Nobody Better Lay A Finger On My "Triggerfinger"

Aaaaaaand here's Lori, dangling upside down in her sedan post-crash, so tempting to the zombie who paws at her cracked windshield. Wouldn't it be great if she turned into a zombie right now? She'd look like this:

But instead of becoming a zombie, she wakes up, starts to sorta yodel, and leads us right into the credits.

After the commercial break, we revisit Rick's bar gunfight from several weird Dutch angles as if to prepare ourselves for another interpretation of the afternoon's events. It's nighttime by now, and Hershel wants to head back. But just then, headlights shine into the bar -- headlights that belong to the scary gang Rene used to be in! We won't be watching another version of the gunfight after all; we'll be watching part two of it.

Back at Lori's car crash, the zombie smushes its face through the windshield with complete disregard for all the painful face-cuts it's probably getting. Zombies, right?? It yanks Lori's hair as she tries to escape, so she whips around and stabs it in the eye! As soon as she's out of the car, another zombie lumbers up behind her. Lo and behold, she kills that one too! Wow, Lori really just crushed it. This is the best Lori there has ever been. I finally have stopped hating Lori, thanks to 2 zombie kills in 3 minutes.

The thugs outside Hershel's bar have already seen and killed 2 "roamers," (!!) so their attention is split betwixt finding their friends and dodging a ton of zombies. Unfortunately, Rick starts a dialogue with them. "They drew on us," he explains through the door. That oughta do it, Rick. He sends Glen to the back room, where somebody keeps making strange noises. Good lord, let it just be a zombie. Eventually the mysterious visitor leaves and I guess jiggles the door handle for good measure. We never see who it is. WAS IT A ZOMBIE, MAZZARA?

At Hershel's place, Carol gets sick of all this civilization and goes out to Daryl Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss for some good old fashioned verbal abuse. She tells him to go ahead and get it all out, so he reads her the riot act for not taking good enough care of her daughter. I think that Carol's history of abuse is making her go looking for punishment. Aw, Carol. How is your hair still so short?

When Shane hears about Lori leaving, he too finds a car and drives off towards town. Everyone finds a car and drives to town. Hershel does it, then Rick and Glen, then Lori, now Shane. But you know what? I'm actually relieved that Shane's going. Rene's gang said very plainly that there were a lot of walkers showing up, and I just started to like Lori. Come on Shane, make it start!

Hershel and Rick have joined Glen at the back room exit, and whoever jiggled that handle is now a mystery for the ages. Hershel takes down a thug, whose fresh corpse attracts a ton of zombies. They say that a feeding zombie is a safe zombie, but Hershel's never heard that and now he's scared. He looks like he's about to do something crazy, but it's hard to tell what that might be. In the meantime, Rick sneaks out of the bar with two guns aimed in different directions, covering himself. Good thing, too, because now there's a SNIPER.

A thug drives up in his pickup to warn the sniper about "all the roamers," urging him to just jump from the roof. Obviously the kid lands on a wrought iron fence post through his leg. His friend abandons him, peeling out like a horde is right behind him. Rick's looking at the kid like-- RICK, DON'T YOU DARE.

Oy oy oy, Rick wants to save the sniper because he's only a teenage sniper, after all. Hershel prepares to amputate, drunk as a skunk and attracting thousands of zombies. Rick and Glen do their best to pick off the ones that get too close, but geez louise, there are trillions of them! They run out of time, and it looks like they'll have to leave the kid there to die. So Rick shoves his leg back up off the spike.

Shane finds Lori and lies to her about Rick being back at the farm so she'll go back quietly. Great idea, Shane, I'm serious. Please lie to Lori to get her to do things that are safe. This is why authority figures lie to you. To keep you safe from zombies.

When they get to the farm and Rick's not there, Shane spills Lori's pregnancy secret to whomever doesn't know yet. Which is Carl. Carl freaks out at first, then gets really excited about becoming "Big Brother Carl." Naturally, that comes off pretty lame. But trust me, it's one of the least lame scenes I've seen Carl do. He's growing on me at the snail's pace of one sir [SNL-aged] Kenan Thompson.

Shane and Lori have a very loud heart-to-heart in Hershel's living room, which I guess they must think is sound-proofed because they're delving into the paternity issue really candidly. Shane's trying to get her to admit that they were in love way before the zombiepocalypse, and Lori falters when she tries to deny it. Shane is quickly becoming The Situation of the Walking Dead. My friend Zach said that.

Somewhere in here, Maggie tells a neverending story about a muddy horse and birth control pills, I suppose to remind us that this catatonic girl is important somehow. WHO CARES, MAGGIE. WHO CARES, CATATONIA.

The next morning, Rick pulls up at the farm with Hershel, Glen, and this kid, who's named Randall. What's his last name, Flagg? Haha just a little joke from The Stand but also please dear Lord don't let his last name actually be Flagg, that would be terrifying!!!!!

Hershel amputates the kid's leg off camera in the barn, and when he comes in to tell Rick and everyone how it went, he says Randall should be on his feet in a week with partial nerve damage. A) Randall has only one foot now. B) One week seems like an insanely short recovery period for a WROUGHT IRON IMPALEMENT. C) Hershel is still drunk. D) Hershel is a fucking miracle worker. Why was he wasting his time in Noonan when he clearly should've been one of the doctors at Princeton Teaching Hospital or whatever, maybe Seattle Grace? Hershel, enigmatic.

Glen and Maggie have a relationship talk yet again but it's manageable. He tells her how scared he was at the bar when usually he's pretty brave in the face of danger. It's because he's in love now, and he has to stay alive. But the convo still ends with two unhappy post-adolescents stomping off to separate rooms.

Meanwhile, Rick and Lori have a similar conversation in their tent as they change shirts next to their chest-level tent windows. The way Lori grimaces when she peels off her shirt, it seems like she's going to be sporting a gnarly zombie bite. But instead she's just herself, totally unscathed and totally honest about everything Shane has said to her. And she even says the line which is quickly becoming the town bicycle - "I think Shane killed Otis!" - all in order to slowly shift Rick's attitude on Shane. Lori wants Shane gone, and she's willing to Lady MacBeth out on Rick to get it done. Judging by Rick's ten-hour camera spike at the end, it just might work.

Photos courtesy amctv.com