I need to start out by saying that I don’t think I’ve ever hated a television character as much as I hate The Governor. I find something likable, or at the very least cheeky, about all my favorite villains, but man. I just hate him. I hate him more than I hate Andrea, for God’s sake. And as much as that sounds like a complaint, it really just means that The People in Charge of These Things are doing their jobs really, really well.
On tonight’s episode, Rick has decided to take an extended stay in Crazytown, Glenn takes the reigns as group leader but is pretty much being a vengeful turd about it, and Merle and Daryl make a decision about their fate after rescuing a family from an onslaught of walkers. And hereby ends the spoiler free portion of the recap.
The “meh”:
I am getting a little bored with Glenn and Maggie’s “stomping off” relationship. There’s always some stomping. Tonight’s tiff was especially muddy: Was Maggie upset because she thought Glenn was mad at her for being assaulted, or because of his behavior since their rescue? Was Glenn mad at Maggie for being assaulted or was he mad at himself for not being able to protect her? My thoughts are of course the latter, but it really wasn’t terribly clear in the writing and this particular argument seemed a senseless plot point. I’m hoping for a quick chain of events to tidy up a bit: Rick stops seeing Laurie’s ghost (or we see a point to that), and returns to his position as camp leader so that Glenn can get rid of the pressure that he, sadly, cannot handle.
The Governor set Andrea up with a boastful pep talk, and encouraged her to be the spirit of the town in his stead. Meanwhile, he is continuing to raise everyone’s distrust of her. Why? He is sinister enough without these actions, and it seems that the distrust and misdirection while the Governor sneaks out for vengeance would have been the natural progression anyway.
The Awesome:
Merle and Daryl come to their senses and return to the prison – in the nick of time, no less! After the Governor releases a Walker-bomb on the front lawn, the brothers arrive just in time to save Rick and Hershel from certain doom. I’m really glad that this decision did not take several episodes to resolve. It was great to finally see the two interact for the first time in three seasons, and it was an efficient and powerful development of their entire history and relationship. That right there was awesome television writing.
The final fifteen minutes of the episode were exhilarating and a great balance to the heavy drama and character development of the rest of the episode. Seeing Michonne whip her sword through a field of zombies always makes me cheer a little, and her one spoken line of dialogue tonight was spoken normally, not in a Batman voice. I hope this becomes a trend, because she really is one of my favorite characters.
The “oh no, not that guy”:
Aw, not Old Timey Facial Hair Guy! I’m so sad! Yes, just as we were getting to know Axl, he leaves us. The episode did a great job of setting him up for something momentous – I was actually anticipating a reveal that the nice guy act was just that, but yeah that’s pretty dumb of me because this is The Walking Dead.
Kill of the Week? If you answered anything other than Hatchback Zombie you are wrong.
All in all, good episode and another helluva cliffhanger. CitizenBot returns next week for your recap and review!