Rick was supposed to show up with Michonne if he decided to take the governors offer. There was no point in going just to tell him to fuck off obviously. Governor had a trap set up to slaughter everyone.
I was touched, as well. Great scene!
Oh, yeah, forgot about that, another bad prop shot. This episode was notable in that the writing was stronger than usual, and the production design was worse than usual.
It’s fine that Rick is a bad leader, lots of people would be if pressed into a leadership role by circumstance. What irks me to no end is that the people Rick is leading don’t call him out on his incredibly poor judgement, which puts them all in danger. Even worse, they know he’s cracking up mentally and hallucinating; any sensible person would stage an intervention of sorts and put Daryl in charge for a while.
That was my impression, that their not showing up would convey the “no deal” idea without putting them in danger.
Yep, Merle’s a belligerent, asshole, outsider until the end. Killing for other people was all he was good for, so he went out a-killin’.
It is a staple of the genre.
I’m really going to miss Merle. He was a great character!
In my opinion, there’s no way the Governor could beat Merle in a straight-up fight.
(Merle had been worked over a bit by a couple of minions before going head-to-head with the big Kahuna.) Then again, straight-up fights aren’t the Governor’s style!
By the way, how many people did Merle and his merry band of walkers dispatch?
Really solid & intense episode. It was long in the making but it paid off.
It does appear that for someone to do a right thing people need to talk. To try and convince the other no matter how, at moments, it all sounded cliché. There were several dialog exchanges but the most impressive one was the last (human) exchange between Merle and Daryl about what it means to have balls and where individuality ends and concern for group overrides it. I think Merle realized at one point what a waste of life is his idea of living especially when he heard it from Michonne.
When Rick and Gov met 1st time it was agreed same place two days later. I think…
Eight.
This was a much better episode than the last few. I didn’t especially buy Merle’s attempted redemption - his character was bitter and racist and out of control right from the beginning. His self-reflection and thoughtfulness seemed pretty out of the blue and out of character.
But even that was not beyond being tolerable, since they were at least doing something.
And Michonne got more lines. Lines that made some sense! Hooray!
I thought of the posters on the SDMB during the scene of Merle hotwiring the car. They are right - the zombies in Walking Dead are nothing more than nuisances. Dispatching them is trivial, and people can do it with their hands bound and tied to a post, or when the zombies jump on them while they are laying under the dashboard of a car.
A little thing that seemed unnecessary was bringing up Daryl’s “tracking” ability. Either he knew that Merle would go to the meeting spot or he never would have found him. How would he “track” all the miles Merle covered in the car otherwise?
The key to the redemption, if that’s what it was, is Daryl. It’s fine to be a bitter, racist, violent, macho loon when that’s what a man should be, but not when the other guy you grew up with an raised hell with has straightened up and now looks at you like a wild animal. I think Merle’s observing (and remarking on) Daryl’s abandonment of the crazy, redneck, hedonistic, egoist outlook makes Merle’s decisions in the episode plausible, IMHO.
Bingo, by the standards of this show, this was masterful writing.
Pretty sure she’s had more lines the last two episodes than the 12 before that combined.
This is becoming a real problem. If the zombies are not dangerous, then the show is saying that almost all humans are monsters restrained only by government from murdering each over for no reason.
This is part of the DNA the show shares with Lost, fanciful tracking abilities used to facilitate plot conveniences. Daryl knowing that Rick was supposed to take Michonne to the same meeting place, so Merle would do the same, makes much more sense than him tracking Merle there.
Yeah, they knew exactly where he was going but they ideally had to get to him before that.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say for no reason, but I have a little list, and I’m sure that I am on other folk’s. 
Still doesn’t explain how you track someone who has been driving along roads (let alone walking along pavement). What, does Daryl have superhuman smell powers like Burton Guster?
Besides which, the show proved that if you know where someone is going, you can automatically know how to catch them between here and there (see the Governor and Andrea, last week). There is only one path people can take to cover two relatively distant points on this show.
Really liked this ep. Merle was awesome and I was really sad to see him go. Did anyone else noticed that he got Ben in the shoot out? Wonder how that’s gonna work out with the kid’s dad. My only issue with the ep was, how in the world could the guy with a knife for a hand lose in a fist fight?
Love the show… but can we all agree that Rick (Lincoln) is a VERY sub par actor?
Reedus acts circles around him. Lets kill off Rick and make Daryl (or Rick’s son depending on time acceleration) the leader please.
Uh oh…better hope there’s not a mild nuisance that somehow destroys civilization, then, they might get to you before you get to them.
He’s certainly sub-par in this particular role. “Stiff” is the word that comes to mind for me; some of that might be having to affect an American accent. Robert Taylor on Longmire (an Aussie) shows the same approach; a slow and flat delivery. I haven’t seen Andrew Lincoln in anything else, he may be better when using his natural accent.
Then again, the way the character is written does him no favors. Rick is basically a dullard, his role is to take 40 minutes of agonizing to reach a decision that anyone watching the show has been yelling at him to reach since the cold open. His love for the awful, awful Lori makes him unsympathetic, his fathering skills are questionable at best; at bottom he’s just a bland, dumb, white guy, who’s the lead character because for some reason we need a white guy to be the lead. I’m sure Bryan Cranston or Jon Hamm could make the role come alive, but it’d be an uphill climb.
Was it that guy? I thought it was the kid who’s mom didn’t want him to train with guns because he had asthma. And Merle got the shit kicked out of him before the Governor did anything, plus the guy is actually like a head taller than everyone else.
Pretty sure it was Ben. It was the person who go in front of the shot when Merle was aiming at the Guv. A quick Google search seems to support this. I didn’t watch The Talking Dead last night but people are saying that they confirmed he was dead on it?
Edit: And apparently people are saying that’s who Merle was eating? I don’t know about that and unfortunately I deleted it from DVR so I can’t go back and look
The Talking Dead listed “Ben” as one of the departed in last night’s episode.
I’d forgotten who Ben was, but he was identified by name in the In Memoriam section of Talking Dead, along with a slow motion replay of a bullet hitting him.
We never really see who Merle was eating, although I suppose someone could sort of identify him by his clothes.
IMHO, Taylor pulls off the “tortured tough guy” role MUCH better than Lincoln. The writing is much better on Longmire than TWD though, by far.
As an aside, Motorhead and Ted Nugent in one episode? SA-WEEET. Turn It Up fit that situation soooo well. 
Wow, I totally missed that. That should set up some tough decisions for Tyreese to make, because naturally Ben’s dad will be screaming for vengeance.
Agreed; Taylor’s slow, flat delivery reads as “laconic”, Lincoln’s as “kinda stupid”.
Overall, I think they’re about the same, but Longmire gives its lead character much better material to worth with than TWD does.
Hell yeah! In a perfect world, though, the Motorhead track would have been “Overkill”. That drum track alone would have pulled in every zombie in a three-mile radius.