“The Walking Dead,” Season 2, Episode 4, “Cherokee Rose,” gives our intrepid heroes a time to relax and to plan for future adventures, with only one encounter from the flesh-eating walkers who infest the planet.
Spoilers surely follow.
Hershel and Rick have a discussion over whether the group can stay at the farm or not. Hershel would just as soon they be on their way as soon as Carl is mended and Sophia is found. Rick wants them to be permitted to stay. The world is a hell and the farm seems to be a refuge from it.
There is an adventure with a walker who fell into one of the wells. There is an attempt to pull the thing out of the well alive. Unfortunately the lower half of the walker separates from the upper half and falls back into the well, contaminating it forever.
Glenn and Maggie go to a pharmacy in town to get more supplies, including an item for Lori Glenn is to get discreetly. While there, they make love. There is a certain attraction between the two and, as Maggie suggests, the pickings are not all that great in the zombie apocalypse world.
Dale teaches some of the ladies how to use firearms, a crucial skill in the world where they find themselves.
Otis’s funeral is a horror, mainly because audience knows what Shane did and no one else does. Indeed, Shane is put on the spot to say some words for the man he shot in the leg and left to be devoured alive by the walkers.
Daryl hunts fruitlessly for Sophia, but he is later able to comfort Carol, her mother, with a Cherokee Rose, the state flower of Georgia. He tells the story of how the flower was supposed to be the result of the tears of the bereaved mothers on the Cherokee trail of tears. However after four episodes with Sophia missing, one wonders if there is any point to looking further.
Lori takes the pregnancy test. It is positive. That means she is bringing new life into a world that has gone mad. She is not sure how she feels about that. And, considering that there is doubt as to whom the father is, the conflict is heightened indeed.