deanna can mostly keep her emotions in check, whereas Darryl struggles.

[01:48:22] For people who don't remember, Deanna was the original leader of Alexandria.

[01:48:26] She was, paid by Tova Feldshuh, who was amazing. How many times has Rick had to hold him back over the years and say, Darryl, not now! As he ages, he learns to control himself, mostly. And while the scene with Carl and the deer is beautiful, it's time to give up the spiritual idea that critters symbolize innocence. Lime disease, filmmakers. Tick-borne illnesses. Down with Bambi, I say.

[01:48:48] Well, if you don't do another episode before the new year, may yours be safe and fruitful. I'll be eating venison at our Christmas dinner. Thanks so much, Deanna.

[01:48:58] We will be doing one before the new year, but not before Christmas. So Merry Christmas to everybody and happy holidays. And thanks, Deanna. That was totally delightful. It was great. Okay, here's one more call from Sam from Boston.

[01:49:13] Hi, it's Sam from Boston. I'm really, really enjoying the rewatch and the podcast. I really appreciate you guys doing this. It's awesome. And I'm rewatching it along with you. I started season two and then next thing I knew I'm on episode eight of season two.

[01:49:32] I'm like you guys, I didn't like it in the week to week format. But I kind of really appreciated it after that when I can binge it and get kind of away from the standalone episodes. And yeah, I just I forgot in the beginning when Carl and Sophia are like, can we go to the Grand Canyon? No, no, neither of you will ever see the Grand Canyon because you'll die horrible deaths as young children.

[01:49:58] It's kind of like grim watching that. It's like, like, oh, no, I guess not. It's only kind of humorous to me because I know the actors are alive and fine. But yeah, it was just really great. And I remember it took me back to my original watching of the series when it was airing.

[01:50:14] And this brought to me the full horror of the horde and just seeing them all coming in and how terrifying that was, even if they were slow moving. And yeah, it's still kind of viscerally brought me back to that, which I really appreciated. And yeah, it is kind of weird looking at how mobile and just aware some of the walkers were in the beginning seasons and some of the things that just kind of got left aside.

[01:50:38] I was like, when can they open doors? But apparently the one going after Andrea could. And Rick really did his best to try and take care of Sophia. I really don't see another avenue that he had. And it is just kind of odd to see like Rick struggling with two walkers. But it's like, oh, that's right. This is a beginning. This is a part of it. And yeah, and of course, the CGI deer. It's still just as awful.

[01:51:05] And go Chandler Riggs. He did a great job acting to, I'm guessing just open space. So this is awesome. This episode just propelled me into a marathon watch. So can we do the podcast? Bye. Awesome.

[01:51:20] Go on YouTube and look up Walking Dead deer, because then you'll see the one that everyone refers to when they're talking about the awful deer in The Walking Dead. And then you'll realize how great this one actually was.

[01:51:32] It was honestly that the deer in season seven and a season that had Glenn and Abraham's death in it. The deer may still have been the worst thing about that season. It was so bad. It obviously wasn't, but it was up there.

[01:51:45] Yeah, that was very bad. But that was an amazing call, Sam. Thank you. Oh, Sam, you're so bubbly. I love it.

[01:51:51] All right. That is our show episode 556. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Next episode, Walking Dead season two, episode two, bloodletting, which I was trying to think, do I remember? This is Herschel, right? First Herschel appearance.

[01:52:10] Herschel Green. Clean shaven Scott Wilson. Can I just say I was sick a couple of weeks ago or last week, I think I took a day off and it was so hard to not binge season two. So I went off in a different direction. I think I ended up watching some season four because I was like, well, by the time we do that on the rewatch, I'll have forgotten it again.

[01:52:33] Yeah, bloodletting. So if you want to write in or leave us a voice message about it, you can find all our contact information at podcastica.com.

[01:52:41] Go to podcastica.com. Check out our other podcasts. Check out Welcome to the Apocalypse with Randy, Robert and Jenny, our new improv podcast. I think it will put a smile on your face. I can't wait.

[01:52:55] This episode is made possible by Patreon supporters like Mark Nichols, who pledged their support at patreon.com slash Jason cabassi. So thanks to Mark. Mark's a great guy. Met him in San Francisco. Yeah, Mark, you should come do a Zedhead show sometime. That'd be really cool.

[01:53:12] Oh, that would be so fun.

[01:53:13] And speaking of that, that's our Patreon exclusive podcast. I didn't mean to make that obvious transition, but this year or this month we're doing one where I have a few people on to talk about our favorite movie shows and games of 2023. So that's coming up for Patreon people.

[01:53:31] I'm excited. And happy holidays, everyone. That is it. That is our show. Thanks for listening. Don't get bit, Tyler Sheil. Bye.