Who whacked the live guy from the van?
Did anyone else think that the van guy looked kind of small and skinny? Maybe a woman or a kid?
Yes, I was pretty sure it was a woman.
Nobody, he ran off and got in the truck with the Governor and the surviving attackers.
Or take cover.
Was he the same guy firing through the fence?
I’m gonna watch it again…
Are we supposed to view the prison attack as an well thought out attempt to destroy or weaken the protagonists or as an ineffective act of revenge by a deranged man, that doesn’t end in disaster only by dumb luck? I can buy the latter, the former, not so much.
After the raid on the town, there are maybe 10 Woodbury militia left. Not enough to both stand guard and go fight our protagonists, who had 10 combatants (discounting Beth and the woman in the new group). The prison may as well be a fort: thick walls, strong doors, fireproof, surrounded by clear land, and lots of cover for defenders. Lacking heavy weapons to breach the walls, 5 guys could hold off every person in Woodbury until they gave up and went home.
So the writers use a string of dubious developments and a heaping dose of lucky timing to give us a big, splashy gunfight. Rick scares off the new guys by yelling ambiguously at a hallucination. Apparently no one asked for clarification or tried to talk them into staying. Axel doesn’t know how to work a gun. Rick wanders around outside. Glenn goes off in a huff. We’re now down to four people who can shoot. Since Herschel is out in a field instead of sitting in a window with a rifle, more like 3.5. Then everybody stands around outside for no good reason.
Haven’t read the thread yet, but I just wanted to post something quick. Did anybody get the impression that the person who drove the zombie bomb van was a woman? If its a man, it may not matter as a character on almost any show being a man is the default, so if its a woman like I believe, there must be some point to it. The only one I can imagine is Andrea. Looks like she turned to the dark side
I was going to say this. It’s not clear to me what the Governor’s goal was. If it was to permanently kill off the prison group, then it was a terrible plan. If it was just to cause havoc for a short time, regardless of the outcome, then, okay, but why?
It’s entirely possible the Governor did some scouting first and would not have attacked had he seen things going better for the prison folk. Yes, he got lucky in that the prison was the weakest it could be, but I think the group got lucky that Rick was outside and Daryl wasn’t back yet – it made Axel appear to be the leader, so he was the one that was taken out.
I got the feeling it was a woman too. But, it wasn’t Andrea. She was talking to nerdy scientist and wondering where the guv was. She suspected that he was going to the prison to exact revenge, but certainly didn’t go with them.
The previews for next week show that Andrea doesn’t know about the attack on the prison as well.
Agree, and I’d also note that making your antagonist a Generic Mad Leader is a great out for hack writers, you can write any course of action for him, and it’s all plausible because he’s just that nuts.
It can’t be Andrea, she was looking for the Governor in Woodbury after the Governor’s raiding party had left.
Weak episode, I would love for them to kill off all the characters and reboot without using anything from the comic series.
Interesting. Rick said that he knew he was hallucinating, but followed his vision outside. There had to be a reason, right? It probably did save his life.
Of course, if Rick actually had been shot they might get some competent leadership instead of this nutjob.
Rick is indeed riding the short bus to crazy town. Thing is, we can see that in any genre - I watch Walking Dead specifically for post-zombocalypse survival stories. I want to see some MacGuyvery cleverness, not just total social and psychological disintegration.
At this point, I’d even invite the kid taking lead.
Rick and Herschel were both outside and not far from the Governor’s truck, and Axel and Carol were also both outside. In a situation where civilization has fallen and there are very few motors and other gizmos running on a continuous basis, it’s pretty silly to think you could sneak up on people in a truck. (I already deleted the episode or I’d try to identify the truck the Governor was next to, but it was a beat up old pickup or SUV and surely wasn’t quiet.)
I think this episode had too much teleporting. The Governor’s group of attackers teleported into their attacking positions and Tyreese’s group teleported out of the prison. Lazy writing.
Maybe van lady is the Gov’s assistant/ex-girlfriend. She disappeared a couple of episodes into the season, maybe she’s found a way to get her old job back.
What in the show’s dialogue/story indicated that this is a plausible motivation for Maggie? Maybe there was something and I missed it.
This whole storyline makes me roll my eyes pretty hard.
First, imagine a woman in present day Rwanda or some other hellhole in the real world being captured by the enemy. She could reasonably expect to be raped, probably gangraped or raped multiple times, possibly tortured, killed and made to suffer all sorts of horrible things. If she got off with what Maggie had to do, she’d think it was the luckiest day of her life.
It’s only our delicate western sensibilities combined with an extremely sexist bent that makes it apparently seem so horrifying and traumatizing to the people here. I say sexist because Glen underwent actual, horrible torture. He was severely beaten for hours, and then left to bek illed by a zombie - eaten alive. And yet what did you see in the threads after that episode? “Oh poor Maggie”, as if men are expected to undergo horrible experiences and it’s no big deal but if a woman experiences a moderately unpleasant one it’s deserving of far more sympathy.
But the reality is that their world - these are people who have been hardened by a year of surviving in a horrible world - is a lot closer to the the Rwanda example I mentioned above than a first world country. Maggie should be battle hardened to the point where what happened to her should be a relief, rather than a trauma, because you’d expect so much worse.
It seems to me that they want to convey that she’s traumatized, but they didn’t have the balls (or thought the audience was too delicate) to show or imply that she was raped or even violently gang raped. So they’re treating what she actually did go through, which was skeevy but entirely minor in the context of her world, as if she were raped. So the audience sympathy, and the degree to which the character is shown to be traumatized, is way out of proportion here, which I guess is what’s confusing me.
You are watching the wrong show. Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any shows along the lines of what you want.
If the show spins this as some kind of mystical intervention to spare Rick’s life, that would be the point of no return for me watching TWD.
There’s probably a snappy term for the phenomenon where most every television show, as the show enters its middle and later seasons, features the same sorts of stories and cliches and generally drifts toward a universal bland sameness, regardless of whatever genre or premise supposedly underlies the show.
Makes sense; the Governor does seem to be especially concerned with his underlings’ loyalty and willingness to die for the cause of late, volunteering to drive the zombie paddywagon into gunfire is a stand-out way to prove one’s loyalty and resolve.
I don’t really think you have any idea what you’re talking about. People living in “hellholes” do suffer from extensive psychological trauma from the horrors they face. And it does twist people. Yes, other people also suffer from even worse treatment. That really doesn’t make everything better.
You’re joking, right? Glen is clearly also suffering from major trauma.
People who are “hardened” aren’t okay. They’re majorly fucked in the head.
Hmm, maybe Carl will get a psychotic little playmate. 
It’s okay to show children being killed on camera as long as it’s another child killing them, right?