This is why I watch this show. Every so often it produces some truly great television. Tonight it did so as a fable about mercy and the precious nature of life, right smack in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Go figure.

It's a simple setup, an episode in a bottle. It felt like one of those old Twilight Zone episodes where two people talk a lot. It worked, too, in the same ambling way.

I guess it's official now that this show is just marking time in a six-episode season until the finale. But did it have to be such a structural mess?

The engine's still sputtering a bit, but I think it turned over on this show's third try, an uneven episode that at least has enough going for it to rise above the mundane. Rising above the mundane is a good thing. Keep it up.