The Walking Dead: Episode 206 (“Secrets”)

For an episode filled with bullets through zombie brains, it was Glenn’s head I was expecting to explode as secrets rattled around inside it like time bombs. Lori is pregnant, there’s a barn full of walkers… at least no one told him that Hershel was planning on kicking them all out once Sophia is found.

“Secrets” was mostly concerned with a sanctity-of-life issue that didn’t involve Lori’s decision whether to keep the baby. It’s Hershel’s Pro-Undead stance. His infected wife and stepson are getting fed wounded chickens from the hayloft, and that particular secret is spreading. Maggie wishes Glenn would stop calling them walkers—they’re still “Mom” and “Sean” to her, an attitude that was tested by a zombie attack at the pharmacy.

Hershel’s optimism, buoyed by the idyllic setting at the farm, seems beyond naïve, but hope and two daughters are all he has left. His anxiousness to see his guests on their way has everything to do with keeping the brains of the less-alive members of his family intact—a much better reason, I guess, than just trying to keep his daughter away from the Asian boy.

This reminder that the enemies are us, the zombies are our brothers and mothers robbed of their humanity, is one that movies have only been able to touch on, but The Walking Dead has revisited over and over: with Morgan, holed up with his son, unable to shoot his walker wife, or even abandon her; with Andrea having to put down her own sister; and now with Hershel’s Zombie Protection Program.

The hardest job of the apocalypse it seems, though, is Motherhood. Carol remains a wreck with her daughter missing. And Lori, after almost losing Carl, after seeing him hardened (“Everything is food for something”) and knowing he’ll hardly remember his prior life, can’t bear the thought of bringing another helpless creature into this terrible world, especially after discovering the secret of their impending homelessness. Her worries are practical—a baby’s cries put everyone else in danger. She frankly can’t see how human life remains much better than what the zombies have. But she can’t bring herself to go through with the abortion.

In the end, Lori divulges all her secrets and realizes that Rick already knew about her and Shane. It seems like we may get a baby after all.