The Walking Dead: Top 7 fatherly lessons learned from Rick Grimes

2) “I’m tired, son…please take it.”  (Season 2, Episode 12, “Better Angels”)

In the penultimate episode of the second season of The Walking Dead, we watched as Rick had a private conversation with Carl, wherein he gave Carl back a gun had taken from Daryl.

In the previous episode, Carl, after taking one of Daryl’s guns from his motorcycle, found a stray walker trapped in the small swampland in the wilderness outside of Hershel’s farm. Being a kid, and not quite grasping just how dangerous a situation he was in, Carl rather carelessly taunted the stuck walker until it suddenly became…not so stuck, wrenching itself out of the mud and, eventually, following Carl back to Hershel’s farm where it found Dale who, distraught over the prospect of the group deciding to execute Randall, wasn’t paying attention, and ambushed him, ripping his guts open as it tried to attack him.

This left Carl feeling guilty about his carelessness, and he attempted to alleviate this by giving Shane the gun he’d taken, afraid that he wouldn’t use it properly, and get another person killed. Shane angrily told Rick about the situation, prompting him to confront his son about what happened and give him the first of what would be many a tough lesson about what their lives were now that the world was filled with walkers. As Rick handed Carl the gun, he said:

“Take it. What happened to Dale had nothing to do with you.”

(Carl): “…He died, Dad.”

“…Yeah…yeah…feels like there’s a lot of that going around…that’s why I need you. No more kid stuff. I wish you could have the childhood I had, but, that’s not gonna happen. People are gonna die. I’m gonna die, Mom…there’s no way you can ever be ready for it. I try to be, but, I can’t, best we can do now is avoid it as long as we can, keep one step ahead. I wish I had something better to say…but, I’m tired, son…please, take it.”

This was Rick trying his best to tell Carl that the days when they didn’t have to worry about survival were gone. The days when they could all be carefree and not have to worry about protection or defense were over. No one could afford to be careless with guns, but, even more so, they couldn’t afford to not carry them around, or pretend that they didn’t need them, because death was now a very immediate part of their lives, and their only means of staving it off was by protecting themselves as best as possible, i.e. with weapons that could kill the dead from as far away as possible.