Apparently in the comics Carl kills Shane and Rick offs his zombie?

And this is the reveal that you don't have to be taken down by a zombie to be turned into one, I'm guessing?

Carl killed Shane because Shane was getting ready to kill Rick. There was an imminent threat and Carl handled it. It was an important moment in the series and happened early.

Rick killed Shane's zombie after he had already discovered that the zombie virus was in all of them and if they died (no matter how), they would come back as zombies. It was pretty dramatic in the graphic novel when a person died in his sleep and came back as a zombie and killed 1 or 2 survivors. We all were like WTF? And then Rick figures out what this means in terms of Shane, drives miles and miles to dig Shane up from his grave and put a gun to his head.

I was hoping (for example) that the daughter with the high fever would have died in her sleep and come back as a zombie (without bites) and that would be how the reveal took place. To me, this was a really messed up development that no matter how you died, that was your future.

And btw, if Rick has known all this time about this, and didn't share this with the others, that is even more irresponsible. Even if Sophia had evaded the walkers, if she broke her neck, drowned, what have you, this was her fate.

It made finding her alive and well FAR less likely to my mind. Not to mention they need to sleep in shifts to keep watch.

Finally, this would have been my way of conducting a test. I would have shot Randall in the head and asked Shane to watch him to see if he turns and about how long it takes. There is a malevolence with this asshole, so might as well put him to good use. Humanity be damned.

If Rick doesn't realize that someone he killed could come back as a zombie, why the double taps on the bandits from Philly in the bar?

so you are saying that he has known, but didn't share this with others?

I think you are right. I agree.

So, wait, if you kill someone you have to then do a zombie killing thing to them right away, and that works? You don't have to wait for them to rise again and then do it?

Not to mention they need to sleep in shifts to keep watch.

I don't think so, any more than they need to protect themselves from other zombies, right? Unless there's a reason Sophia was coming home, and other zombies would walk on by.

There was an imminent threat and Carl handled it. I

I might not hate that Carl as much as I'm disliking the one we have right now.

If Rick has known this the whole time, he's pretty crap at leading people. He's pretty crap at being a husband, a friend, and a father. Jesus.

I think Matt raises a compelling point. If you double tap and make sure the 2nd gets them in the head, you are probably done.

BTW, may I also say that the reveal about the zombie virus being in all of us was just so well done. The group had gone to 1 or 2 abandoned housing communities and I wondered why they were getting attacked by zombies in sealed up homes.

Then boom!

There is no fucking lead up to this revelation EXCEPT for the double-tapping. That's a bit too subtle. I would have preferred more hints dropped. I don't know if the Darabont shift impeded the writers' ability to do good storytelling or what, but the characterizations and the plotting are shit.

Awake isn't a genre show: [link]

Which means we can't question anything, I guess, because dreams are non-linear, yadda yadda? So there can totally be scenes in the dream world where he isn't even present?

In some ways, I'm in agreement with one of the commenters that just because Killen says it isn't genre doesn't mean it can't evolve. The telling thing is that he does not want to reveal which is real just yet and enjoy the tension of the character trying to live in both.

but the audience may not like this, so I can imagine the show moving slightly in a different direction.

Well, I don't think they're treating it much like one right now--the idea that he's experiencing red day then green day (oh...) but they're interleaving it for dramatic effect to show to us makes it really hard to follow the mechanics--I can't keep track of how the information flows between the worlds. It's hard to be sure that info doesn't go red->green->red in a shorter period than a day, for instance.

But I think it's because I'm used to mysterious genre shows that I want to work things like that out. Your general Grey's Anatomy watcher might not give a fuck--and if they're the audience, there's no reason for the writers to be honest about it.

They've already had scenes in both worlds without him in them, right? In my head, that would seem to put both worlds on similar planes of reality, but evidently I'm overthinking it.

Basically that's it in a nutshell. If it's not being written as genre, my reflexive way of approaching the plotline is going to be considered overthinking for what it actually is.

Which irritates, and will take some getting used to.

If it later "becomes" genre, that will also irritate.