Watching last night’s episode of “The Walking Dead” (8 p.m. Central Sundays on AMC) — where Randall is tortured by Daryl and nearly executed at gunpoint by Rick and then nearly knifed to death by Daryl — I was practically yelling “Trust him! Trust him!” like C-3PO when Chewbacca is strangling Lando in “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Morality in the time of zombies
I would totally be the Dale of the group in a zombie apocalypse, arguing that we need to hold onto our morals lest civilization descend into a new dark age. Indeed, many viewers sided with Dale last night, judging from my perusal of Facebook posts where people claimed that the entire group has turned into — I’ll tone down the vocabulary since this is a family blog — jerks.
If Rick had shot Randall while everyone except Dale and Andrea stood by meekly, it would’ve been tough for the show — or at least the group of characters we’ve been following so far — to recover. TV characters need not be perfect, of course, but if 90 percent of them behave in a detestable manner, a show can become dark and unsustainable.
“The Walking Dead” Season 2 (2011-12)
Sundays, AMC
Showrunner: Robert Kirkman
Stars: Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride
There’s been a fair amount of backlash against “The Walking Dead” in this second season, and I strongly disagree with most of it. The writing staff is underestimated: In retrospect, there was no chance at all that Rick was actually going to kill Randall.
But by getting that close, “The Walking Dead” teased out the talking points it has been known for from the beginning. At the same time, it allowed Jeffrey DeMunn, unfortunately underused in Season 2 as Dale, to go out with a great monologue about holding onto civilization, followed by a wrenching death scene.
The wrong approach
That having been said, it is quite frustrating that the group has approached this Randall situation all wrong. De-facto group leaders Rick, Shane and Daryl have been so obsessed with protecting the women and children that they’ve done nothing but torture Randall physically (Daryl) and psychologically (Rick and Shane, who almost kill him several times) ever since they saved his life and re-set his shattered leg.
They should’ve had the entire group in the barn to talk to him. When Randall mentioned that he liked video games before the apocalypse, he could’ve talked with Glenn about favorite games. When he mentioned he went to the same high school as Maggie, they could’ve reminisced about various teachers and sports teams.
These conversations would verify Randall’s claims that he’s just a scared kid trying to survive; they would all feel more comfortable around him and be ready to assimilate him into their commune.
A group conversation would also reveal that he’s a big fat liar, if that’s the case. Then, if they didn’t trust him, they could blindfold him, fill his ears with loud music, drop him off 18 miles away with a survival pack and say “Good luck.”
Something off about him?
Here’s the rub, though: As much as I abhor the way Rick, Shane and Daryl are handling the situation, Randall is almost certainly a bad guy. On recent episodes of “Talking Dead,” host Chris Hardwick has noted that “There’s something off about that guy” and the Anthrax musician on last night’s episode crystallized it perfectly: “Randall is Ben Linus.”
(Indeed, once you start down that path, the similarities between “Lost” and “The Walking Dead” are numerous. Isolated communes, no government, the mystery of what else is out there, etc.)
It’s not merely a case of Randall being a fictional TV character, which necessitates that he will have an impact on the plot rather than being smoothly integrated into the group and forgotten like T-Dog. It’s also his responses when tortured by Daryl: Although he claims to be just a kid trying to survive, he endures a lot of pain before spilling the beans that there are 30 people in his group.
And why did he wait so long to tell the anecdote of his group members raping young girls? If he’s innocent and his goal is to find refuge with this group, why not reveal everything he knows about his abhorrent previous group right away?
(By the way, the casting of Michael Zegen is perfect: He looks both shifty and innocent, which is probably a big reason why Rick keeps wavering on whether to kill him.)
Bracing for a surprise
There’s little doubt that Randall will indeed turn out to be a Ben Linus type; I just hope we don’t get a scene where Maggie finally sees him and says “Hey, I know you! You were the school sociopath!” I hope it’s something more surprising than that, something that doesn’t underscore the stupidity of Rick’s decision to isolate Randall from the others.
And I think it will be something surprising. Every time I start to underestimate “The Walking Dead,” it hits me with a great finish like in last night’s episode. I expect two more great hours to close out the season.
What are your thoughts on Randall? Should we trust him like Lando Calrissian — just a guy put in a bad spot — or is he TV’s next Ben Linus, ready to spring a complex scheme that will put our heroes in danger from the 30 “others?”