There’s a different “Who” song whose lyrics would make for a better headline but AmSpec got to it first.

I’ve been begging forever for TWD storylines that steer towards individual characters and away from the tedious group dynamic. Now they’re giving it to us (the Governor’s story arc last fall was strong) and suddenly a terrible possibility presents itself: We might end up having to sit through even more badly acted teen-angst soliloquies from Carl. The scene where he told off his (unconscious) pop last night should have been cathartic; instead all I could think of was Peter Brady signing “Time To Change.” Even the tease about Rick turning zombie and Carl shooting him in the face was hollow. Did anyone think, for even a moment, that this show would dispatch dead-weight Papa Grimes? He’s the show’s ego and superego. (Shane was the id.) You’re more likely to see Tom Cruise get killed in a Tom Cruise movie than you are to see “The Walking Dead” without Rick.

I did like the little vignette of Carl sitting on the rooftop eating pudding a few feet from a growling zombie, though. That was a poetic moment in a normally plodding show about what small-town childhood memories would be like growing up during the zombie apocalypse.

And you can never have too much Zombie Hershel Head.

Now, explain something to me. Why don’t the zombies attack Michonne when she’s got her zombie pets on a leash? I know there was something in one of the earlier seasons about masking your scent with the smell of rotting flesh in order to walk freely among the zombies. Rick and Glenn covered themselves with viscera from a corpse and were able to mingle in a zombie crowd before one of them made a noise and they were found out. But Michonne doesn’t do that; all she does is walk six feet ahead of, or behind, a pair of zombies. If that’s enough to mask her smell, why does she need zombies on a leash at all? She could walk into a crowd of them and the smell of decay from the entire group would, presumably, be strong enough to cover her scent.

In lieu of an exit question, a promise: If we get a story arc about Carl going through puberty, replete with Rick having to explain Things and Stuff about the birds and the bees, I’m done.