I enjoyed it last night. I feel like Rick's best Batman-as-portrayed-by-Christian-Bale voice got a little stale during that long walkie-talkie scene that looked and sounded like it was completely voiced over. The herd scene was solid and tense with a good job at making the group look separated and outnumbered to up the scares, some cinamatography like Carl and Sofia both nearly disappearing from sight of their parents because of the marching zombie legs and never being able to see any of the main caravan vehicles during T-Dog's 'escape'.
I agree a million percent on Sofia's mom being annoying as well as Andrea. Dale is pretty useless as well and Glenn has had a pretty stale part the last few episodes, but he had a good start to the series.
As someone who never read the comics, I'm interested to see what happened to Sofia (I'm assuming here she didn't simply get lost). I'm less interested about Carl's recovery as I am about what looks like a potential new group and subsequently a break-up (or separation?) of the current main group.
Dale comes off as a little 'useless' in terms of what he brings to the group, but he serves a very important part of the social dynamic in terms of storytelling. He's everyone's father. At least in the TV show. When people are going off and making rash decisions due to the heightened tension and their survival instinct mode, he's the voice of reason, wisdom and patience. He's the guy that tells everyone to settle down and not make rash decisions just because they're scared.
In last night's episode, Andrea was like 'that's my choice to go off and die.' What Andrea missed was the point of Dale's intervention. If she were emotionally stable and not making decisions out of grief, then he might have reacted differently. It's hard to stay sane and patient in an insane and frenzied world, and if Dale isn't there to bring some fatherly guidance to people, there will be a lot of people making a lot of stupid decisions.
The show spun Andrea's decision as something she wanted to do, but it smartly avoided the important question: was she CAPABLE of making that decision. Both her and Shane wanted to take their balls and go home because they couldn't deal with it. They were both acting like spoiled fuckers, all sour grapes because they couldn't have what they wanted. In times like that, there needs to be people to set them straight and make them realize that they have to stick together and not let their petty bullshit get in the way.
Dale was the gentle hand, but it wasn't what either Andrea or Shane needed. They needed someone like Lori to smack them around a bit and remind them of what really matters. I LOVED the scene where Lori gave the gun to Andrea. She basically used child psychology on her to get her back on track and make her realize she was acting like an entitled bitch.
Dale's role is further emphasized when he's telling the other guy that he lied about the radiator hose because he knew people would make impatient, rash decisions out of panic and survival instinct, so he decided to give them more time to do the right thing, which was to find Sophia. I really liked Dale in last night's episode.
Dale in the comic is not exactly the same character. From the beginning, he's having a relationship with both Andrea and Amy at the same time, and all three are cool about it. Also, Andrea is the same age as Amy so they're both college students-consenting adults but too young for Dale in a world with social norms. The taboo nature of their relationship instantly highlights all three characters and makes them interesting, so you're paying more attention to what they're saying and what they're doing.
It also highlights an interesting element of good dystopian storytelling-in a world without social boundaries, how are people going to act? Is it right or wrong to do that? Should the old unwritten customs of society be preserved or abandoned in favor of establishing rules that the new guard find more desirable and reasonable? It's the best thing about dystopian fiction-the breakdown and examination of cultural behavior.
It's why I, personally, love Romero and The Walking Dead over most of the misguided zombie stories. They miss the point. People want action and gore, but those luddites are missing the fucking point of what makes it special and why zombies can be more than mindless eating machines-they can be a vehicle for communicating interesting ideas about humanity. It's why I've loved GOOD zombie fiction ever since the original Dawn of the Dead hit theaters.