5 sentence review of The Walking Dead

Season 2, Episode 8: “Nebraska”

5. The horror fans complain who there isn’t enough splat on “The Walking Dead” should go dig up the early  film “Braindead,” a blood-soaked gross-out designed to appease grizzly appetites.

4. But if you want to learn about humanity, oddly enough, it takes a show with flesh-hungry monsters to really ask the fundamental questions of our existence.

3. After slaughtering the zombies in the farm’s barn, which included friends and family, Herschel (Scott Wilson) questions his faith, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) questions whether hope has any place in this post-apocalyptic word and even earnest Glenn (Steven Yeun) questions if Maggie’s (Lauren Cohan) declaration of love is real.

2. The second season’s tension has been between the ruthlessly practical, blunt Shane (Jon Bernthal) and Rick, who to strives to survive while holding onto morality, dignity and tenderness.

1. Yet “Nebraska” finds both men in opposite roles: Shane, in a Christ-like gesture, washes the hands of Carol (Melissa McBride), whose daughter Sophie was found as a zombie inside the barn Shane broke open, while Rick has to kill to humans who threaten the camp in action that make answers to those big philosophic questions more elusive but no less worth asking — and watching.

Lauren Cohan plays Maggie on "The Walking Dead."

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