OMG, like totally huge spoilers in this so if you haven't watched "Better Angels," stop reading and go look at Cute Overload or something.
So THAT happened. Twice, if you count Carl's shot. Shaneless. No Shane in The Walking Dead's Game. "Better Angels," the penultimate episode of The Walking Dead Season 2, continued to swing the wrecking ball at the mess left by first half of the season and poured down cement for what will be the foundation of Season 3. New showrunner Glen Mazzara is doing some good things with what he was given, which was a dried-out corpse of a show. He has reanimated The Walking Dead, got it up on two feet, and now has it at least shambling in the right direction. Things aren't perfect, but they're definitely improved. Who knows, by the time Season 3 arrives, The Walking Dead might be running at a full sprint.
But the previous regime left Mazzara and the writers one juicy development to play with, and that was the death of Shane. Shane! Nooooooooo! Even though everyone saw his death coming from 18 miles out, either through the comics or AMC's own accidental spoilery ad for the DVD set or Jon Bernthal's casting in L.A. Noire or those pictures that were floating around the internet or just because it was pretty obvious, it's still a giant moment for the series. But I wish it had happened a little differently. A little less "my name is Shane and I'm a crazy psychopath and I want to take over your life, Rick," and a little more "I tried, bro. Really, I tried." You know, for some sympathy. Because even though he was portrayed like the big bad villain, Shane was right a lot of the time.
I'm guessing it was Lori's apology and admission that she knew things weren't fair for Shane that set him off. She FINALLY owned up to her responsibility in the mess of Shane's mind in that conversation by the whatever tower, and while the talk was well intentioned and oh-so overdue, it had the wrong effect on the poor lug. Ditto for Rick's dismissal of having a long talk with Carl, who's been stealing guns and killing Dale. Rick had no idea that when he said he'd talk to Carl later, Shane saw it as poor parenting to the child he had once adopted as his own. Both those things combined to send Shane to Cuckoo Town, and he saw an opening to get that Rick-less life back—so he went for it.
Plotting cold-blooded murder isn't the way I would have handled the situation (I would have started a "Rick has herpes" rumor), but Shane elaborately staged Randall's escape, broke the kid's neck, ran headfirst into a tree, put people in danger by having them run around the forest in the dark, and then pulled a gun on Rick. I'm still wondering why Shane never actually pulled the trigger since he clearly had already crossed the edge. It wasn't Shane's finest moment and since I've been a Shane defender since the pilot, I wish he had left the series on a better note rather than "[indiscernible garble] I'm Shane I'm crazy person Me love Lori! [growls!]" While the rest of the series got better in the second half of the Season 2, Shane got treated worse by the writers. And then Shane got stabbed by Rick.
But then Shane got up. Only it wasn't Shane. It was Zombie Shane! "Better Angels" not only made a major move in killing off its biggest character yet, it made its biggest reveal about the overall zombie situation. Just like those cops we saw a few episodes ago that had no visible bite marks or scratches but were clearly at one point zombified, and just like broke-neck Randall who got up and started walking around, Shane became a zombie without having any contact with a zombie. It's a violation of Basic Zombie Rule #1, which states (and I'm paraphrasing) "any person scratched by a zombie, gnawed on by a zombie, or bled on into their eye by a zombie (28 Days Later), is infected and will die and become a zombie." I guess the theory is that everyone is already infected somehow, and the Z virus if you die at the hands of a zombie or the hands of your former best friend (is that what Dr. Jenner told Rick in the Season 1 finale?). Or is it just those that have been splattered with zombie goo, as Andrea was in the RV? Now this show becomes more than about survival, it becomes a show about finding a cure.
However, Zombie Shane sat down pretty quickly after Carl blew his brains out with one hell of a shot for a kid. But the real question is this: what was Carl doing out there alone... AGAIN? The entire farm is on alert because there's a madman with a gun looking for a kid to rape or whatever they thought Randall was going to do, and Carl is out there on his own? Where is Lori? Shouldn't the first thing that Rick did is tell Lori to get Carl and run into the farmhouse where he'll be safe? Shane may have been insane, but he made a good point about being able to raise Carl better than his parents do. A starving pack of hyenas could raise Carl better than the Grimeses.
And in the final final moments (the end went on for a long time didn't it?) I think we saw something that we've been waiting for: an excuse to get the hell off the farm. There are zombies on the horizon, and with the mud hardening and gunshots going off on the farm, they're heading the survivors' way. I didn't think Season 2 could spend almost the entire season on the farm, but they did. Now it's time to get them out of there.
The second half of Season 2 still has its haters (this show is pretty unique in its temperamental/over-protective fan base), because it still has its problems and haters are gonna hate loudly and annoyingly. But those who have been paying attention have to admit that the show is in a better place than it was in before the middle of Season 2. Back then, the show was a giant meteor heading towards Earth ready to kill us all. You don't just blow it up and save the day as we learned from Deep Impact, you have to gently nudge it until it's on the right path to smash into something else much lamer like Venus. This is all prep work to make sure Season 3 starts off on the right step.
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