The Walking Dead, for all its faults, works best when it sticks with action. I won’t say the show handles action well. Because it really doesn’t. The logistics which are necessary for a good action scene are never right. But when the show sticks with the zombie stuff, it’s easier to overlook the nonsense. As such, the action-packed mid-season finale was about as good as the show gets.
The episode opened by introducing us to a new group of plucky survivors. I had to wonder what non-comic fans thought about these guys. If I were them, I’d have to wonder why we were spending so much of the season finale introducing characters who had nothing to do with the mounting tension between Rick’s group in the prison and the Governor’s group in Woodbury.
The leader of this group is Tyreese, a popular character from the comic book. In the comics, Tyrese was introduced early in the series. He served as Rick’s right hand man after Shane’s death (which also happened much earlier in the series). On the TV show, that role has largely been filled by Daryl.
Even with the knowledge of who Tyreese was in the comic book, the introduction of his group seems a bit random at this point in the story. We should be focused on the high stakes rescue mission at Woodbury. So it’s a little weird to ask the audience to care about a bunch of new characters many of whom do not seem to have names yet.
The group seeks shelter in the prison. Axel has been left alone with the weakest members of Rick’s gang; Carl, Hershel, Carol, Beth and baby Kickass (or Judith if you prefer). This seems like a really bad idea. Especially if you have knowledge of what happened in the comic book. At first, the show teases us with the knowledge that something bad went down in the comic. But then it goes a different (and less interesting) direction.
Axel is asking Beth creepy questions which make him come across like a pedophile. Carol interrupts. Axel explains that he’s been locked up a long time. And there aren’t a lot of options since Maggie’s with Glenn and Carol’s a lesbian. Carol laughs in response. Apparently, Axel came to the conclussion based on Carol’s oddly short hair.
I can’t remember if we have talked about this before or not. But let’s discuss Carol’s hair since it has become a minor plot point. How’s she keeping it that short? All the men have grown in bushy beards over the year since the apocalypse. But Carol has maintained the same closely-groomed clipper cut. At cut which likely would have had her pegged as a lesbian before the apocalypse. Or a cancer survivor. Honestly, that was my first impression of her.
Carol assures the prison inmate that she is not a lesbian and he responds by getting all flirty. Carol actually blows him off in a playful way that makes me think the world’s creepiest love triangle may start when Daryl returns.
Much of the episode is spent in Woodbury. Glenn and Maggie make a decent escape attempt which is ultimately thwarted. They forge a weapon out of zombie bones. Why the hell would anyone leave a dead zombie in their cell. At best, it’s disgusting. It has to smell. At worst, they are providing their prisoner with a potential weapon. There’s really no upside to leaving zombie bodies laying around like that.
The rescue crew eventually finds Glenn and Maggie. Glenn makes the dubious decision to let Daryl know that his brother resides in Woodbury. That may be info that could have waited until after they safely returned to the prison. Daryl starts to freak out, but Rick reigns him in.
The Governor rallies the troops to hunt down the “terrorists” in Woodbury. Andrea insists she has a “hell of a lot of experience” although I’m not sure that’s true. Sure, Shane trained her to shoot. And she survived in the wilderness for a while. But does that qualify as experience when it comes to protecting a town? I don’t know. The Gov sends her off to check on the citizens against her protests that she is more valuable than that.
A shoot-out in the streets follows. Andrea tells the Governor that she spotted them and the Gov looks like he’s going to lose his shit. Andrea then describes Oscar who she doesn’t know. The Gov seems relieved although he actually has no way of knowing who Andrea does or does not know.
In the midst of all the gundfire and smoke, suddenly not-so-sane-again Rick imagines he sees Shane shooting his way through the crowd. This hallucination doesn’t really make any sense at all from a storytelling perspective. It’s just fan service because apparently Jon Bernthal was free that day.
Fake Shane shoots Oscar because there is a new token black guy on the show now. You knew Oscar’s days were numbered when he went off on a rescue mission with the three most popular characters on the show. He was a red shirt on an away mission with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I can’t wait for Glenn’s monologue about how important Oscar was to the group.
Speaking of Tyreese, his group made their way into the prison where they were attacked by zombies on the boiler room set. The show seems to really like filming zombie attacks there. Since Rick is away, Carl saves the day. But being the little psycho/bad ass that he is, he does two things. 1. He insists that the group kill their infected. 2. He locks them in a cell away from the rest of them.
Meanwhile, Michonne has split off from the rescue crew. In the comic book, she had every motivation to want revenge on the Governor. In the comic, he did horrible things to her. But the TV show went out of their way to make sure we knew that the Governor had not had his way with Maggie, much less Michonne. So I had to ask myself why Michonne was so hell-bent on revenge.
Eventually, I remembered that the Gov had ordered his men to kill her. Which, I guess is as good a reason as any to set about taking revenge. But it’s a hell of a lot less compelling than what happened in the comic. In reality, Michonne stayed behind because that’s what happened in the comic. It didn’t make nearly as much sense here.
Michonne finds the Governor’s room full of zombie heads and eventually unmasks Penny. Just as she is about to put Penny down, the Governor walks in. He begs Michonne not to hurt her. Michonne actually reasons with him for a minute, but ultimately decides to kill the zombie child.
The Governor loses it and a fight breaks out. Glass tanks are shattered and zombie heads are rolling on the floor. Michonne stabs the Governor in the eye with a shard of glass which is a hell of a lot less than what she did to him in the comic. Before she can finish him, Andrea interrupts.
The two have a Mexican stand-off despite the fact that Andrea is armed with a gun and Michonne is carrying a sword. Michonne doesn’t bother explaining anything because she never does. Instead, she walks away silently. Andrea sees the heads, the dead zombie child, and the Governor’s missing eye and somehow still doesn’t put the pieces together that this guy is a psycho.
The show ends with a meeting of Woodbury in the after-math of the “terrorist attack”. It’s actually a pretty neat scene which plays up on our post-9/11 paranoia. The Gov gets his peeps riled up with fear of “the other”. And he pins his failures on a convenient scape goat, Merle Dixon. He trots Daryl out as proof of Merle’s betrayal. At long last, we get to see the Dixon brothers face to face.
The crowd calls for their heads and Andrea just sits there because that is what she does. Dear Walking Dead, please kill Andrea. She is worthless.
Last season, the mid-season finale brought an end to the long-running mystery of what happened to Sophia. This episode didn’t have any events quite that significant. But it did move quickly and set up the conflicts for the last half of the season. All in all, it was about as successful as I can expect The Walking Dead to be.
