As we draw near the midseason finale of The Walking Dead, episode seven, the episodes seem to be gradually improving. Presumably that means the midseason finale will be a standout episode among a fairly docile season, but Secrets show us that even with the slow plot there can still be some great action and drama. Episode seven airs tonight on AMC at 9 pm PST and 6 am EST. Despite some lukewarm reception by critics and fans The Walking Dead has already been renewed for Season 3 after shattering some records for most viewers among an adult show (18-49).  You can find more information on Season 3 here, but now onto the review.

*Spoilers Ahead*
We quickly learn in this episode why Hershel is holding all the Walkers in the barn. He has some crazy idea that they can be cured, but he ignores what Rick previously said about the CDC being destroyed and the world having gone to shit. Dale has a lengthy conversation with Hershel about the barn but all it seems to accomplish is making Hershel restate that he doesn't want them all there much longer. The two other important parts of this episode have to do with Andrea and Shane and Lori and Rick. Most importantly this episode puts a majority of the shows secrets out in the open, at least to some characters if not all of them.



Andrea and Shane show their relationship growing throughout the episode. In the beginning Shane takes Andrea's firearm training up to a new level and finds that the doesn't do well against moving targets. Later when they go out to a suburb we get to see how the situation went down in one house and those people sure took out a lot of Walkers with them. The pondering and horror of what happened to the people at the house is tapered off when they see a large number of Walkers trying to get into the house. They run into the streets, Shane easily taking down Walkers left and right, while Andrea intially has quite a bit of trouble hitting Walkers in the head but Shane makes her focus, while also making her rely on herself, and she turns into quite the marksman. This all leads to Andrea turning into a confident and cocky Andrea, no longer full of complaints and pessimism. We see that this new Andrea wants to have sex with Shane, so they do, in the car in the middle of some forest road. This new Andrea is a bit of relief compared to the old, but it still makes it hard to like her as much as people like the Andrea from the comics.



When Glenn told Dale about the barn he also told him about Lori being pregnant. Dale comes to Lori later on and has a fantastic talk about her pregnancy, sharing some back history about his wife and how his wife always got sick at the smell of cooking meat, the same symptom that Lori showed a moment before. Dale doesn't talk about the past too often and it was nice to see how they handled him broaching the subject, it was also very nice to see Lori being upfront about everything and letting Dale in. Unfortunately Dale didn't know what to tell her, specifically about whether or not to bring a child into the world, but he did give splendid advice about letting Rick be part of the decision.



The last part of the episode is all about Rick and Lori. Rick finds Lori's morning after pills, but not Lori, and runs out looking for her. By this point we viewers already know that she has thrown up the pills, showing that she is well aware of the implications of that and cannot handle it. Based on my little knowledge about the morning after pill I can guess that it probably wouldn't have worked anyways, since it supposed to be taken immediately after you have unprotected sex with someone. Rick finds Lori near the side of the road and she tells him everything, finally, but their confrontation is moving. They each show anger, remorse, pain, sadness and so many emotions that I must hand it to Andrew Lincoln and Sarah Wayne Callies, if nothing else that was some great acting. The conclusion they come to seems to be that they are going try to make the best out of it but we will see how that develops throughout the rest of the season.



There is one last thing I should mention, something that comes up in the next episode; at the end of the episode Dale and Shane have a heated conversation where Dale tells Shane that he thinks he is an awful person and Shane basically tells him that if he is indeed an awful person then he will have no problems killing Dale. It doesn't mean a lot at the time but it leads to some further confrontations between the two later on. The next episode is the mid season finale with the show returning in February and having watched it by this point let me say it is a big one with some important moves forward in the plot. Secrets show us that "secrets get people killed" as Glenn says in the next episode and I wish I could quote the rest of that speech because it is great. Thanks for reading and tune in later for the review of episode 7: Pretty Much Dead Already.

Violent Score: 8.5 (out of 10)


-Written by Sean Cargle