That’s a good point, otherwise we spend a lot of time saying things like “Glenn will get better, he’s a major character” or “Carol will come back, they can’t get rid of her”.
I actually thought they were going to kill him in the last episode at the prison because the show featured him so much. I guess he just had a brief reprieve.
So…Daryl find out about Carol yet?
Yes. He and Rick were just about to tell Tyrese when the Governor showed up.
Since it’s cool to keep dumping gas on these dead bodies, I hope they explain where they get this unlimited supply of fuel.
Otherwise, good episode. You knew Hershal was going to get it as soon as he had that smirk on his face during Rick’s speach.
Also, the editors REALLY wanted to fuck with the Darrel lovers with that scene cut. I can here everyone yelling “NOOOOO” as I watched that part of the episode.
I came in here expecting to see a lot of ‘hated it’ results, but it looks like I’m the lone hater.
I found this episode to be maddeningly stupid. None of it made a damned bit of sense.
Where to start? Let’s see… If I was a crazy governor intent on saving my new Penny from the old Penny’s fate, I think I’d plan a crazy assault on an armed compound - one which any group with a lick of sense would have equipped with hardened positions, zeroed in rifles in good shooting positions, etc. Of course, the Governor may have remembered Rick’s previous strategies and decided he was too stupid to think of that. Okay, perhaps. Makes sense. But even so… That assault was idiocy and only got as far as it did because the writers forced reality through the ‘drama’ hole and simply ignored what would really happen.
But let’s say the Governor is the reincarnation of Patton and the plan is solid. Then the next thing I’d do is leave mom and the kid alone in a camp nestled in the woods - the mom who can barely handle a weapon. Then I’d make sure that mom remembers to let the small child play in a pile of filth 50 yards away. And she should pay careful attention to the impenetrable water barrier and ignore the dense, unprotected, zombie-infested forest beside her distant child. Because what could possibly go wrong? Mud zombie was just a bonus. One could have popped out of the forest at any time.
Then you’ve got another problem - you’ve got a camp full of scared civilians, plus Vin Diesel and his magic tank, and a tough Hispanic female soldier/cliche/red shirt. Most of them will be completely useless in a battle. And those people were totally unbelievable. It was unbelievable that they’d join a suicide rush on an armed prison, and it was unbelievable how they acted in the battle. I’ve seen better NPC’s in Skyrim.
That ‘assault’ on the prison was a joke. Here’s what should have happened: The governor was just about to strike his heroic captain zombie pose on top of the vehicle, when suddenly a hail of bullets cut through everyone. The end.
Okay, let’s say they wait to try to save the hostages. In that case, The governor raises his sword arm to kill Herschel, when suddenly a hail of bullets… etc.
Seriously, The Walking Dead needs to get some better combat choreographers. Every time there’s a gunbattle I just roll my eyes. It’s cartoon-level stupid. People walk slowly through an open field, apparently thinking that crouching down an extra six inches makes them invulnerable. And they turn out to be right. The battle in Woodbury and the fights leading up to it were just as bad.
Compare the action on this show to shows like Breaking Bad or Band of Brothers or other high quality TV series. Imagine how incredible this show would be if the filmmaking was up to that level of quality. But it’s not. It never makes any sense. Drywall appears to be bulletproof. In fact, I think the show’s logic is, “if the bullet can’t see you, it can’t hit you.” Battles never seem to have any coherent logic to them - there’s always just a lot of running and shooting and smoke and dramatic moments where the combat magically stops so a character can have a dramatic pause without being shot in the face. Well, usually.
It made no sense for the Governor to kill Hershel. He actually liked Hershel. And just as a pure survival tactic, let’s solve this puzzle: You, the Governor, are going to slice the head off of one of two people in front of you. You’ll only get one shot in before all hell breaks loose. Who do you pick? The ninja assassin who took out your eye, killed your child, and plans to kill you, or the kindly country doctor? Also, you might also want to consider the ramifications on unit cohesion when you murder the nice white-haired man in front of your erstwhile civilian army.
But the other reason he wouldn’t have killed him is because he must have believed that the second that sword arm went up a hail of bullets should have hit him. Even if he didn’t think that, he certainly would have expected all hell to break out as soon as he struck Hershel - with all his people out in the open.
Anyhoo… How did Mom and the kid get to the battle? And why? How did they even know where it was? How far away from their camp was the prison, anyway?
You can’t even put that one on the Governor, for Pete’s sake. That kid is the only person he didn’t kill: bad parenting did.
On the good side, the Governor is dead, that stupid prison is done, and maybe the next half season will get back to its roots.
This question verifies that the majority of board’s opinion of the show is completely invalid.
OK, the usual less-than-stellar decision-making & tactics aside, this was the best episode this season. People did stupid things, people let themselves be talked into doing stupid things, we had yet another ninja zombie pop up out of nowhere to bite someone, we had the most ineffectual tank rampage ever, and yet this was best episode. Why? Because they finally killed off the (literal) comic-book villain that should’ve been dead 8 or more episodes ago.
I agree with Sam Stone: The Governor should’ve caught about 17 bullets when he pulled back the sword to kill Hershel, or at least immediately following that. I have to wonder that, given the inability of the writers to not make stupid characters do stupid things for stupid reasons, if this isn’t the high-water-mark of the series.
In fact, I think I’ll go ahead and say just that: This episode will prove to be the high-water-mark of the series. We won’t give the writers the benefit of the doubt any longer. We know that being patient won’t pay off. The Governor is the last character we’ll ever get invested in. He was interesting for a couple episodes, but then everyone boarded the crazy-train for Stupid Town for the rest of the season, and the fuckers didn’t even have the decency to kill him in the finale! When they brought him back, they teased us with a possible redemption arc, but comic-book-villain-guy came back and shit all over that.
Regarding Mean Joe’s spoiler about Judith/Little Ass-Kicker:
Hell, the writers appear to have passed up a golden opportunity to get rid of the freakin’ baby, that’s how stupid they are! It’s a goddamn zombie apocalypse, we don’t need to have them tote around 10 pounds of screamin’ deadweight while they get all angsty about her well-being. She is virtually a non-entity in the show anyway, and she’s not gonna age into a more interesting character like Carl did, so they should’ve just let her die.
It was cathartic to see Michonne run The Governor through and leave him to zombify, and I think that’s the entire reason I had a favorable opinion of this episode. Change that one thing: If The Governor had got away again, is this STILL a good episode, or is it frustrating and stupid like so many others? As long as we’re talking about The Governor, it’s too bad Michonne didn’t have time to chain him up and drag him around as a zombie pet. On a related note, our inept survivors have got to start hamstringing the people they leave to die and turn into a zombie. Until not-Maggie came up and shot him in the head, I was afraid they were gonna turn The Governor into a ninja zombie who would, through some stupid contrivance, terrorize the crew for at least three more weeks somewhere down the line, but not before we follow him around for a couple episodes as he stumbles around, moans, gets all introspective and tries to become a better zombie.
I’ll keep watching it because there isn’t much else for me to watch on Sunday nights, and because there are a handful of actors worth watching (though we’re -1 in that department after Hershel’s passing). It can be an aggravating show though, since it has the POSSIBILITY of being quite good, but instead it’s as if the writers are playing Walking Dead Mad Libs, or Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Plot.
I’m not going to argue that killing Hershel was the right move (although not out of character for the Gov), but he was the right one to threaten. He figured that Michonne wasn’t going to be all that popular/beloved.
Now I know none of them are military geniuses, nor crack-shots (unless called for in the script), but when the Governor killed Hershel, someone needed to take out the tank operator. Is that so hard to figure out? Hell, leave the Governor be, he’ll kill his own people (going on past performance). Stop the G-D tank!
Ideally, he’d kill Michonne first to show he’s serious and then threaten Hershel. It doesn’t make much strategic sense to kill your highest value hostage first.
Besides the gov getting skewered (I shrieked “yes!” and scared the cat), my favorite moment was Mitch getting an arrow shot by Darryl. While sadly looking at his marvelous tank all burning up. I mean, he probably started out the day: what could possibly go wrong?
Sam Stone, I actually agree wholeheartedly with your critique. The fact that I consider this episode to be a good one probably reflects the low standards I’ve come to have for the show.
I loved your take on bullets not being able to “see” their target. How about Daryl successfully shielding himself behind a walker, which absorbs a bunch of rounds fired essentially point blank? How about using an aluminum picnic table as a shield? The tactics are childish and ridiculous. The depiction of the fight scenes are too. One can easily see these gunfights being carried out with finger guns, yelling “pow” and arguing “I got you!” - “Did not!”
I was just pleased that something happened. We didn’t have an excruciating build up with a bunch of stupid dialog that ended with the governor standing at the fence as the climax.
Also, why does every attack on this place come from the rear? There must be a front entrance, with parking lots and walkways. Why always bunch up in the back and then attack in single file?
The Governor was insane. Nutts, crazy, his elevator didn’t go to the top floor.
Much of his crew were the guys who had been with Martinez, who liked killing folks.
But I digress.
What about the eviscerated rat? I think the young girl killed the ill members, and Carol was covering for her.
Perhaps we will find out in February. :rolleyes:
Amen. As an end, the episode was mediocre: it was an even-stupider redux of the previous Guv’nor prison assault, complete with a guard tower being blown apart.
As a means, to get the characters out of the prison and back on the road, and getting it all done in one episode, it was perfectly adequate. I was prepared for Governor vs. Rick II to take the rest of the season, to see it all wrapped up in one episode was delightful.
The prison set is a redressed factory, I’m assuming the other side is an industrial park or other non-prison-like setting.
Agreed, though his rifle appears to lack a rear sight. Just like with the guy who refused to drop his shotgun and got shot, Carl was right. If they’d just laid into the Governor and his people from the word go, the untrained morons the Governor was leading would have scattered, and that’d be that.
Also, memo to Daryl: Don’t give Bob, one of the few people you have with military training, a rifle with no sights at all. Don’t give Tyreese, the hulking bruiser, an M1 Carbine, which is much more suited to a slender female like Beth or a youngster like Carl.
Tara survived, right? I assume she’ll join the gang, and further assume that her sister was killed by the wave o’ zombies.
No one’s opinion of a work of art can be “invalid”, nor can one poster’s opinion substitute for a majority’s.
I don’t really care too much about the unrealistic battle tactics or whatever, I really liked this episode. It had great drama, good tension, and once again showed the horror that these folks have to experience just to stay alive.
The one thing that bugs me is that crazy pronunciation of “Carl” that Rick uses. I know the actor is British and he’s trying to imitate a southern accent, but does anyone pronounce that name that way?
I’m also assuming that Carl and Daryl were actually too far away to effectively take out Guv. Once the shooting started, there wasn’t much hitting of targets (although that could also just be sloppy writing).
I actually cheered when that zombie came out of the ground and bit the kid. She was dumber than a box of rocks.
Cheered again when those badass little girls took out the two shooters - “FINALLY! Kids that are USEFUL!”
I was also really hoping that Carl would suddenly appear and put a bullet in the Governator as he was strangling Rick, but Michonne skewering him was justified. I figured she left him to turn so she could kill him again. 
The only part that bothers me about the battle is that people who are expert crack shots able to head shot zombies in one shot empty entire clips at people completely out in the open without hitting anything.
Man, what a dramatic ending for poor ol’ Hershel! I’m going to miss the guy…
And I am very glad to see the Governor finally get offed. It did seem out of character for Michonne to run him through and not take his head off, though. Or, for an even messier death, just jam the katana blade right through his skull like she did with Penny. I would have enjoyed seeing that. And it would prevent his resurrection as a zombie. That action (skull destruction) was left to his properly pissed-off gal pal, instead…
By the way, did she (the Governor’s girlfriend) survive to the end of the episode?
The governor’s girlfriend and her sister both survived.
I was actually somewhat happy with the battle scene, tactics and all.
These aren’t (for the most part) military people, so I wouldn’t expect them to have much of a clue. Some of them were smart enough to follow the tank for cover. We had at least one person who realistically just couldn’t handle it (one of the sisters).
There was the standard storm-trooper accuracy to enable the battle to stretch out, but I recall reading somewhere that some very low percentage of bullets fired in battle actually hit anything - and that’s trained soldiers.
Still storing their weapons outside in barrels though. I guess maybe they bring them in at night or when rain threatens, so you could possibly hand-wave that away.