This week’s episode kicked off with a great flashback that showed Lori being a tiny bit of a jerk as she revealed to a friend that she and Rick never argue about anything. Er, what the what? She’s upset with him that as a married couple, they DON’T fight? At ALL? Yeesh. Cue Shane driving up in his patrol car to tell her Rick’s been shot. Or not tell her, as she guessed by the look on his face. Of course, given that Lori was waiting to pick up Carl outside of his school, the key point of the scene was how she’d tell the poor kid his dad is in the hospital. Naturally, with Carl being the victim of a gunshot last week while under Rick’s protection, the tables are turned as now he has to figure out how to tell her the bad news. In a nice twist, it was someone else who delivered that news and soon after, Lori to meet up with the pair. There were a few new faces this episode as Rick, Shane and Otis (the shooter) rush an injured Carl to the home of a wise old doctor type to see about some emergency bullet removal.

It turns out Carl was shot by Otis accidentally while out hunting for a group of survivors holed up in a nicely-sized house not far from the woods. Fortunately for everyone, there was a doctor in the house. Let’s just say the surgery scene was the most disturbing part of the episode and the doc only got ONE of the six fragments in the poor kid’s side (ouch). “One down… five to go.” At least Carl passed out before I did, ewww. And so did Rick (almost) after giving up a few pints for his son. Speaking of passing out, poor T-Dog’s arm wound is now infected (blood poisoning!) and I say it’s not looking good for a brother out there. Based on his fever, rambling and that look he gave as some medicine was discovered (Merle’s stash, at that), my money is on him becoming a linebacker-sized zombie in the next episode or so. There’s still no sign of Carol’s daughter, Sophia and I also think she’s gone for good. But I could be wrong as that sort of stinks if the show dumps two kids this season. On the other hand, as TWD will no doubt be renewed for a third season, that’s one way to get over the whole “Hey, how come that kid looks like he/she’s aged a year?” or “Hey! That’s NOT the same kid!” thing a few shows go through. I’m not morbid folks, just truthful…

As Doc Greene needs some better medical supplies in order to do another operation on Carl, Shane and Otis set out to secure surgical goods from a temporary hospital set up outside a high school after the zombie outbreak began. Meanwhile, back on the highway, the rest of the original crew argued about how to proceed now that they’ve been split up even more. While I hate over-speculating, I’d say at least three more of the folks left from Season One will be looking for new acting gigs at some point this season. The best line of dialog this episode was between Rick and Dr. Greene (who turned out to be a vet, not a veteran, as Lori thought before that surprise was revealed). He told Rick that the current undead thing was “Nature correcting itself… restoring some balance.” Hell, if that’s so, I’d like to nominate just WHO gets eaten if there’s a real zombie plague. Let’s just say pickings would be REALLY slim when it came time for new elections post-zombie apocalypse.

Undead Re-deaths: 1. A walker attack on Andrea was interrupted by a baseball bat to the head by new character Maggie Greene (on horseback!) followed by a crossbow bolt to the head from Daryl when it popped up about a minute or so later. Gore count: Meh. Amusingly enough, other than Carl’s painful to watch no anesthetic operation, this week’s episode of Boardwalk Empire was a LOT more gory and shocking (some poor guy got his skull beaten in with a rather hefty wrench and yup, it was pretty nasty viewing). Of course, tonight’s episode ended with Shane and his new buddy trapped behind a flimsy retractable fence as way too many walkers banged away at it. Given that a single screw was holding that fence shut, next week should be pretty interesting as between the two men, they don’t have a tenth of the ammo to deal with that horde. Overall, the hour flew by far too fast, but the amount of suspense set up for the next few episodes is more than welcome. My one question for the writers is this: why the hell doesn’t anyone just set a pack of those damn zombies on FIRE and let them burn?

Score: A-