Dream sequence: the traffic jam, with our survivors plus many of their lost loved ones, plus oodles and oodles of other people. Helicopters fly overhead and Lori is there with Shane - Rick died in the hospital. Shane and Lori are worried because the Refugee Center, to which all these folks are headed, has suddenly stopped broadcasting on the radio. They hear gunfire in the distance and are horrified to see the helicopters dropping napalm on the center. Lori cries and clutches Shane. Come on - this show moves slowly enough that we don't need extended dream/alternative reality sequences to bulk it up.
It was a dream since Lori wakes up at Herschel's farm. Whatshername Sophia's mom suggests that maybe the survivors could make dinner for Herschel's family as a thank you for their hospitality. Rick comes out with new search grids for everyone. One of Herschel's group, some kid I don't recall seeing before, wants to help even though he doesn't know how to shoot a gun. Darryl thinks he'll borrow one of the farm's horses in order to cover more ground. Up on the farmhouse porch, Glen tells Maggie that they've got another eleven condoms left. Maggie: "I don't even know if I like you." Glen: "But you're thinking about it, right?"
Out in the woods on their search, Rick manages to get a morose Shane talking, teasing him about all the girls he done slept with in high school. They banter and laugh a bit until Shane gets melancholy about all those folks, that time, lost forever. They walk and talk, walk and talk. Shane thinks they should cut their losses and give up the search for Sophia: they're putting themselves in danger, looking for a girl who's likely already dead. "If we'd just moved on, we'd be halfway to Ft. Bend by now, Carl wouldn't have got shot. Otis would still be alive." Rick insists that he's not giving up.
Darryl rides Herschel's horse, shootin' squirrels with his crossbow. He sees Sophia's doll down by the creek and goes to investigate. I wish he wasn't out here by himself. He calls for Sophia but gets no answer, so remounts the horse and rides on. The dang horse shies at a snake, tossing Darryl. The horse bolts into the woods and Darryl falls down a big cliff back into the creek, somehow managing to impale himself with one of his arrows.
He climbs out of the creek and secures the arrow by tying a strip of his shirt around his chest. God, he's got lovely strong arms. He hears some noises in the bushes and has to search for his crossbow, sunk in the creek. The quiver seems to be lost. He drags himself up the banking to the ridge, admonishing himself not to be a pussy. Then he slips and falls back down again.
Rick and Shane return to the farm, both in a snit. Lori asks what's wrong and Rick tells her that Shane thinks he's weak for endangering them with this search for Sophia. She tells him that he's making the best decisions he can with the information he has - nothing weak about that. Herschel then wants a word with him: Darryl took that horse without asking and Jimmy, that kid who joined the search, did not have Herschel's permission to do so. Rick says they'll need to work on communicating with each other. Herschel snaps that they should each work on controlling their own groups.
Darryl, having hit his head, is hallucinating his big brother Meryl looming over him. Meryl says he's going to die out here and it'd serve him right, having left his own kin behind. He accuses Darryl of being Rick's bitch - "they're laughing at you behind your back, you know that, dontcha? They're not your kin. If you had any nuts in that sack of yours, you'd go back there and shoot your pal Rick in the face for me." Darryl rouses from his hallucination in time to catch a zombie trying to gnaw through his boot. He beats its face in with a stick, then pulls the arrow out of his midsection, loading it into the crossbow just in time to shoot a second zombie lurching out of the woods at him. Damn, I hope that first zombie didn't get a tooth into him.
After the commercials, Darryl bandages his wound as best he can. "That sumbitch was right," he mutters before cutting into his dead squirrel and eating it raw, blood smearing over his chin. Then he cuts the ears of the zombies and strings them around his neck. Ick. He struggles to climb back up the banking and Meryl reappears to taunt him some more, goading him enough to reach the top.
Herschel looks into the kitchen and is pissed that Maggie said the survivors could make dinner for everyone. "We need to set some boundaries with these people," he tells her, "Don't get close to them - they're not going to be around forever."
From her perch atop the RV, Andrea spots someone lurching out of the woods across the field. She shouts "Walker!" and wants to shoot it, but Rick, Shane and T-Dog sprint across the field with machetes to meet the zombie face to face. It's Darryl - and he looks awful, bloody and staggering. They can't tell if he's been turned until he snarls, "It's about time you pointed that damn [gun] at my head." Relieved, they stand down ... but Andrea can't tell what's going on at that distance and she shoots. Darryl goes down, hard. Rick screams, "No!"
She didn't hit him straight, however, only grazed him. Herschel comes out, pissed at the ruckus everyone is making. Rick quickly pulls the string of ears off Darryl's neck before their host can see it. T-Dog holds up the doll Darryl found, recognizing it as Sophia's. Back in the farmhouse, Herschel grudgingly patches Darryl up, bitching about his lost horse and how fast they're going through antibiotics. "It's a wonder you people have survived this long."
Once again, Shane thinks they need to stop searching: Darryl nearly died for a doll - and Rick stomps off. Shane looks at Lori, saying that he's sorry but someone needs to make the hard decisions in the group. She gently tells him that the easy thing to do would be to cut their losses - the really hard decision is to stay and help other people. Outside, Andrea frets about having shot Darryl. "Don't be too hard on yourself," says Dale, "We've all wanted to shoot Darryl at one time or another."
Dinner with the group is a strained affair, Herschel clearly disapproving. Sophia's mom takes a plate up to the recuperating Darryl. She gives him a kiss on the forehead, saying that he did more for Sophia today than her own daddy ever did his whole life. Maggie and Glen pass notes to each other under the table, planning an assignation for later. But Maggie doesn't read the rendezvous location until later and is frightened when she reads Glen's suggestion that they do it in the hayloft. She sprints to the barn. Glen has gotten there ahead of her and is horrified to see that Herschel has imprisoned a bunch of live zombies in the locked barn. "You weren't supposed to see this," gasps Maggie.
Previously on The Walking Dead /
next time on The Walking Dead
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