Who is this all-knowing Dale we meet in “Secrets,” Episode 6 in the second season of “The Walking Dead”? He’s not the Dale we’ve seen all season.
Instead, he’s the guy who knows something’s wrong with the twitchy “I can’t keep a secret to save my life” Glenn, who fumbles with words until he just spits out two bombshells: “There’s walkers in the barn and Lori’s pregnant.”
So all-knowing Dale sidles up to Hershel and casually slips into conversation, “Hey, so what’s up with the flesh-eating monsters you’re keeping comfy right next to where I’ve parked my RV?” (We’re paraphrasing here.) Turns out they’re just “sick” (Hershel’s actual words). The good doc seems to think that maybe one day there will be a cure for walkeritis, that one day his wife and stepson and friends and neighbors — all of whom are undead barn dwellers — will be “well.”
Well. Good thing that’s solved. (This is not going to have a happy ending.)
Next up on Dale’s list of “people with problems to stick my nose into” is Lori. While he’s cooking meat, she walks by and nearly vomits. He gives her some story about how his wife used to get nauseous at the smell of cooking meat before she miscarried. Lori realizes Glenn told Dale she’s pregnant.
Lori says she “can’t” tell Rick she’s pregnant, which is super juicy because it insinuates the kid is Shane’s, right? Wrong. Lori insists the baby is Rick’s and gives reasons for staying mum that are overacted and too melodramatic for us to actually care about — “My well of good memories is drying up!” “My baby won’t ever have good memories!”.
Oh, but that’s not the only problem the all-knowing Dale seems to think he can solve. After Shane gives Andrea an “advanced” shooting class — because everyone, even little Carl, is arming themselves in this episode — the pair end up in a walker shooting spree while looking for Sophia in a housing development down the road from the farm. Andrea — who is suddenly a sharpshooter with total bloodlust after blowing out a few zombie brains — is so turned on by their escape that she grabs Shane’s crotch on the ride back to the farm. They do it, or so we assume they do, because she straddles him in the passenger seat and the horn honks.
Back at the farm, Dale asks Shane and Andrea what happened. Andrea seems too caught up in the afterglow of killing walkers and sex to answer coherently. Dale seems to realize this, and when Andrea walks away, he confronts Shane. Dale comments on Shane’s shiny ride full of gas and suggests he leave the group, saying he knows Shane’s been contemplating it. Really? He knew this?
Dale also seems to think Shane has been vague about the night Otis was killed — again, with no previous clues that would lead the viewer to think this. The confrontation ends with Shane threatening Dale for throwing around accusations that he killed Otis. Which, of course, he did.
So what do you think? Do you like the all-knowing Dale, or would you rather just see the other characters tell him to mind his own damn business?
Best zombie moments of the night:
One of Hershel’s farm folk breaks the leg of a chicken to feed it to the hungry walkers he’s boarding in the barn. That way it’s still alive but it can’t fly away, get it?
Andrea becomes a sharpshooter after Shane lets a walker come thisclose to her after they searched the abandoned housing development and woke all the neighbors — the zombie neighbors. She shoots it in the head and knocks out the next advancing walkers like she’s playing a carnival game.
A zombie attacks Maggie in the pharmacy when she accompanies Glenn on a run to get Lori morning-after pills (Later, Lori makes herself throw up said morning-after pills. She proceeds to get into a huge fight/philosophical “what is the meaning of life if everyone is a zombie” exchange with Rick after he finds her empty morning-after pill packages.) Finally, sheltered little farm girl Maggie, who’s been helping to house walkers, sees the horrors that zombies can bring to humans.
