Today in TV History: ‘The Walking Dead’ Killed Off Lori (And We Had Mixed Feelings About It)

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone. 

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: November 4, 2012

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Walking Dead, “Killer Within” (Season 3, Episode 4) [Watch on Netflix]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT:  Perhaps fittingly, The Walking Dead staggered and stumbled at times in its first two seasons. Certain storylines that were surely thought to be necessary to keep human drama in a zombie story fell incredibly flat. Nowhere was this more apparent than with the Rick/Lori/Shane triangle that dominated those first two seasons. It all became incredibly irritating, and it distracted from the things that the show was doing well. Shane got dispatched in the Season 2 finale, but the remnants of the storyline persisted, specifically with Lori’s pregnancy. A pregnancy that Rick stupidly talked Lori out of terminating in season 2. This is the zombie apocalypse! Ain’t no place to raise a baby! But nooooo. Rick knew best, and Lori couldn’t get rid of their baby together (even if there was some doubt that Shane might be the father). They’d figure it all out, right?

Spoiler: NOPE. They didn’t figure it all out. After the walkers chased them off of Hershel’s farm, they holed up inside a prison for a while, and it was there that Lori was going to have her baby. By now, we’ve become accustomed to The Walking Dead having the absolute worst thing happen to its characters at all times. Back then we might have been a bit more naive. We might have thought that the weeks Carol spent preparing to deliver Lori’s baby would result in a fraught but ultimately successful procedure. NOPE. Carol got caught in an attack and was herself assumed dead for a while, so it was left to Maggie to try to deliver the baby during a walker attack. Maggie probably would have been able to figure it out, resourceful farm girl that she is but NOPE, the baby is breach and Lori needs a caesarian. In a prison cell. Without anesthesia or antibiotics or, you know, stuff to stop her bleeding.

That The Walking Dead was able to work itself out of the corner it had written itself into would end up being a good omen for the show going forward. That it worked itself out of that corner by offing a regular character would also be an omen for itself going forward, though how good that omen would be is probably up to the individual viewer to decide. That Lori’s death was presented as devastatingly as it was — with poor Carl having to be there, and what he had to do after his mom died — was the true testament to the kind of heightened, frayed-nerves drama that The Walking Dead could deliver at its best.

[You can watch The Walking Dead‘s “Killer Within” episode on Netflix]

Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.