Is it just me, or has Daryl’s crossbow gotten bigger? It looks like something out of a first person shooter. I also love how Herschel put on his Sunday finest for the big fight/negotiation.
What The Walking Dead does better than most series or movies is use the lack of dialogue to hammer home the tension. The relative silence is never boring.
My stomach literally turned when The Governor smiled his thin grin at Rick and said, “We’re here to move forward.” An opportunity was missed when Rick was too delicate with his phrasing of how The Governor sexually assaulted and threated to rape Maggie in front of Andrea. I think that tidbit would have finally cracked something of her obtuse shell. I was proven right when Herschel told Andrea (after her ouster from the meeting that she called) that The Governor was “a sick man,” though he still didn’t get specific. With that, the last of Andrea’s willfully ignorant façade crumbles and she sobs to Herschel: “I can’t go back there.” When she does choose to return to Woodbury, I can’t help but feel that she’s about to channel her inner Mata Hari and work against The Governor from within. Scenes from next week indicate that she’s rallying Tyreese and his posse against the big man; whether that will be enough to prevent a slaughter is still up in the air.
How exactly is Glenn now giving orders re: logistics? I know he’s evolved quite a bit since the “world went to shit,” (as Andrea so eloquently put it) but I can’t help but think his knowledge about ammo and staging has more to do with gaming than experiential learning.
Daryl and Martinez engage in some mutual zombie slaughter, but Andrea, though she gets up close and personal in a kill that seems to be her venting her frustration, is left out of their later bonding. The two men commiserate their position as grunts, embodying the cannon fodder that men of lower socioeconomic status have always served as for other men, who are off in a room, making decisions for the rest of them.
Rick attempts to use logic with a sociopath and mocks The Governor’s name and then calls him no better than “the town drunk who … rips up my yard.” It’s a side of Rick that we’ve been missing – the sure leader who can see his way through the bullshit. His character attack of The Governor was surely justified after Mr. One Eye brought up the questionable paternity of Rick’s daughter, Judith.
When The Governor mentions losing “the people we love,” Rick may not know that The Governor no longer has anyone that fits that description. It turns out that The Governor’s initial demand of surrender from Rick wasn’t as literal as first anticipated. By asking for Michonne, he’s *only* asking Rick to turn into a slave-trader and turn on a woman who has saved his ass on several occasions. On the one hand, Michonne’s position with the group is still somewhat tenuous, but in asking Rick to make that choice, he’s attempting to undermine Rick’s most redeeming human quality: his morality.
As the two camps return to Woodbury and the prison, respectively, we see the relative strength of the two sides. Woodbury clearly has the advantage with the military weaponry – and The Governor’s plan of amassing an army all along is seen in stark camouflage-paint relief.
Rick shows some true mettle and interprets The Governor’s “offer” as nothing short of a declaration of war. For a moment, there was a thought that Rick and company might rather run than fight. Rick’s later confession to Herschel of the truth of his meeting with The Governor, though, shows his internal conflict. “I’m hoping you can talk me out of it” is so ambiguous – does he mean talk him out of not sacrificing Michonne or talk him out of giving her up? I was struck by Herschel’s recounting of all the people Michonne saved and all the times she helped – how does one keep track? Human memory is a slippery thing, especially when you’re dealing with high stress, highly traumatic situations that continuously and endlessly occur. It could be easy to forget, and then, in that case, how is a person’s worth measured?
Special thanks to Chilean deviantARTist el-grimlock for his geektastic illustration for this week’s post, entitled “Pac-Zombie.” You can check out more of his work here.
