Walking Dead Recap: Triggerfinger

In the last couple of weeks, gunplay has had some pretty powerful impacts on Rick Grimes and the rest of the survivors on AMC's The Walking Dead, so it's probably not any great surprise that this week's episode is entitled "Triggerfinger," or even that the shots fired in the waning moments of last week's episode helped to shape the plot for this week. If you're anything like us, though, you found those final moments of "Nebraska" pretty compelling and want to get right to the episode discussion... As always, remember that these recaps are intended for viewers who have already seen the episode, or for whom spoilers are a non-issue. SPOILERS ON. The episode opens on Lori's car, in the darkness hours after her crash, with the walker she had hit struggling to bite his way into the overturned vehicle while she regains consciousness and begins to panic. On the other side of the credits, we hear Rick's shots, finishing off the men who were menacing him (along with Glenn and Hershel) at the end of "Nebraska," and then cut to the interior of the bar where Hershel and Glenn express their silent agreement with the decision Rick made. As they begin to pack up and leave the bar, however (with Glenn taking the guns off the corpses), they hear a car pull up and hide behind the door frame. Moments later, voices and shadows are falling across the trio, saying that they heard shots. Back at the overturned car, an impressively grotesque display of zombie makeup takes front and center as the injured walker from Lori's car accident forces his head into the shattered windshield, doing some pretty substantial damage to the skin on his face as he does so. Lori, for her part, is able to sneak to the back of the vehicle, but her weapon is pinned under a piece of the car. As the walker grabs her by the hair, she's able to kill him using a piece of the car, only to be set upon by another one from behind who she manages to incapacitate, but not stop completely, with a hubcap. Returning to the car, she's able to find a handgun and kill it, but anytime you fire a gun in this world, something bad is bound to find you... Around the dinner table, the survivors and the Greenes comment on their missing members. It's not long before they realize that Lori is gone, likely to chase Rick, and step away from the table to look for her.

Back at the bar a series of gunshots disrupt Rick's plan to bring the three men out the back door, and it's only a moment or two before voices from outdoors come, asking after Dave and Tony. Rick admits to the men that their friends drew on him and lost, and while part of the outside party is eager to head home now that they know their friends are dead, the apparent leader refuses to leave without vengeance. Rick tries to persuade them that it was a case of "wrong place, wrong time," but gunshots begin raining in on them and the three have to scatter throughout the bar to take cover. At the survivors' campsite, Daryl and Carol sit around a fire, discussing Lori's attempts to get him to find Rick in "Nebraska." Carol begs him not to shut down following the loss of Sophia, but he storms off. The rest of the group confirms that they can't find Lori on-site either, and after ascertaining with Dale that nobody knew Lori was leaving and that it's uncertain she had weapons, Shane jumps into his car and tears off to find her. Back at the bar, Rick is reloading and still trying to talk reason to the gunmen outside. When he gets no response, he indicates for Glenn--armed with a rifle--to check the back door. In the store room behind the bar, he sees shadows outside the door and fires on the person going for the doorknob. Meanwhile, Shane finds Lori's overturned car and attendant dead walkers on the road, but hears a crashing sound and heads back to his car before he can find Lori herself.

Rick tells Herschel to head to the rear of the bar to cover Glenn while he watches the front door. Herschel tells Rick that he can shoot, but just doesn't like guns, and then heads back to give Glenn a shot at the car.Glenn is almost immediately fired upon by one of the outsiders, whom Herschel takes out but not before Glenn is apparently hit and collapses behind a DumpSter in the alley. As Glenn's attacker cries for help, Glenn tells Rick that he isn't hit, but the three are pinned down in the alley by gunfire. The outsiders, their leader driving a pickup truck, decide that they're going to run because there are roarmers everywhere; the driver tells a sniper camped out atop a building across from the bar to jump from the roof into the bed of the pickup; when the jumper misses the truck and seriously injures himself, the driver peels out and leaves. While Rick goes to rescue the injured jumper, the man who fired on Glenn is discovered and devoured by walkers despite Herschel's efforts to pick them off. Across the street, the screaming jumper has impaled his lower leg on a fence and the survivors quickly determine that the only way to save him in a reasonable timeframe is to amputate. Over the man's frantic protests, Herschel prepares to amputate while Rick and Glenn pick off dozens of incoming walkers. As they get too close for comfort, though, Rick's only options are leaving the kid to die--or forcibly ripping his leg up and off the fence, leaving the jumper screaming in agony and bleeding profusely. On the road to the farm, Shane drives up on Lori while she walks the center of the street. He tells her that Rick and the others are back at the farm in order to coax her into the car. At the campsite, Carol is wandering and finds a number of small animals and a necklace of ears hanging from a tree near Daryl's tent. She tells him that she won't let him pull away from her, and stands stone-faced before him while he berates her, belittles her and blames her for Sophia's death. Shane pulls up, with Lori in tow, and his lie is immediately exposed as the group is surprised to hear her ask where Rick is. When she starts to become animated, he tells her that he has to look after her and worry about the baby first. The assembled group, including Carl, are more than a little surprised to learn of the pregnancy and her son immediately confronts her about it. After a long, awkward silence during which she's unable to respond to Carl, Dale saves the day by whisking her off to check out her injuries from the wreck. Back indoors, she apologizes to Carl not for failing to tell him about the baby but for not telling him before she left. He grills her a bit about the baby, and Carl asks that if it's a girl, can they name her Sophia. Shane enters and immediately begins trying to justify his behavior to Lori, who sends the rest of the survivors out of the room and confronts Shane with his chronic dishonesty, going back to when he told Lori before the pilot that Rick was dead in the hospital. Ultimately that turns into an inquisition about what happened with Otis. When he handwaves the question, she admits to Shane that Rick knows about their affair. Shane tries to convince her that what they had during that time was real, and that she and Carl belong with him. When she refuses to admit it, he walks out. The next morning, Andrea checks in with the Greenes to find that Susie is still dehydrated and catatonic. She has a bit of a shared moment with Maggie, talking about their sisters, and then promises that Rick and Glenn will recover Herschel. Outside at the campsite, Shane and Andrea get into a brief argument over Shane before she heads to the car to join Daryl, T-Dogg and Shane in a search party for the missing survivors. Before they can leave, though, Rick pulls up, driving Herschel and Glenn's traveling hospital. While everyone is playing catch-up, Dale realizes that the back seat contains a blindfolded and unconscious stranger who Glenn identified as Randall. While Rick and Herschel advocate for the humanity of saving Randall, T-Dogg suggests setting up a perimeter guard at the farm in case his friends come looking for him and Shane throws a tantrum because he believes they've endangered the group. When he begins to stalk away, he's confronted by Herschel, who tells Shane that he's there only because Rick talked him into it, and that he'll keep his mouth shut as long as he's on the Greene farm. Maggie approaches Glenn, taking him aside to ask him what's going on; Glenn tells her that he froze during the melee, because he felt too guilty putting himself in danger because of her admission of love. She takes this as a great sign, but Glenn immediately poo-poos the notion, rejecting her advances on the grounds that he has to think of the group, not himself. When Herschel finally checks in on his catatonic daughter, he's confronted by the other. Maggie screams at him for drinking again, and for leaving, before she storms out on him. Outside, meanwhile, Andrea and Shane discuss the notion of Shane's approach. She tells him that the group needs him, but that he's unable to present himself rationally and so he should reconsider himself.  He tells her that the pair of them are the only ones acting rationally, and that they are ostracized from the group for it, and then leaves. In their tent, Rick and Lori undress and talk about Shane. She tells Rick that Shane thinks the baby is his, but that regardless of genetics it's Rick's. She tells Rick that Shane is delusional and dangerous, and tells him the story of Shane lying to retrieve her. At first Rick seems unconcerned, but she tells him that Shane not only scares her, but that she believes him to be delusional and dangerous. She relates her earlier conversation with Shane to Rick, in a way that's clearly leading him into a confrontation with Shane.