I thought he was when this began; He may try to be again, depending upon how things go. It will be interesting to find what he says if he learns that the Gov wants to make a deal about M.
If so, he would have had to know that Rick’s group would free Merle and Daryl when he pit the two of them together, and that Merle would be taken in by the prison group.
Merle didn’t really appear to be trying to get his brother to return to the group when the two of them were out on their own.
The writing on this show is such that you may nevertheless be correct, but it wouldn’t be consistent with a lot of the stuff they’ve shown us, and it would call for some 7 dimensional chess type foresight on the governor’s part.
Not just the governor but also by Merle. He’s not that smart, if he was a spy he wouldn’t have acted like such an asshole before him and Daryl went off.
This was subtly explained early in the season. Ever notice how when the Governor gave Andrea booze that she’d always take a single sip and then leave the rest? That was telling us that she has a low alcohol tolerance. So he probably just made her drink the whole glass and she passed out.
If they had the forethought to scavenge some Sta-Bil, and keep moisture out of it, the gas will stay usable for two or three years. This all falls under the heading of “What do they do all day?” We get 10 minutes of melodrama for every 10 seconds of survival.
I watch it on potential, in the hope that it will improve. It’s the DeMarcus Cousins of cable dramas: it could dominate if it got it’s shit together and worked hard.
It’s still the most watched show on tv isn’t it? I doubt they feel any pressing need to improve.
This was a really weird mishmash of bad and good. There was so much ridiculous contrivance surrounding the Governor hunting Andrea, and yet the actual scenes in the building were excellent and tense. (Well, except for the conveniently silent and still zombies in the stairwell. Randomly stealthy zombies are such crutch in this show it’s become a cliche.)
He definitely turned off the engine. It was part of what they used to ratchet up the tension.
I like Tyrese, and I hope he gets to do some cool stuff. It seems like when he was pretty much on board with Woodbury, he felt he could/should protest “his” town using execrable warfare techniques and spoke out. Now that he’s suspicious of the whole setup, he’s wisely acting much more compliant. That felt like good writing. (Maybe it was an accident. :p)
I concur 100%.
It annoyed me that Andrea was so easy to catch, and made such a dumb decision to go in the building. I enjoyed imagining an alternate reality where she passed by the building and kept moving across country, keeping to cover wherever possible. And meanwhile Phil acted just as he did in the actual episode, being all scary and weird, thinking he was playing a cat and mouse game, when in reality he was alone in a building with some zombies. 
It wasn’t a Kia sedan. She was clueless.
When the scene cut to her stumbling through the forest again, I almost literally jumped off the couch screaming, “Take the huge goddamned fully-stocked badass zombie-smashing 4WD TRUCK, you moron!”
But nooooo…
Before he is tokenly killed off. 
Poor Tyreese just wants people to be reasonable; instead he’s fled from one deranged leader right to another. Worse the luck!
Ha, that’d be the best scene of the season, easily! If Dan Harmon ever migrated over the TWD writing team, we might get something like that.
You’re right, it’s a massive hit for a cable show. Then again, they’re about to start season 4 with their third showrunner; normally that kind of success goes hand-in-hand with stability at the top. Clearly, AMC has had issues with the way the show has been produced, or running TWD is such a godawful job for some reason that people are eager to quit. It’s quite strange.
Maybe the new guy will move away from horror cliches and into some tighter plotting.
Even if she couldn’t steal it, disabling it, or just sticking her head in to check for firearms (99% chance there’s an AR-variant in there) would have been a smart play; but then again, Andrea’s not a smart or level-headed character. Fleeing into the woods was understandable for a character with such poor judgement.
Perhaps his hand dandy medical/torture kit includes sedatives as well as a speculum.
I would love for this show to have exemplary writing but perhaps we’re expecting too much. First and foremost it’s horror, a genre not noted for a surplus of exceptional writing. The writers (and multiple writers is usually a problem in itself) have to cater to the gorehounds and to picky, detail-obsessed people like us. There are also time restraints (only 16 episodes of some 40-odd minutes each) and I’m sure there’s no small amount of meddling from the suits.
Frankly I’m surprised the show is as good as it is. 
As for the Governor/Andrea showdown, what’s the big deal? Yes, it was dumb of Andrea to go into that building but then we we wouldn’t have had that set piece. The Governor should have gotten away easily-there were what, less than a dozen zombies? He shot most of them and could easily have escaped from or killed the rest. He likely had the truck keys on him so Andrea couldn’t take it. She didn’t stop to rummage through the truck or disable it because she wanted to get the heck out of there. He knew where she was going as well as her likely route so it wasn’t that difficult to surprise her. He knew in advance what he wanted to do to her if he caught her so he likely had drugs stashed in the truck. Catch her, knock her out, cover her body with a tarp, drive into Woodbury. There ya go.
As for the gasoline/batteries issue, the better quality batteries would be good for a few years wouldn’t they? Milton, being the resident brainiac, would probably know how to keep the gasoline usable which is why the Governor keeps him around.
Mad Mad season 5 has 8 credited writers.
Breaking Bad season 4 has 7.
I’m not holding out for exemplary writing, I’ll settle for good writing, hell, Sons of Anarchy-level writing, which is all just setup, payoffs, reveals, and misdirects. I’m not talking about nitpicks, but rather basic elements like theme, every scene having a purpose, the characters having agency and making real choices, and internal consistency. Some stability in the showrunner position would certainly help; God only knows what a shambles Mad Men and Breaking Bad would be if Matthew Weiner and Vince Gilligan were fired after season 1 and a revolving-door approach was established. Probably as bad as this season of Community has been post Dan Harmon.
Writing purely to advance the story to a set piece is very often bad writing; it’s a major problem with Hollywood action films right now.
Batteries have a useful life of five or more years; I meant that the ones in cars sitting idle for a year would no longer have a charge. Certainly, Woodbury would be capable of storing gasoline, or better yet diesel, for long-term use. All it takes is waterproof tanks and Sta-Bil, available at many a rural Georgia hardware store, I’m sure. No genius necessary, just foresight.
How the prison manages to keep their Hyundai, or the vehicle they gave Andrea, gassed up is more problematic. They are newly settled, and had been itinerant for a long time before that. Maybe they established a cache of stabilized fuel they could return to periodically; if not, they are out of luck. Any gasoline they can siphon now will be oxidized. Diesel lasts longer, but their dinky Hyundai won’t run on it, nor will Daryl’s chopper (wonder if Merle plans to ask for that back?).
Michone used to drive, but the two zombies in the back seat kept driving her nuts with their endless “I bit you last” games so it was easier to walk.
If you watch with subtitles on, it says (engine turns off).
Nobody would be either walking or riding cars at this point. Everyone would be on a god damn bike. Cept maybe Michonne while she had her pets.
Neither one should be an issue only a year or so into the 'pockylips. About now, they should be filtering gas to remove accumulated water and crud, and while it may not be good for race day, it should be good enough for normal use. There should be tons of methanol around, in bulk and in every auto parts store, to stabilize and recondition bad gas. Five years in… different story, but there should still be millions of gallons of re-refinable gas in refinery tanks, especially on the Gulf Coast. They could even get one oil field, connected to one refinery, working again without too much trouble. Crude oil distillation needs only power - it’s only the unnecessary catalytic stages that need exotic chemicals.
Quality batteries should last for years as well. And somewhere, there’s a battery factory with unfilled shells (case/plates) that should last decades if electrolyte hasn’t been added.
It’s all such contrived bullshit that I will have to be really, really convinced to pick the show up next season.
It was a decent episode, definitely better than most of Season 3.5. I have a lot of the same nitpicks about nonsensical character actions, but it’s become so prevalent in the series that I’ve come to expect it.
I didn’t like the ending with the long cut to Andrea in the torture chair. We all knew that was going to happen, but they acted like it was this big, shocking reveal. It was silly.
I liked how Milton grew a pair, but I fear that he’s not long for the world, since the Governor knows that Milton is no longer his man. Milton knows he won’t survive outside of Woodbury, so I wonder if he’s planning some final act to deal a blow to the Governor while simultaneously preventing himself from being tortured.
I agree that the music at the end of the episode is getting annoying. Especially considering how it’s a blatant move to pad the “soundtrack.” The level to which they’re monetizing this series is truly incredible, and I feel like it’s really having a negative impact on the show. It’s not enough that they’ve got a Dr. Pepper sponsored contest and a gillion video games and whatnot. Now they’re blatantly letting the marketing drive the content. I think they think it’s ok because, unlike Breaking Bad, Walking Dead is more of a popular moneymaker than a legitimate masterpiece. Studios can release any half-assed, zombie-related entertainment and people will eat it up.
I wonder if that’s playing into the high writer turnover. I would have thought that writers on successful shows would be snatched up by other programs, but if they’re getting fired instead, I wonder if that’s an intentional cost-saving effort. Still, I really don’t have a problem with this show simply remaining a trashy popular moneymaker, as long as it funds more interesting AMC programs, like Breaking Bad; like the Cars series does for Pixar.
The Telltale Walking Dead game is by far the best thing ever to come out of the entire series (including the comics). I can’t wait for the next season.