I didn’t think they’d have the guts to do it. Unloading Deadweight Dale is one thing but where does the show go now that its one and only interesting character is gone? We never even got to see a real Shane rampage. I thought the last five or six episodes were simply a prelude to him snapping, grabbing a shotgun, and taking out Lori, Glenn, T-Dog, Herschel, and ideally every other dull/annoying character on the show. Instead he got a knife in the gut from Mr. Rogers. Take it from a beta male, my friends: Ain’t no way Sheriff Rick could out-alpha-male Shane. That’s less likely than the zombie apocalypse.

EW has a nice interview with actor Jon Bernthal about having to leave a show (and cast) he grew to love. Three points to ponder as the “Walking Dead” fan base mourns and regroups. One: If Rick ‘n the crew are so paranoid about being discovered by Randall’s gang, why on earth are they driving around the farm unnecessarily? Engine noise is probably the surest way that they’d be detected. Two: Where’d all the zombies in the woods come from at the very end of last night’s episode? You’re lucky to see one “walker” around the farm in each show this season and yet suddenly, at the precise moment Shane is liquidated, they’re streaming into the field? I’ve got nothing against a convenient plot device but work for it a little. Three: How exactly is the zombie “virus” transmitted? I’ve always assumed that it takes a bite or scratch from a zombie, but obviously I’m wrong. Neither Shane nor Randall was bitten or scratched; in fact, a few episodes ago, Shane noted that the two zombie cops he and Rick killed appeared to have no bites on them. Clearly it’s airborne and everyone’s infected, with the “virus” lying latent until the moment of death. But in that case … what’s up with the bites and scratches? It’s part of zombie lore that no one recovers from one of those; if the undead draw blood, you’re finished. Bites are always fatal — and yet, evidently, they’re not the means through which the virus is passed on. That’s odd, no? I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept the possibility of a global zombie armageddon, but dammit, I want the science to add up.