Or two? And the answer is yes. I have developed a theory of a phenomenon I call "Buffy Syndrome" which basically suggests that we overlook the specifics or particulars of a woman, particularly an attractive and young woman, wielding power, and simply take gratification from the very fact of her using power, to consider whether or not she is using it rightly or for good ends. I think something like that is going on with Andrea on the Walking Dead - the gun represents her empowerment as a character and that is to be embraced and applauded, no matter how stupid, petty and pathetically she behaves.
Last week, she continued her girl-power tantrum against all the men who hold her down and try to tell her, a strong independent woman, what to do with the gun she touched for the first time a few weeks ago (on her personal timeline). In this case, she took it upon herself to NOT help out the other women with the cooking, and elected to stand watch atop the camper, despite their being parked in a farm, with wide lines of sight, up to the treeline, where being the camper doesn't help you see anyway. DALE, being a sensible and wise character, kept watch from atop the camper on the road and atop a hill, where he was afforded the best vantage point, and where the large camper would not serve as a blind spot preventing you from seeing walkers until the came around the corner of the camper and were right in your face. That is unlikely to happen on the farm, which made her lookout perch nothing more than posturing. But she's an attractive woman doing the posturing, so it's cool and empowerment! Yay! Then, ignoring the advice of all the other men, as well as common sense, and probably basic firearms safety, she takes it upon herself to play sniper when they see a walker staggering out of the aforementioned treeline, very far away. The men with experience with guns told her not to shoot, and several of them ran up to investigate the walker personally. Also, civilization has collapsed. The closest thing to a functioning settlement they have encountered is farm full of people who hate guns or can't shoot. In other words, the things that make guns more than awkward clubs - BULLETS - have become a non-renewable resource. Against a very slow and clumsy adversary like the undead, it is much better to save shots and kill solo walkers hand-to-hand. Common sense and firearms safety is DON'T POINT GUNS AT PEOPLE. Andrea, by pointing a rifle (that she has NEVER fired in action before) at a target her friends were all gathering around was doing just this, and she had absolutely no experience or credentials to lead her to believe she could get away with having Rick, Shane & friends between her and the target and still make a shot without endangering them unnecessarily. Situations were such a shot would be justified would be if the enemy was armed and threatening her allies, and that's about it. Other than that, even a profession sniper would prefer the closest parties take the shot, because they were more likely to make it. But professionals do not have to prove themselves or carry a chip on their shoulders because they are reacting badly to being a chick in a world where sexual harassment no longer has a government out to eradicate it, and her gender is more useful for breeding than other, more immediate abilities. The guys are always going to be better at cracking a walker's skull, or running to and from targets, and all sorts of other physical things. All she has to go on is the shooting skills she is so desperate to acquire. The two most badass female characters in the books are Andrea herself, much further down the road when she has had a ton of training and practice with her sniper rifle, and another woman who has martial arts & sword skills that bespeak years of training. That's what it takes for a woman to match a fit man in hand to hand combat.

In spite of these myriad shortcomings in Andrea's actions, she has been give a pass. Daryl, the victim of her immaturity, portrayed as an angry & embittered character from a background implying misogyny, brushed off her apology with a rationale for her behavior and a joke. Dale, the guy who stood next to her, trying to talk her down and telling her not to shoot, also coddled her in the aftermath, instead of offering the well-deserved 'I-told-you-so' her actions would have merited, especially from a responsible teacher. Then this week, she is being petted and fawned over in the general shooting class for her ability, with no consideration that her general bad-tempered nature and unwillingness to listen to moderating advice makes her shooting talent a liability to the group's survival. And despite her insistent position that she's just as good as a man, she petulantly stalks off in a huff and walks off alone when her teacher tries to treat her like an adult who can handle criticism. His attempts to teach her to focus, concentrate and use the gun properly in times of stress and danger were not in the least bit unreasonable or unexpected had she been in official training (and the man teaching her is a police instructor - so he's not just a jerk who can shoot - he has actual experience and training in teaching firearms). Yet, when she behaves like a child and acts in a very dangerous way in a world of walkers with her stomping out in a fit of resentment. It's not even as if she's only endangering herself - we have already seen how her companions react to a missing person with their season-long search for Sophia, and how their efforts to find the child have led to the injuries of Daryl and Carl, and indirectly the death of Otis. How many might be hurt or killed by Andrea's wandering off alone because Shane had the temerity to mention her dead sister. A sister whose death caused Andrea to overreact and behave irrationally for the rest of last season and into this one. Her very behavior and reactions to the death give the lie to her posturing and pretense of toughness and competence, much less any notion that she should be trusted with a deadly weapon.

And then there is Lori. She's upset, she doesn't like losing the comforts to which she has been accustomed, so FUCK her kids! They can just DIE, because Lori's all mad at having to live a level of comfort and civilization that is still superior to many eras of human history. Did she think accidents didn't happen to kids in the middle ages, only without the antibiotics and detailed knowledge of anatomy and surgical techniques that allowed him to be saved. Her rants this season about why go on and how can anyone raise a kid in this world are the most colossally spoiled, entitled and petulant behavior portrayed in the entire series. And then there is the issue of her wanting to abort the kid. Setting aside the moral issue of abortion, it is still a luxury of civilized society. Contrary to the expectations of our sybaritic culture, people have not always had kids as a luxury accoutrement once they were financially secure enough to afford them, or as a disastrous accident caused by ignorance and poor planning. People in more primitive eras did not have children because they were too ignorant to practice safe sex, they had them because society needs to repopulate in order to keep going and society is the only way that weak people survive. Weak people like Rick and Lori in their sixties and seventies. Weak people like Lori, when she is not surrounded by men who would die to prevent her being raped. Society is what goes looking for Sophia when she gets lost, despite the cost in injuries to Daryl and Carl. Society is what saved them after their injuries. Even if that group, plus the farm-dwellers, is the only group of humans left, they are going to die out unless they start breeding, because everyone, aside from Glen, Maggie and the farmboy, seem to be over 30, and will very soon be unable to kick walker ass, or even provide basic necessities for themselves without a lot of effort and pain.

And sandwiched in between her despair over being pregnant and her complete inability to handle her child being injured in any sort of sane or constructive way, we have her throwing a shit-fit over Carl being taught to shoot, that only gives way to the unanimous opposition of people with much better judgment. She might not like the idea of her son having a gun, but she pretty much gave up any right to have her feelings matter when she contemplated not saving his life. By doing so she abrogated her moral right to make decisions for him, even aside from the sheer stupidity of her position. In previous eras, when people had to deal with daily survival on such an immediate basis, Carl's current level of firearms proficiency would have labeled him a slow starter or a child of unimaginable privilege and luxury. Of the entire group, he is the single least capable of protecting himself in hand-to-hand combat with a walker, and most in need of a gun when faced with any threat. For someone who's gravest wrongdoing so far has been excused entirely and only because of the world falling apart, she is awfully and willfully determined to cling to outdated mindsets that were only operative before the plague. The very reason Rick can so easily forgive her adultery - the disruption of life and circumstances caused by the outbreak - is exactly why her expectations of comfort and safety are wrong. All of her subsequent errors (her situation precluding children, her right to an abortion, her distaste for a child using guns) are predicated on the expectation of a normal world and normal situation, in which her violation of her marriage would have been unforgivable.

Both characters need to get their heads out of their asses and grow up. The season is slow enough with its apparent decision to focus on characterization that we don't need that characterization slowed down with pointless tangents and immature digressions to a couple of characters whose main (and only, if they keep acting like such deadweight liabilities) selling point is jeopardized by the addition of a younger and much more attractive female to the cast.