I don’t think it was a casting issue as much as it was a writing issue. A great actor will still be a weak character if the character is poorly written, and I think that’s the real problem with TV Andrea (and Lori, and Michonne to a degree). They’re not written well, and they don’t behave consistently. I don’t think it’s fair to rag on the actors for that, seeing what they were ostensibly given to work with.
I think that was his point, there was a sound of a casing hitting the floor.
Yeah, but going from just pure memory, since I didn’t DVR it, I remember it being a semi-auto - which would make sense as a weapon to bring to a seriously outnumbered siege on a fortification, instead of a revolver.
That would be about the only thing in this episode that made sense… I could list all my gripes, but everyone above has them pretty well covered. I’m pretty sure this was the* series* finale, for me.
A terribly depressing S3 finale and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean it really sucked completely. I don’t want to beat dead horses by repeating everything that has been said already here are some of the reasons I felt is sucked completely:
1.) Expectations - I know a lot of people didn’t like much of S2 in the way it just dragged and dragged at Hershel’s farm. Yes, at points last year I got annoyed at the search for Sophia and the apparently listless plot. I felt though that the events at the barn (mid-season finale) and the death of Shane were really big pay offs. In hindsight, the season was not so much about the search for Sophia but about two opposing philosophies for survival (Rick vs. Shane) and how Shane’s internal demons and the pressure of survival were destroying him and the connections to those he loved (Rick and Lori). This season had no equivalent pay-off in either dramatic resolution or character development/arc.
2.) No resolution - Um… so The Governor went (more) nuts and killed everyone but his two henchmen? How convenient for Rick & Company that by his own hand The Governor lost the battle they’ve been building up to all season long. Talk about anti-climatic.
3.) No Meat - Where there could have been a strong difference between Rick and The Governor, there really wasn’t one besides the cartoonish “The Governor is a bad guy” story. They didn’t fully commit to showing how they differed and they didn’t fully commit to showing how they really were just degrees of the same person. It was milquetoast. They just existed, Character A and Character B. They didn’t explore the potential of a Woodbury environment vs. surviving on your own or in small groups. How does a person who was removed from society react when society no longer exists? We don’t know because that wasn’t explored at all with the prisoners. Andrea may not have wanted anyone to die but seriously her character became just a shell to drive plot/decisions - they didn’t honestly explore her predicament and feelings. They didn’t have Maggie get raped but they played the rest of the season as if she experienced “the worst traumatic rape ever!” then suddenly it was all okay. They did nothing with Rick’s slipping grip on reality. A fan favorite character resurfaces and… what happened again? Oh, right nothing. No lesson was learned from Morgan’s pain and loss and isolation. The entire season was just one big dumb set-up to a battle between two groups that fell flat and didn’t cost Rick & Company anything.
On the positive side, the one character (after S2) that I hated the most was Carl and really we see in S3 that he has grown dramatically. He carries the guilt of his “childlike” actions (Stay in the house Carl!) and their repercussions. He is hardened by the life and losses dealt to him. He is decisive. He is the embodiment of a new type of morality in a Walker World. He was to me, possibly the most interesting character in S3 and the least explored.
:smack: Ahh, got it. So I backed the Tivo up a few minutes and listened to it again. Yep, definitely a sound of something metallic hitting the floor after the gunshot. It could have been a shell casing, but it sounded too heavy. I wonder if it was supposed to be the gun hitting the floor.
And that’s the kind of attitude that will end with your corpse walking the Earth.
It was Rick’s revolver. And I also heard the shell casing and though to myself it was a screw-up as a revolver does not eject shells.
And yes, Rick should have dumped the revolver a long time ago in favor of a semi-auto but you know… why start making logical decisions now?
I can see that, sure. But Herschel’s explanation of what happened that he delivered to Rick seemed to be at odds with what we saw. Again, the viewer is left to wonder if the ambiguity is deliberate, or if the shooting was ineptly blocked and accidentally ended up looking justified.
To the list of “Things that should be highly dangerous but aren’t”, underneath “Zombie” we can add “The Governor” and “30-odd militiamen”. This made for a finale that was simply robbed of any real impact. “Boring”, as said upthread, is probably the most apt descriptor.
That was my point, though re-reading it it could be taken as complaining that there was not a casing-sound when there should have been, rather than my intent, which was that there was one when there should not have been. I rewound it a few times and would swear I heard a shell casing hit the floor, then the revolver hit the floor. If I’m right, then the show seriously needs to fire their sound people. This season alone, we had Michonne reacting to obvious zombie sounds like they were from a little girl; Andrea supposedly being tracked from the noise of stepping on glass that was, in fact, inaudible; and now the phantom shell casing.
It was definitely Rick’s revolver, he was all set to shoot her himself, she asked to do it, and he gave her the revolver. The last shot of Andrea has her holding it.
As for why Rick keeps lugging around that revolver, I have no idea.
It ain’t go to jam at an Awkward Moment. 
I think the ping noise was the latch on the door.
I gotta agree here - but when you pair that with how many fatalities Rick’s group delivered (none?), it’s kind of even. How it was set up, the Governor’s group could have been slaughtered easily (if not all of them, at least one group), they all walked down the narrowly confined space. A grenade or two would have decimated the group.
I think you are right here - I didn’t rewind the show, but both my wife and I noticed this.
It makes no sense to me. I mean, at least his kid has the sense to equip his hand gun with a suppressor - Rick can’t do that with his revolver.
Screw it, I think it was Michonne - she had a gun hidden on her and blew Andrea away after whispering something cutting into her ear for sleeping with the Governor… 
Ah.
Modern semiautos are equally reliable, if not more so (by virtue of being less complex, check out a revolver clockwork sometime). The Beretta M9, for instance:
I’ll have to watch it again.
Yeah, oddly restrained on both parts. No one from Rick’s group is even wounded, and they seemed to inflict between zero and four casualties. The only real violence is carried out by the designated Crazed Supervillain, complete with Inexplicably Loyal Henchmen.
This stuff is crucial. I can and do mock things like shell casings ejected from a revolver, or the wheels on Merle’s car suddenly changing, or the laughable notion of opening handcuffs with pliers. But the real failings of the season are pointed out by MeanJoe above. I’d distill it down to a persistent failure to have the events of the show mean anything.
When I first saw the grenade hit the prison floor, I thought “oh hey, they’re finally going to show a clever solution to the imbalance of numbers in this fight” - the prisoners had access to prison riot gear which included teargas and gas masks. So instantly I thought “draw them in to an enclosed area, drop your teargas, slaughter them while you move in with gas masks on, clever” and it turns out nope, it was just a random A-team ambush plan where no one was actually going to die. I don’t get it - why would it be bad to show our group outsmarting and outfighting the other group? Is there just no one on the writing staff that could come up with something obvious like that?
If they were trying to show Carl being merciless or psychopathic, they did an awful job. Why not just have Hershel yell at the kid “drop your weapon!”, and the kid actually drops his weapon, and Carl shoots him anyway? This show seems to have a lot of moments where it seems like it wants to imply a character did something much worse, and that other characters react as if they did that worse thing, but doesn’t have the balls to actually show them doing it. Another example is the Maggie capturing thing. It’s like they wanted to act as if she were raped by the governor, and have everyone react as if that happened, but didn’t have the guts to go with it. Here they wanted to make Carl seem like he was shooting a defenseless guy, but didn’t actually have the guts to show it that way.
Because the way it actually played it - the kid was slowly inching his shotgun to be pointed further towards Carl. He was glancing back and forth sizing up his chances. You could argue they could’ve yelled “DROP IT NOW”, but just shooting a guy that seems to be thinking he can get the drop on you is not at all psychopathic.
I’ve been thinking about the whole outcome of the ambush being an example of this, as you alluded to in your comment. In fact, their reaction afterwards, of “We did it” is very much like that. Did it? Did what? Nothing remotely damaging happened to the Governor’s crew, except that maybe they were a little scared, and as a fighting force, were momentarily routed (in the sense of being sent into a disorderly retreat).
The shows creators seemed to struggle with the idea of showing Rick’s group as a superior tactical/battle hardened group, without actually having them devastate the Governors group. I can only guess that they felt this would challenge the morality of Rick’s group in some fashion - perhaps in fact in the same fashion that we are supposed to see Carl’s morality as questionable and dark when he shot an armed attacker after giving him one warning to disarm.
It just becomes unrealistic if you have to keep your characters free from doing anything remotely unpalatable, while also wanting to set up conflicts with other human groups. It’s like retroactively making Greedo fire first.
And yet Carl had to lie about the reason he shot the kid.
He didn’t say “I don’t think he was about to surrender”
The Governor will be a regular next season.
http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/04/01/walking-dead-governor-season-4-david-morrissey/
“Pulling a Sylar”. Heh, that’s exactly what I was thinking at the end of the episode.
Because in Carl’s mind - he was not going to - and he was also a danger.
Carl also wanted to be back with the group AT the prison - he wanted to be part of that fight - so, this was his way of contributing - little did he know he would claim the only casualty.
As for the ‘dropped casing’ sound - I thought it was Michone’s sword or other item when the moment happened - hard enough to believe she actually emoted on screen, they couldnt show her actually reacting.
God. :smack:
He has nothing left. It is him, a truck, and two henchmen. Seriously, that is where an entire season’s build-up of the big battle between Rick and The Governor ended. The Governor lost his shit and personally killed his own militia which was the only power he had to threaten Rick’s group with. Will Season 4 now be him trying to recruit more people to join him so we can have a S4 finale where he attacks the prison with a militia?
I was so disappointed in last night’s finale and the season over all but you know… sometimes good shows have bad seasons so there is always next season to look forward to. Now, if it is just more of The Governor and Rick I might just be done with the show.
Drat.