If you want to complain about the direction of “The Walking Dead” this season, you’re more than welcome, but if you tune in specifically to see zombies and zombie kills, you can’t justifiably complain about last night’s bloodbath. The entire first half of the episode was Romero-style, brain-splattering, full-on zombie destruction, and it was phenomenal. Was it absolutely necessary to drag it out that long? Who cares? Zombies got their asses kicked until, of course, they overran the farm by sheer force of numbers.

The death count: Two. Jimmy and Patricia (Otis’ wife), the two least recognizable members of the cast. I had completely forgotten about them until last night, so their loss wasn’t exactly dramatic. I’m sure there’s some 16-year-old girl in Idaho who became fixated on Jimmy who was crushed by his death, but the reaction of most viewers was, “Jimmy? Oh yeah! I totally forgot about that guy.”

The Plot Developments: Once the survivors were overrun by the zombie horde, they reconvened at the highway, minus Andrea, and the truth about the zombie infection came out. Everyone is a carrier, news that Rick had procured from the CDC but kept from everyone. You die, you’re a walker.

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SPOILERS ABOUND

In a discussion post a few weeks ago, we talked about the limitations that many of the best drama’s main protagonist face: Characters like Dexter, Don Draper, and Raylan Givens have to remain fairly static because too much growth or maturity would necessarily end the show. If Don Draper sobered up and settled down, there’d be no more “Mad Men.” If Dexter defeated his urge to kill, or if Raylan Givens resigned as a marshal to raise babies with Winona, those shows would cease to exist.

“The Walking Dead’s” Rick Grimes faces a similar predicament: His own dumb choices often create the arcs around which the show’s plots are built. But, despite fairly two-dimensional characterization, the second season of “The Walking Dead” — or at least the second half — has been about Rick’s rise to the true leader of the group. In order to achieve that position, however, a far more dynamic character, Shane, had to go. Unfortunately, being the leader of the group doesn’t change the fact that Rick is still one of the least interesting characters on the show.

Last night’e episode followed a similar narrative arc several of the previous episodes: Five minutes of gripping action followed by 35 minutes of talk, talk, talk, and ending with a two-minute “Oh SH*T” moment that keeps us compelled enough to watch next week. Last night’s “Oh SH*T” moment was the biggest of the season, even if it was the most expected. We knew Shane would die (I didn’t think it would happen until next week), but we didn’t know how or under what circumstances. He was killed by Carl in the graphic novel, and in a small moment of redemption for Carl’s character, Carl was able to pick off zombie Shane last night to end the episode.

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Eastbound & Down/Life’s Too Short/Luck (HBO, Sunday) – HBO’s next series should be a sci-fi show set 25 years in the future that follows the life of the child that was raised by Kenny Powers. Maybe with lasers and stuff. I think that would be a good show. (Preview of this week’s episode after the jump. NSFW audio. Duh.)

Saturday Night Live (NBC, Saturday) – I like Jonah Hill. He seems like a really cool guy, he’s dating Dustin Hoffman’s daughter, the world is his oyster. But it’s gonna take a long time for “Academy Award Nominee Jonah Hill” to sound right.

Portlandia (IFC, Friday) – Season finale, followed by a sneak peek at “Comedy Bang Bang,” IFC’s upcoming show based on one of my favorite podcasts.

The Simpsons/Bob’s Burgers/Family Guy/American Dad (FOX, Sunday) – I don’t know if or when you gave up on these shows, but I recommend giving them a fresh shot every once in a while if you did. This has been “DG Tells You to Do Stuff and Then You All Probably Yell at Him About It.”

The Amazing Race/The Good Wife (CBS, Sunday) – From TV Guide, here is the complete summary of this week’s episode of “The Amazing Race”: “The race continues in Turin, Italy.” Heard it here first!

The Walking Dead (AMC, Sunday) – Here’s something I’ve always wondered: Zombies eat brains, right? But as more and more people are turned into zombies, the number of brains they’re eating will increase exponentially. What happens when they run out? Brains are a finite resource, zombies. They’re not something renewable like air, or Skittles, or oil. You need to conserve — maybe eat only half a brain and save the rest for later, or start raising humans like livestock. Here to help.

Shameless/House of Lies/Californication (Showtime, Sunday) – Based on our poll today, it looks like a bunch of you watch “Shameless.” That surprised me a little. I will have to retreat to my laboratory (kitchen) and ponder this (eat pasta) for a while.

UPDATE — The Announcement (ESPN, Sunday) – I forgot about it on Friday, but this documentary about Magic Johnson’s announcement that he has HIV looks great. Watch what you want on Sunday, but I’ll be watching this. (Here’s an excellent review by Dan Devine at Yahoo!)

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Sunday night is both one of my favorite and least favorite nights of television. I love it because, with the exception of Tuesday night (“Southland,” “Justified,” “Parenthood”), it’s the most densely packed night of great programming. I hate it because, as as television critic, I feel compelled to watch all the good shows. That’s a lot of TV for one night; I have to use two DVRs set up to record two TV shows, and I end up staying awake until two or three in the morning to watch it all, a challenge that’s compounded by the fact that I have newborn twin daughters (I know, I know: White people problems).

It doesn’t help that all of these great shows start after 9 p.m. I watch: “The Good Wife,” “Shameless,” “The Walking Dead,” “Luck,” “House of Lies,” “Life’s too Short,” “Eastbound and Down,” and up until a couple of weeks ago, I was also watching “Downton Abbey.” (I do not watch “Comic Book Men” or “Californiacation.” I have to draw the line somewhere).

Anyway, for my own edification, I was curious about whether the readership here faces similar white-people difficulties. I suspect most of you mete out the programming across the week (Monday, after all, is mostly a graveyard), but I’m curious about which of those Sunday night shows you watch and what you’re interested in. We cover a lot of the same shows here, so if I knew that you all were watching some of these other shows en masse, perhaps we could broaden our coverage to cover stuff like “The Good Wife,” “Shameless,” and “Life’s Too Short” a little more frequently. (Keeping in mind that, next month, when programming turns over once “Mad Men,” “The Killing,” and “Game of Thrones” returns to Sunday night, we could present this question again.)

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[SPOILERS, UNDOUBTEDLY]

I’ll admit, I was frustrated by much of last night’s episode. It was beginning again to feel like a Frank Darabont episode: More talking, more stalling, more stasis. But unlike “The Walking Dead” under Darabont’s stewardship, last night’s episode — the fourth full one under Glen Mazzarra — didn’t take six episodes to get to the point. It took 45 minutes, and ultimately, the payoff was worth it. “The Walking Dead” lost its first major character in long time, and for once, they managed to build some sympathy for that character before killing him off. Moreover, they managed to do it in surprise fashion. Perhaps the book readers saw that coming, but I had no clue, and it was all the more unsettling because Dale — somewhat forgotten this half season — had been the group’s moral center.

Ultimately, it was not — as I’d initially thought — a stalling episode built entirely around whether to kill Randall. Instead, Mazzara used Randall to further develop several other characters in last night’s episode, not least of which was Carl, who we discovered is a Class A dipsh*t. Randall is also being used to drive the wedge deeper between Rick and Shane, cause Andrea to question her own loyalties, and most importantly, bring Daryl back into the fold. Daryl has grown the most of any other character on the show, and last night’s episode looked to elevate him as the new Dale, the group’s moral center. Not bad for a guy who was once a one-dimensional, redneck racist.

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