At least Rick admitted to Herschel that he knows Lori's not real but he needs to deal with this on his own. A MUCH better way of dealing with this plot thread.
Far more believable as well than fucking flaking out about Lori's 'ghost' while negotiating a posslble agreement with Tyrese's group.
The 'crazy Rick' story beat just doesn't work for the main character of a narrative with the pacing requirements of television. But if they intend to have this stuff in there, how they did it last night was just better.
But once it's all done, if they intend to keep Rick around on the show (and you know they will), he needs to get back to what made him strong to begin with. Or take him in a new direction. And by new, I don't mean a douchey, throw-humanity-out-the-window-and-just-survive mentality. Because, you know, fucking yawn.
Herschel and Carl are the best things about the show right now.
I'm starting to warm to Carol a bit more because she's not acting like a simpering victim anymore. Getting lost in 'the tombs' was the best thing that could have happened to her. A great machina for a believable change in the character's direction. Probably means she's going to be offed soon.
Angry Glenn doesn't work. It makes sense, but in a conventional zombie story, this is the point where the character goes over the edge and gets killed. Same could be said for Rick given where the story has put him, too.
I love that Merle will be in Grimes County Jail for a little bit. I am really curious to see the character dynamics play out.
Talking Dead is something I tried watching once and I just wanted to mute Hardwick, a host I generally like when paired with the proper material, the whole time.
And the format is all wrong. You have the actors, writes and producers of the show on. Great, good, perfect. You want to bring on Kirkman and Andrew Lincoln some time? They are involved in the show and I am interested in the creative process from their point of view.
But when they start bringing on people like Felicia Day, Kevin Smith, werewolf dude from True Blood and all these other people that aren't even connected, that's just AMC showing their balls off and saying 'See? The Walking Dead is a huge hit and look how we surround everything around it with celebrities!'
And Trey, you hit the nail on the fuckign head with the plot explanation thing. The second you have to watch Talking Dead to understand something that happened on The Walking Dead, the show has slipped in its own diarrhea.
Maybe the guest star format and the light, pseudo-comedic tone for Talking Dead works for some people, but for me it gets a F-.