Review

Carl is losing his fight to live due to internal bleeding and Hershel wants' to operate even though he doesn't as yet have the medical equipment Otis and Shane went to fetch from the zombie overrun school. Lori and Rick discuss the world they find themselves in with Lori wondering if it wouldn't be better for Carl if he never woke up and had to continue facing the living nightmare they find themselves in. Andrea is also facing questions about her will to live, from surprisingly Daryl and naturally Dale.

In the nick of time Shane returns with the required medical equipment but Otis has fallen to the zombie hordes while retrieving said equipment. Exactly what went down at the school isn't what Shane claims and in a series of flashbacks we learn what happened. T-Dog finally gets some attention for his badly cut arm, but being sewn up without pain killers is a bitch as I can attest to. Glen takes to praying, feeling his friends need it, which attracts the attention of Maggie.

Director Phil Abraham, here breaking his Walking Dead cherry, takes a fairly innovative approach to Save the Last One that immediately caught my attention and had me rocking on to the episode. We begin with a scene of Shane in a bathroom, which is slightly disconcerting as Shane was last seen penned in with Otis by a herd of zombies. We quickly learn the bathroom is the present and the episode will flash back to cover events at the high school Shane and the now deceased Otis went to in order to get a respirator amongst other medical equipment. I was actually lapping this approach up as actor Jon Bernthal presents a very haunted Shane who clearly has a sizeable guilt complex over events the others are not aware of.

The question we're pretty much left with from this episode is whether or not Shane has emerged as a tragic character, in the Shakespearean sense, due to his fling with Lori and is it now driving his actions as he deals with unrequited love amongst the ashes? In a single episode Director Abraham and Writer Scott M. Gimple have elevated the character to more than interesting. Considering Shane wants to leave the group and thus avoid any potential problems down the track he is certainly prepared to put his own life on the line and take the sort of decision necessary in order to protect Lori and Carl. It can't end well, it nearly never does for tragic characters, but I'm so very happy they haven't made Shane into a straight bad guy, he's dealing with things as his code of conduct allows, and more importantly is showing true remorse over the decisions he has been forced to take.

One of the great episodes in terms of elevating a tragic character, and its not who you think.

Also pretty much to the forefront in the episode is the question of exactly what the survivors are fighting for, what do they hope to build from the ashes, is the day to day hardships worth the sheer terror of fighting zombies and renegade humans. Guess this is a standard survivalist question, even ponder in movies like The Warrrors where the titular crew arrive back in Coney Island and one of them asks why the hell they were fighting to get back to that winter wasteland. Rick one feels hasn't given much thought to why they are surviving, it's enough that he's across the requirements and is facing each new obstacle with faith that there might be something better just over the horizon. Folks that have read the comics will be aware that he harbours a secret that Dr. Edwin Jenner revelled at the C.D.C last season and in this episode he almost blurts it out, which would probably be the last straw for Lori. And really you have to start looking at her and to a certain degree Andrea as liabilities in the brave new world, it's all about survival every minute of the day not chick moments. Guess we can expect most of the main characters at some stage to go through their own evaluations, T-Dog definitely has though it wasn't given much screen time, and Glen appears for the first time to be in an introspective mood. Fingers crossed the Writers are strong enough to get these ideas across the line in the rest of the season.

With Carl being cared for there was also time to revert back to searching for Sophia, though the search was restricted to Daryl and Andrea who have their own run in with a zombie. Daryl appears to believe Sophia is out there somewhere and isn't giving up hope of a successful conclusion to the search, though most everybody else fears the worse. They are really promoting the character of Daryl this season, great stuff, he remains interesting and is surprisingly complex given his redneck persona. Also of note finally Carol shows some emotion over the loss of her daughter, previously it's been on par with losing your house keys on a particularly hectic day.

Anyone else wondering what else season two is going to deliver? Looking ahead here we have Carl pretty much out of the woods, Sophia gonzo - anyone really think that is going to turn out well, and Shane currently on a long day's journey into a particularly dark night. But there's no real cohesion to the narrative as yet, we're already up to play with the situation in this franchise they need to start building some story arcs to have us rocking. While it may or may not be cool to have "a big bad", depending on viewpoint, they for sure can't let this season meander from episode to episode without a central context to pin things too. I'll keep a weathered eye out.

Save the Last One dropped to 6.1 million viewers, which is pretty sad considering it's been the best episode of season two thus far. While the figure is great it must be a slight worrying that the trend is downwards rather than bringing new audience members into the fold. Fingers crossed the season begins building over the next few weeks.

So the slow nature of the season continues as we explore individual characters and come to terms with the situation. The high school was awesome enough, and the implications could be pretty dire when the full fallout goes down. I forgot to note the gore content continues to be fairly high this season, dude being eaten alive was shocking, so don't go here if upset by blood and guts on the screen. Overall I was rocking to the episode and have no problems recommending it to fans and non-fans of zombie visuals. There's a lot of deep thoughts going down, which may put off some viewers, but equally it can be stated that in season two The Walking Dead is finally delivering on Kirkman's promise, to show what happens after the zombie movie end credits roll.