On whether or not I am personally glad that Shane is dead: Yes. He was going into ultra survival mode, and he was getting to where he was going to be a danger to literally everyone by dint of 'you are of no use, therefore you are a burden, and you won't leave, so I'll just have to kill you.' I think that, had he stayed alive, he would have killed a couple of the less helpful characters just because they weren't pulling their weight. To me, that makes him worse than the zombies. They are just *relatively* mindless drones, with a single objective, doing what it takes to fulfill that. They aren't aware that anything they are doing is wrong, or even what right and wrong are. They have no concept of morals. Shane, on the other hand, is a fully functioning human being with a fully functioning mind, and he is aware that he is doing something wrong, and is rationalizing it. 'Whatever it takes, we have to survive.' Unfortunately, 'We' in his interpretation isn't we the group, it's 'We, the people who I think are useful. Also Carl and Lori.' I understand not wanting to have people around who are going to get you killed, but literally the only people who are exempt from his 'you better pull your weight or you're out' are the two people who aren't pulling their weight in the worst possible way. I don't hate Lori like most people. I can understand the position she is in. She thought Rick was dead, the world was going to hell, she needed someone, Shane was there. In that situation, I can understand him becoming a surrogate Rick. Since he was filling all Rick's roles, she was treating him like Rick, hence the sex (I don't think she should have had sex with him, but I can understand how it happened). When Rick came back, she felt guilty and she resented Shane for putting her in that position. Now she feels obligated to Rick and is ashamed that she betrayed him, despite no real betrayal taking place. So, she lashed out at Shane. This entire time, his obligation to protect his best friend's wife and son, who he now has come to consider his own wife and son because that's how he was being treated, has been the only thing pushing him forward. Now, the people who he has been relying on have turned against him. Hence the crazies. I also don't hate Carl, he is a child and is going to do what children do. He is being treated like a child, not allowed in on any of the important things going on which would teach him how to handle himself in this world, so of course he's acting out. My one real issue with Lori, since all her seemingly irrational actions can be traced to the what happened between her and Rick and Shane, is that she can't seem to keep track of her damn kid.
Basically what I'm saying is he was willing to kill everyone but the people who, in reality, were probably characters who are the most dangerous to NOT kill. So, yeah, I think he needed to die.
However, I think that they killed him too soon. The episode he died in was the same episode that they mourned Dale's death. It literally started with Rick saying that it was their duty to prove that Dale was wrong, that the group wasn't broken and they could mend the issues between them. After Rick's morality taking a dive for about three episodes, after him slowly descending into the same pit as Shane, he is looking up towards the light, to trying to find the good man he once was. As such, the writers could have (should have) given it a couple episodes, let Rick slowly ascend back to that place where he was that man. They could have also brought Shane down farther, because at the point he died, he was still, in a convoluted way, a moral person. He wants to kill Rick because Rick isn't good enough for the group and he resents that they aren't listening to his more sound judgement. That has logic. They could have given it time for the two of them to move in opposite directions, making Shane darker and darker while Rick found his inner Sheriff. Then, in the episode that Shane pulled his scheme and Rick was forced to kill him, Rick's fall would have been so much more meaningful. After trying to rise above the dark immorality of this place, he could have been finally finding himself again, only to have it shatter under him. That, to me, would have meant more.
So, yeah. I don't have many friend who watch the show that I can talk to about this stuff, so I ranted a little bit.
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