So it's almost the end of season 2 and the rag tag band of survivors still finds itself led by Rick Grimes - a father, a husband and a generally nice guy. The only problem is good guys don't always make good leaders. I'll forgive him for his mistakes in season 1 as he was still new with the whole zombie thing (dropped gun bag in panic at first horde), and some things were really just out of his control (T-dog dropping keys, suicidal CDC survivor). I'm just surprised they let him be in charge though since Shane was doing a decent job of running the show till he showed up.
His lack in the skill department also may have contributed to this. For example, when he and Sophia are being chased by two walkers and he is unable to use his gun - he has to go run off somewhere to take them on one at a time. Had my favourite crossbow weilding hick been the one running the kid down instead of helping the unfortunate clutz T-dog, I'm sure he would have offed them both no problems. Hell, he did just that in a later episode where he is severely wounded, high on shrooms and starts off unconscious just to give the zombies a chance! There's even a specific part where someone says "I don't think anyone would have done different" to the girl's mom Carol and there's a shot a Daryl's face where he says nothing for Carol's sake but you can see in his eyes that he wouldn't have stuffed it up. Due to Rick's failure, the girl went missing and so began the long and ardous search phase which in the end Rick didn't help out much with anyway. This was ultimately solved by "bad guy" Shane, albeit accidentally.
Issue #2. A leader needs to be in control of his people. True, this is harder when you have hard headed idiots who don't listen to instructions (*cough* Andrea & Carl *cough*) but seriously - you let your own child wander around on his own into the swamp and don't even frigging notice? If you can't keep tabs on your own kid during a zombie apocalypse, I certainly don't think you should be trying to lead a whole group of people. Shane seemed to give more guidance to the kid than his own father did.
Issue #3: A leader shouldn't be inconsistent. Good old Rick though, finds some scum bags whom he doesn't trust and in perhaps his most awesome form this season blows them both away. Nice. Then suddenly after a twist of events he decides to save another scum bag who was just moments ago shooting at him and his friends? WTF. I would understand if he was doing a Jack Bauer (ie save him for torture) but his ultimate reasoning was the dude was young and should be let go, despite the real threat that he could go get his heavily armed buddies and come back for vengeance? Stupid. I swear sometimes he thinks he's Eddard Stark. Fortunately for him this problem was again solved by Shane, the only one with the balls to do what needed to be done.
It's a pretty big flaw for a leader who can't lead properly, but that also gives him room for improvement. I suspect he'll need to work on that really quickly now that his best buddy is double dead.
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