Bookshelf Battle

Grrr…argh…spoilers!!!

Daryl vs. Zombie

Rick shaved his beard off!  Carol’s sporting a sweater and baking casseroles!  And the gang have their own mansions!

The group’s been beaten down for awhile now.  They’ve gone from one bad settlement to another, facing the likes of Woodbury (where they squared off with the Governor) and Terminus (and almost got eaten by the cannibals).

Deanna the Congresswoman runs the settlement.  The place has been up and running since the beginning o the zombie outbreak.  In other words, the people are pretty soft.  They’ve had heat, electricity, all the trappings of civilization.

They’ve had to do very little fending for themselves and it shows.  Rick and the group are skeptical and wary, though it generally seems like the townsfolk are trustworthy.

Still, there are problems.  Deanna’s son Aidan claims to be the big tough guy but makes rookie mistakes.  He keeps a walker hanging on a tree so he can torture it once in awhile as retribution for killing his friends.  Glenn and Tara are aghast.  As veteran zombie fighters, they realize it just doesn’t make sense to hold a grudge against a zombie.  Kill it to keep it from being a threat and that’s it.  The thing doesn’t know what it is doing so you’re only putting yourself at risk by keeping it alive and torturing it.

The viewer is left with the feeling that the town should be more afraid of Rick than anything.  Rick shaves his beard and puts on a fresh police officer’s uniform.  Eerily at the end, he tells the group that if life in the town doesn’t work, then they’ll just “take over” the town.

Is Rick slowly becoming a bad guy or is he just keenly aware that possible threats are everywhere?

By the way, I hope you like the latest battle on my bookshelf – Daryl vs. a Zombie!