By Karen Moul

The Walking Dead was back this week with another great episode. It was perhaps not as excellent as the pilot but still worthy of an A-. At first look, "Guts" seemed to offer slightly less action than last week's episode, but that was mostly due to time contraints. The pilot was 90 minutes, and this week we had to settle for a normal one-hour show. But that hour gave us fast-paced storylines, great effects and very creative use of zombie guts.

The worst part of the episode? Nothing ruins an opening scene like seeing your two most hated characters having sex in the dirt. Ew. Shane's not an unattractive character. His conversation with Rick in the pilot made me think he is a jerk who doesn't like women all that much, and he seems to rule his little band more by bossiness than true leadership. And during a zombie apocalypse he thinks it's funny to sneak up behind someone and scare her? Very funny, jackass. He's lucky Lori was unarmed. Of course she's not too attractive either, she abandoned her comatose husband and she seems pretty into having sex with a jerk. So thanks writers for the sex scene, but I'd prefer to look at that zombie eating the rat.

Michael Rooker's performance as Merle Dixon, the "dumb-as-shit inbred white trash fool," was the highlight of the evening (although it's hard to believe that his character could use the word "parlay" correctly in a sentence). Rooker did a great job of making the guy so hateful, and yet at the end I felt sorry for him trapped on the roof. And for those of us who didn't feel sorry for him, Merle reminded us why we should. He shouted, "You can't just leave me here, it's not human!" No matter how bad a person he is, that was an uncomfortable moment.

Loved the scene that followed, the awkward silence in the back of the truck. Nobody likes Merle, and he is clearly a huge liability and danger to everyone, but everyone kind of expected that T-Dog would free him, because that's what a good person, a person with some humanity, would do. But you also have to do what you need to do to survive, and staying on that roof with a hacksaw probably would have meant death for both of them.

With only six episodes, the story is moving fast and Rick is already changing a bit. Last week he had his choice of all the clothes in his house and he chose to wear the sheriff's uniform. This week it's clear he no longer considers himself a lawman. We don't know much of what Rick saw on the way to Atlanta, but he's learned that the old rules do not apply anymore. On the roof he tells Merle he's no longer a cop, just a man looking for his wife and son "and anybody get's in the way of that's gonna lose." Yet he also talks about how important it is to stick together; it's the only way to survive. How is Rick going to balance his attachments and the well-being of the group against his own survival? And in the end which is more important?

A few more observations: