I disagree. Those soldiers were a threat only to the Governor’s authority, and the one injured soldier he killed wasn’t even a threat to that. Having able-bodied men around – men who are familiar with discipline (and weapons) and who can be presumed to want to be helpful – that’s a benefit, not a liability. Hershel would have welcomed them.
Killing the soldiers is enough to convince me he’s evil. I don’t need anything else.
[quote=“wheresmymind, post:78, topic:640741”]
There’s only a few more episodes before the season break, and my guess is that what exactly makes the Governor “bad” will be revealed in a cliffhanger at the end. So far I know he’s supposed to be bad because of how he’s portrayed, and because people familiar with the comics (many on this message board) have basically said “he’s a baddie,” but I’m waiting for the terrible secret that they seem to be building up to./QUOTE]
I sure fucking HOPE that they don’t go the way of the comic with the Governor. They’ve already shied FAR from that and softened the hell out of him from the comic book. I won’t watch that with real actors - I could barely stand that segment of the comic.
Seriously. When I initially heard Michonne was coming into the series, that was the first thing I thought of. How brutal the Governor had been in the comic. I can only hope that they don’t keep that part of the comic. I too wouldn’t be able to watch it. Just too disturbing.
Did you miss the episode where the Governor ruthlessly murdered those National Guardsman? I know you might counter with “What about Rick locking Andrew out to be eaten by zombies?” Well let’s compare them.
Evil Rick: Tomas has just attempted to murder Rick twice. First by taking a swipe at him with a bladed weapon and then by throwing a zombie on him. Rick thinks things over and kills Tomas. Andrew attack on Rick fails and he is chased and locked out of the prison to be devoured by zombies. Dick move on Rick’s part? Maybe. But most of us don’t take kindly to attempted murder and it was a split second decision made in the heat of the moment. Meanwhile Daryl and T-Dog have two prisoners. What does Rick do with them? He honors the original deal he made with the prisoners. He doesn’t murder them. He doesn’t steal their half of the food. He honors his deal.
Evil Governor: Governor finds a crashed helicopter and learns from the pilot(?) the location of a group of National Guardsman. These guardsman are fleeing what was once a safe haven, have no idea about the existence of the Governor’s little town and have not demonstrated in any way that they are a threat. The Governor approaches the guardsman under a flag of truce and proceeds to murder them to the last man. This isn’t a heat of the moment decision. This was a decision made with malice and forethought.
I don’t see how anyone watching the show could look at the Governor and think “yeah, he’s a good guy.” He’s not. He’s a murderer and a thief.
Disagree, and pretty strongly. This isn’t a first-world question, they’re back in the stone age. You yourself admit they could be a threat to the authority structure. That’s a threat, period.
What’s to stop the armed soldiers from coming in and having a field day with the women while the men lay in pools of their own blood? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Nope, didn’t miss it at all. I even commented upthread how it was in keeping with the very philosopy I espoused in an earlier thread. All-male groups have to go. Mixed-gender groups can be assimilated.
We have radically different ideas of what constitutes a “good guy” then.
I wouldn’t call the Governor a “good guy,” but I have to say I feel like they haven’t yet delivered on the incredible tension built up in his introductory episode. Not by a long shot. The closest thing is the obvious pleasure he took in bashing one soldier’s head in, but while that whole encounter was pretty evil by civilized standards, it doesn’t live up to the menace surrounding the guy when you account for apocalypse standards (still evil, I think, but can be rationalized at least).
And if I only knew what Andrea knew, sure as hell I’d be staying! The Zombiseum is weirdly risky and off-putting, but again, balanced against all the benefits of the town, and sold as a way to blow off stress and help people cope, it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me.
I know the Gov’s supposed to be a big bad, but it’s more interesting if he isn’t psychotic evil, but someone who in his mind means well, and is taking some radical actions to protect what has been so hard won.
(Perhaps it’s relevant that last season, when it came out that Randall might know where the farm was, I was immediately like, “Sorry, you have to die, can’t take the risk. We’ll try to make it painless.” I guess I go tribal a lot quicker than some people.)
I don’t watch the Talking Dead, but I think its role should be “oh hey, did you notice the Sophie on the wall of the pre-school?” or “My cousin’s uncle’s busboy played a zombie in this scene. It was pretty cool.”
If you have to use the hour-long talk show to explain what happened on screen, you failed at adequately portraying the scene in the show.
Also, mark me as another one who doesn’t see the Governor as a bad guy. I’m sure, eventually, something will be shown that’s REALLY evil. But I don’t think it’s happened yet. Not when you filter it through Zombie Apocalypse lenses and especially when you compare it to actions Rick & Co have taken as the “good guys.”
Agreed, definitely. I’m also hoping for a little bit of spectrum on Merle, too, which they’ve hinted at. I don’t have much patience for the “just plain evil,” or “just plain crazy” character type.
The graves they were using didn’t have any bodies, they are just markers. We saw T-Dogg die but not Carol. I think she is still alive but the group assumes otherwise.
I think the Governor is clearly unhinged. The notebook, watching Zombie heads like TVs and his daughter make it clear. He murdered the chopper pilot, slaughtered the National Guard men and lied to his people about it. He may not be a mustache twirling villain (yet) but he is definitely not a nice guy.
I think killing the National Guard Guys instead of asking them to join up was pretty tacky.
I tend to agree. I don’t usually watch Talking Dead, and I found that scene hard to decipher without the explanation after the fact. I really just thought Rick had gone loco.
That’s what went on in the Rick scene? OK, then. Guess it’s time to turn the TV brightness way up.
Was the gladiator fight supposed to be “for real” like a boxing match or playacting like professional wrestling? Logically, it should be the latter, but I assume it’s the former. IRL, there’s no chance in hell they would let the only combatants in town have scheduled bare-knuckle brawls. What happens if someone breaks his shooting hand, or throws his back out, or dies of head trauma? Did zombies eat all the boxing gloves in Georgia? Yeah, yeah, I know…it looks cooler this way and nobody has realistic fistfights on TV, so who cares.
Merle has an advantage because he only has to buy one.
The Governor mentioned to Andrea that it was all staged. That the zombies had all their teeth pulled out. But I’m not sure if it extended to staging the entire fight, as to who won or lost.
But it’s a threat only to the Governor, and it’s only a possible threat at that. And they’re not back in the stone age. We’ve seen everyone find food, shelter, gas, weapons. This isn’t the world of The Road, where behavior like the Governor’s would be expected.
The Governor wasn’t thinking of protecting his people when he shot those guys.
Well, if a zombie ever eats Glenn, it’ll be empty again in an hour.
It obviously wasn’t a very “nice” thing to do, and I certainly consider the Governor to be a somewhat flawed character, but I don’t think it makes him a monster. I think the National Guard unit did represent a threat, I can’t imagine a group of 10-15 soldiers assimilating easily into a civilian-run society. It’s easy to imagine a half-dozen scenarios in which they could severely disrupt the society the Governor built. Maybe he is selfish and just wants power for himself. But if his greed and quest for power provides a safe, happy place for 70 people to live, well that’s why people give power to leaders in the first place. He’s got a lot of responsibility, and apparently he occasionally makes some pretty hard decisions. Just like the leaders of our pre-apocalypse nations do.
So we have two leaders, Rick and the Gov. Rick is clearly the moral hero of the series, yet as time goes on we see him succumb to the realities of their situation: compare his reaction to Randal in season 2 with his reaction to the prisoners in this season. We’ve watched him go from being essentially the elected leader of a fairly democratic group in season 1 to a self-appointed dictator in season 3. We’ve seen him kill to protect the group. All things that would have been unthinkable to him before his coma. As the series goes on, he seems to be replacing his previous idea of morality with one more compatible with the realities of the walker-infested world.
We’re shown the Governor’s bad side right off the bat when he kills the National Guardsmen, but as we discover more about him it seems he genuinely cares about the well-being of his people, his past has been just as traumatic as Rick’s or anyone else, and he even seems to be trying to develop a cure. As far as we know, he’s practically saving mankind. It seems to me that Rick is on a downward slope, that the Governor has already slid down.
Unless there is one hell of a horrific revelation about the Governor than we’ve already seen, I don’t see him as too cartoonishly evil to tolerate.
Yes, it was pretty cold-blooded that he killed the National Guard guys like that, but he would have been taking a hell of a chance trying to integrate a squad of well-armed and trained guys who were an integrated team into his small community, or even letting them wander around nearby, getting more and more desperate for exactly what his community has to offer: supplies, shelter, and women.
That’s to say nothing of the very high value of the assets the NG guys had. Armored vehicles with heavy weapons means you are ready when somebody else comes along with armored vehicles and heavy weapons, instead of being at their mercy.
Is he a good man? Probably not. And he may prove crazy enough to not be the man his little town needs, but that has yet to be shown in the show.
Those zombies Michonne had were said to be starving because they couldn’t eat.
Hmmm, I wonder just what, or whom, the Governor’s daughter is eating?