Walking Dead: Pretty Much Dead Already

     So much for any glimmer of hope.  The half-season finale only took our bunch of survivors further down the rabbit hole of despair by shattering Hershel's world view and putting the group's search for Sophia at an end.  Granted, both were a house of cards waiting to tumble, but I held on to a small sliver of hope that someone would walk away with something to look forward too.  I guess if we wanted to be eternal optimists there was one person who ended the half-season on a high note;  good old Glenn seems to have finally solidified his love connection with Maggie.
     I like to think I'm a pretty savvy television watcher, but I have to admit I totally missed the thought of Sophia being in the barn.  It seems so obvious after the fact, but I didn't see it coming.  I'm not sure that's saying anything about the writers of the the show.  It's more likely that I was lulled into the drama and violence to see what was right in front of my face.  It would have been disingenuous to the tone the writers have set if Sophia was found alive after all this time, so I was expecting the group to find her in zombie form, but it never dawned on me that she would be in the barn.  It was a nice exclamation point on the insanity that broke out to have her stumble out of the open doorway.  As discouraging as it was, it was a powerful way to wrap up the season's search.
      Which means the disappointment I felt lay in the handling of Hershel and his zombies.  Did they need to shatter Hershel's world so dramatically and leave him so traumatized?  Couldn't the group have moved on from the farm leaving Hershel to come to grips with the new world order on his own terms?  At some point there needs to be some hope for these survivors or the insane ramblings of Shane will become not crazed but prophetic.  I realize we must hit bottom before we can rise back up and that despair makes for better drama than triumph, but giving Hershel his barn would have been a small sign that people can find piece of mind in this apocalyptic world as fragile as that piece of mind might be.
     On other notes... earlier in the season I was on board with the turn Shane was taking.  He was a yin to Rick's yang.  A voice of practicality to balance out irrationally hopeful.  Now, I feel like they've taken him too far.  How can he come back from his outburst?  It seems to me that the writer's have built a situation where the only rational thing from the group to do is break into two camps; two camps that can't co-exist together.  Shane has obviously gone off the deep end and I can't believe that there can be any other outcome then his death, like in the comics, or his departure from the group.  This could have been a much slower burn, but now the writers have put themselves in a corner.