This episode stuff starts to go down.
As Rick prepares to turn Michonne over to The Governor in order to prevent more bloodshed, the residents of the prison all start confronting each other and their own demons as they prepare for a war with Woodbury that they think they probably will not win.
I do not say this lightly– this is an episode you cannot miss, and you must not miss the final scene.
Get ready for next week’s season finale with an all-week-long marathon of every episode of The Walking Dead. Or, more likely, if you have your DVR set to automatically record every episode and it’s your #1 priority show like me. . .you’re going to find it full pretty quickly and overriding the rest of your week’s DVR schedule, so you might want to decline some of those recordings.
What’s Good: Almost everything
Rick confronting Merle.
Carol confronting Merle. Go, sister!
Glenn confronting Daryl about having to face Merle for what he did in Woodbury to him and Maggie. That’s been a long time coming.
Merle confronting Daryl.
Glenn and Hershel having a kind of father-son chat.
Michonne and Merle.
Michonne and Merle.
Michonne and Merle. Over and over. The writing in these scenes is so taut, and so perfect.
And what Merle does next. Like taunting zombies with whiskey. This show normally doesn’t make me giggle. There was some true humor there.
And then what Merle does next. . . .
And the wrath of The Governor is fierce.
“We ARE the Greater Good.”
And a scene for which Norman Reedus should be nominated for an Emmy right at the end.
During Talking Dead, they reveal Norman calls shooting the scene “emotionally exhausting.”
What’s Bad:
Time Warner Cable and their crappy DVR service which cut up my viewing. Thank goodness the pieces I missed were only commercials. Screw you, Time Warner. With Walking Dead ending next week, I think we’re going cable-free again at the end of the month.
The Ugly:
That we only have one more episode left. And that finally it feels like this this show is firing on all cylinders.
Zombie Kill of the Week:
Garroting and then decapitating a zombie with wire. And this was an episode full of amazingly great zombie kills. Lots of great work by both Michonne and Merle as we see how dangerous both of them truly are.
The Final Judgment
This episode was amazing. This might be my favorite of the entire series, and definitely of this most recent set of episodes. This was all killer, no filler. Not a scene, not a word, was wasted, but all served to move the story and the characters along. Some great, weighty decisions made by major characters, and some awesome zombie kills along the way.
4 stars. Seriously. Amazing.