Too much for me. It
was like the writers wanted to pack as many gut punches into the shows 44 minute run time as
possible. But not in a way that serviced
the story. Odd. At the end of the episode, our gang is separated, and no one got what
they wanted. The governor morphed into
an irrational crazy man, and all his 'people' followed him like deaf, dumb and blind
sheep. To me, this development didn’t
make sense, and I mostly disliked this episode.
However I did feel like it was supposed to serve as a cleansing. Ultimately the episode piqued my interest for
the second half of the season, even if it was a bit uneven and nonsensical.
The episode opens on the Governor talking his crew into
storming the jail. He calmly explains he
has “a plan to do it without anyone getting hurt”. The Governor’s ace in the hole is that he has
captured Michonne and Hershel. He
explains to his crew that he has them.
Wide eyed innocent Tara shoots back, “you TOOK them?!?” The governor ignores her and goes on to say
that he wants to take the prison peacefully, but the crew needs to be prepared
to kill.
After the Governor rattles off a few unfounded claims as to
why the prison gang deserves to be ousted, Tara starts off a chain reaction of
agreement to the plan. Apparently all
the people in the Governor’s new crew are all lemmings.
(Side note – Sometimes the WD writers introduce characters
that make me think, “I wonder how these people survived all this time?” Case in point, the people living in cell
block D in 'Infected'. At this point,
I would say that most of the people who are left should be relatively savvy and
make calculated decisions. But this
group is just so openly and quickly trusting of the Governor and his moronic
plan, it feels like this episode is setting up a conflict just for the sake of
conflict, and not to service the story.
I know that in the comic, the denizens of Woodbury were the ones to
follow the Governor, not some random group of rag tag campers that had just met
him. Regardless, for the sake of
entertainment I’ll let this point go.)
Lilly comes out, arms crossed and chastises the Governor. She says, “You said they weren’t all bad
people.” He counters, “Well, they’re
with bad people.” She lamely asks, “Am
I?”. The Governor tells her that he
loves her, and she recoils in disgust and confusion.
(Side note - Once again, what is going on here with the
character development? Why is Lilly the
only one to question what the Governor is doing, and why on earth doesn’t she
leave at this point? It seems as if
throughout this entire episode, characters felt they needed to stubbornly stick
with decisions they had made, even when they were starting to look like
terribly horrible choices. Lilly sticks
by the Governor simply because she had hitched her wagon to him a few weeks
prior, and the Governor’s crew sticks by him even when they are offered an out
by Rick. But we’ll get to that….)
Back in Mitch’s camper, the Governor tends to a hostile
Michonne’s head wound, while Hershel tries to calmly reason with the Governor. He says that he can see that the Governor has
changed, and that they can try to all live together in the prison. The Governor can’t accept that. He says, “There’s all kinds of ways to do
this….this way you get to live and I get to be….” He trails off. I personally believe that he was about to say
“I get to be a hero”, which would be a call back to the previous episode where
the Governor details a childhood encounter with his brother, the ‘hero’ from
his previous life. Power corrupts, and
is addictive. By joining the campers, he
succumbed to that addiction again. It’s
not enough for him to work at a democracy inside the prison with a group of
people he was once at war with.
Nope. He needs to be the monarch.
Back at the prison, Glen and Maggie canoodle and talk about
a vacation for their anniversary. Adorable. Maggie mentions a local waterfall, and Glenn
jokes saying, ‘I’ll go load up the station wagon’. They hug, and Maggie says she’ll go get him
some water. Apparently Maggie has never
watched any horror movies, because she utters the four words that ensure that
chaos will erupt: “Ill be right back.”
Cut to Daryl and Rick talking about Carol. Daryl is furious that he wasn’t consulted
about the decision to exile her, and seems a bit worried about Carol in
general. Apparently Daryl doesn’t think
that Carol made the right decision either.
He says, “That ain’t her.” Rick
says he needs to go talk to Tyreese about the situation, and Daryl says he’ll
join him.
There’s a short but sweet moment here with Bob and Sasha,
where she thanks him for helping save her life.
Bob has a weird creepy mystery box.
Rick and Daryl find Tyreese in the tombs, and it appears as
if Tyreese has found some sort of disturbing dismembered mouse art. He goes on a rant about finding who did
this. He says hes not going to sleep
until they do. Well, Tyreese, stop
whining like a brat and start doing something about it. (Side note - I still can’t wait for Tyreese
to die. He has done nothing but be annoying from the
start of this season.) Too bad the guys
don’t get a chance to discuss more, because a huge boom comes from above.
Everyone runs out of the prison, into the yard. From above, they see the Governor’s men,
vehicles formed into a ‘V’, with the tank at the center. The camera pans back to a nice complementary
shot of our gang standing in a ‘V’, with Rick at the center, denoting that a
showdown is most certainly about to occur.
The Governor calls out for Rick, and Rick counters by
stating that there’s a council now. The
Governor sneers, and says, “Is Hershel on the council? How about Michonne?” He reveals his two captives. Rick is taken aback, but tries to insist that
he doesn’t make the decisions anymore.
The Governor pushes back, and tells him that he needs to make the
decisions today.
Rick looks over to Daryl who nods at him, as does his deputy
Carl. He starts down towards the small
army, pistol at his hip.
As Rick works his way down the hill, Daryl gives
instructions to the rest of the gang and starts arming the able bodied. He lets them know to get everyone on the bus,
and that the bus needs to leave if anything goes wrong.
Cut to an undisclosed location where Lilly is the only one
from the camping crew not at the prison.
She stares across the water at a walker struggling to make it
across. Meghan calls for her help to dig
in the mud, but Lilly is fixated on the walker. Lilly’s making all sorts of bad choices in
this episode, including letting her daughter roll around in the mud in a world
with no showers. The walker falters and
falls, and Lilly puts her gun away.
Meghan unearths a sign that says “Flash Flood Area”, which was
conveniently washed away atop a walker.
The walker grabs Meghan and takes a big munch out of her shoulder. Lilly sprints down to Meghan and shoots the
walker in the face. Too late.
Back at the prison, Rick has made his way to the fence. He pleads with the Governor to
reconsider. He says there are children
there, and some are sick. This gives
pause to a few of the Governor’s crew.
The Governor says he doesn’t care, and starts firing shots at
approaching walkers. And just in case
Rick hasn’t been paying attention to basic walker behavior all this time, the
Governor verbalizes that the noise will just draw more walkers over. No duh, Gov.
At the interior fence, Carl and Daryl aim at the Governor
and his crew. Carl says he can kill the
Governor from right there, and that he can end it right now. Daryl talks him out of it, saying to trust
Rick and his sweet negotiating skills.
(Side note – This is the second time that someone has had a
clear shot at the Governor and decided to not take it. Andrea had her chance last season, and was
stopped by Milton. My question is, would
Carl killing the Governor mid-standoff have changed anything? I doubt very much that the camper crew would
have just decided to back down, but maybe Rick would have been able to convince
them to live in harmony instead of the massacre that occurred.)
All the kids run to the bus, Judith in tow. (Side note - Why the hell are the children in
charge of the baby? This reinforces my
belief that Beth is basically worthless.
I thought her ONE job was to take care of Judith. Major life fail, Beth.) Lizzie stops them and convinces her sister that
they should help because Carol taught them to stand and fight. They interpret this to mean ‘drop the baby,
leave her totally unsupervised in an open area and get the guns’.
Back at the fence, Rick tries to appeal to the Governor’s
sense of humanity. He offers up the
choice that Hershel already proposed to the Governor. Way to be on the same page, gang! They can all live together. Rick says it’s not going to be easy, in fact
it’s going to be much harder than shooting at each other, but they can do
it. The Governor sees his control
slipping away, and grabs Michonne’s katana and places it at Hershel’s throat. We
get a shot of Hershel, looking like Ned Stark from Game of Thrones as he’s
wearing an ancient looking shirt, and has a sword at his neck.
Rick starts to address the entirety of the Governor’s crew,
and asks if this is what any of them want.
Mitch says that they want what the gang has got, and punctuates it with
a wholly unnecessary, “time for you to leave asshole!” Rick continues to address everyone, giving
them a bit more information. He lets
them know that they had fought the Governor before, and that some of the
Governor’s old friends had become leaders in the prison. What follows is an impassioned speech for
humanity, saying, “let go of all of it, and no one dies. We can still come back, we’re not too far gone. We get to come back. I know we all can change.”
Best. Speech. Ever.
Hershel gives Rick a small smile, thinks they’ve got
this. But the Governor whispers “LIAR”
and violently slashes into Hershel’s neck.
Worst. Moment. Ever.
“NOOOOOOOOOOO.” Rick screams, and all hell breaks loose. Maggie and Beth lose their minds, and both
sides start shooting. Michonne makes her
way behind the trucks to cut herself free, and a badly injured Hershel tries to
wiggle away. The Governor chooses to
pursue Hershel instead of Michonne and hacks Hershel’s head from his body for
no apparent reason. (Quick side note - This
calls to mind the heads in tanks in Woodbury.) Just then, Lilly walks up with Megan in her
arms. The Governor takes no time in
shooting her head off. Seriously? This is just too much. There are just too many reasons why this scene
is ridiculous and unnecessary overkill.
The tank starts to rumble towards the prison, tearing down
the fences. Our gang stoically stands their
ground. Lots of the Governor’s new
family goes down, and the tank starts haphazardly shooting at the actual prison
walls. Bad idea if you want to take it
for any protective reason whatsoever. Mitch
is an idiot.
Maggie instructs Beth to get everyone on the bus, invoking
Hershel as she says, “we’ve all got jobs to do.” Maggie successfully gets Glenn on the bus,
but doesn’t see Beth who went to go find Judith. Yeah, Beth, you were supposed to be watching
her this whole time. But you just saw
your dad get executed, so we’ll cut you a little slack.
Amidst the melee, the Governor and Rick start fist
fighting.
Daryl starts casually tossing hand grenades into the mix, sprinkling
a little smoke into this shit stew of a situation. In another corner of the yard, an unarmed
Maggie finds Sasha and Bob and asks about Beth.
They don’t know where she is. Bob
gets shot in the shoulder. While the
three of them are searching for the exit wound, the bus drives off.
Tyreese is shooting at the advancing opposition from a
raised garden bed, and is almost a goner when Meeka and Lizzie appear with guns
drawn. The sight of children with guns
drawn is a bit shocking, and Lizzie takes the advantage to shoot down two of
the Governor’s people in cold blood.
Tyreese is shocked, but quickly springs out of the garden bed, telling
the girls that they have to get out of there.
In the yard, the Governor starts to strangle Rick to death,
when Michonne comes up from behind, and stabs him through the chest. The Governor gasps, and falls to the ground a
few feet away. Michonne watches as Rick
catches his breath and asks for Carl.
“Where’s Carl?” Michonne replies,
“I don’t know.” Michonne walks up to the
Governor but for some reason doesn’t deliver the death blow.
Daryl tosses a grenade into the tank, which explodes. Mitch evacuates, only to have Daryl shoot him
in the heart. (Quick side note – Is this
the first live person we’ve seen Daryl kill? I believe it is.) Beth runs up and says that she was trying to
find the kids. Daryl surveys the rapidly
advancing walkers and says, “We gotta go Beth, we gotta go.” They run off to the fences.
Rick calls for Carl, and he comes out of nowhere. They embrace, and Rick asks about
Judith. Carl says, “I don’t know”. They stagger over to a car seat, which
appears to be soaked in blood. (Side
note – Press pause on the car seat, and it looks like bloody fingers might have
reached in to grab the baby and save her….but that’s probably just wishful
thinking). Carl goes berserk on a
zombie, firing round after round. Rick stumbles
over to him and grabs him, saying, “We gotta go. Its over.”
Walkers start to take over the prison, as the Governor slowly
bleeds out in the yard. A blood soaked
Lilly calmly walks over and shoots him in the face.
Carl and Rick stumble up the hill. Rick says, “Don’t look back Carl, keep
walking.”
Final thought – No one ‘killed’ Hershel’s head. That makes me very sad. I hope this is addressed in the next episode,
but I doubt it.
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