The Walking Dead S2E4 "Cherokee Rose" (11/6/11)

Everyone finally reconvenes at Herschel's farmhouse: Darryl, Dale and Carol drive up in the gang's vehicles; Carl wakes up, asking if Sophia is okay.  They do a memorial service for Otis, piling up a big cairn of rocks.  Herschel asks Shane to say a few words, seeing how he was with Otis when he died.  Shane doesn't want to because, you know, he's the one who killed Otis, but he does, lying about how Otis gave him his backpack and told him to run ahead while he (Otis) covered Shane's back.  Everyone seems to buy the story, except maybe Dale who possibly looks disbelieving but may in fact just be shocked at the tale of Otis's self sacrifice.

Afterwards, the gang wants to grid the area using Herschel's maps and do a proper search for Sophia, but Herschel tells Rick and Shane that they're not to go hiking around in the heat what with their respective being down three units of blood and having a sprained ankle.  Darryl is feeling fidgety and goes off to search on his own.  The farmhouse is running short on antibiotics and other medical supplies, so Maggie says she'll do a run to a nearby pharmacy and Rick volunteers Glen to go with her.  In the meantime, Herschel says that he's not comfortable with the gang packing heat all over his property and Rick says his group will lay aside their weapons for the duration.  Andrea is not at all happy about this, so Shane distracts her by showing her how to clean her gun.  Herschel takes Rick aside and tells him that once Carl is fit to travel, he expects Rick to take his people and leave the farm.  Rick looks gobsmacked.

Dale and T-Dog go to one of the farm's five wells to fill some water jugs and they find a swollen, waterlogged zombie splashing around down in the well.  It is a particularly loathesome specimen.  They don't want to shoot it because its blood and/or brains could contaminate the well, so they try to lure it into a noose using a canned ham on a string.  The zombie isn't interested in the canned ham - because as T-Dog points out, canned hams don't kick and scream - and Andrea mutters that they'll need to use live bait.  Everyone looks at Glen.  They tie him to a rope and lower him down so he can try to get the noose over the zombie, who perks up considerably with real food dangling overhead.  The rope slips and Glen drops, screaming.  They catch hold of the rope (they being Shane, Lori, Dale, T-Dog, Andrea and Maggie, and maybe Carol too) and pull poor Glen out before he gets bitten.  "Back to the drawing board," groans Dale but Glen tells him to speak for himself and hands him the other rope.  The lassoed zombie thrashes around on the other end.  They pull the zombie up out of the well, slowly, because it is really fat.  It gets caught at the lip of the well though and when they pull harder, they wind up ripping the damn thing right in half. TOTALLY GROSS.  Blood and guts pour out and the bottom half of the zombie ends up falling back down into the well.  Oops.  T-Dog beats the half-zombie's head in, causing Maggie to turn away in disgust since she's never seen one killed so close before - but the rest of the gang just watches dispassionately.  Dale muses that they should probably just seal up this well so no one drinks from it.

Darryl finds an old abandoned house and checks it out.  He doesn't find anyone inside, but he does find a recently eaten sardine tin and what looks like a little nest of blankets in a cupboard.  He goes outside, calling for Sophia, only pausing when he sees a wild white rose at the edge of the yard.  Meanwhile, Shane, Carol and Andrea go back to the highway to see if Sophia has picked up any of the supplies they left for her (she hasn't - is this lost little girl storyline almost done?) and then go off for some target practice.  Shane ends up talking a little too much and it looks as though Andrea is able to read between the lines and figure out that Otis's death maybe wasn't so much a self-sacrifice as just a sacrifice.

Maggie and Glen ride the farm's horses to the pharmacy.  While she heads into the back, looking for antibiotics, he goes to the feminine hygiene section and picks up a pregnancy test which Lori asked him to get for her - discreetly.  Maggie surprises him and he grabs a package of condoms to cover for why he's in that aisle.  She teases him, saying that he's pretty confident, and he stammers and stutters, totally out of his depth, until she tells him that she'll have sex with him - she's lonely too.  They take off their clothes and do it.

Back at the farm, Rick asks Herschel to reconsider asking them to leave - he doesn't know how horrible it is out there.  Herschel tells him that there are aspects of the situation that he can't and won't discuss (??) but if Rick's people agree to live by his rules, he'll consider letting them stay.

When Darryl returns, he finds Carol in the RV.  He gives her the flower - a "Cherokee rose," so named because the fable goes that it sprung up along the Trail of Tears when the Cherokee women cried for their lost children.  He says he figures no flower is blooming for his brother Meryl, but maybe this one's for Sophia.  You know, they're making Darryl into a very sympathetic character.  They better not kill him off!

That night, Lori sneaks off into a field and pees on her pregnancy test.  It comes up positive, of course, and she bows her head and cries.

Previously on The Walking Dead / next time on The Walking Dead