Gov has been bagging him some post apocalypse.

Haha, my wife had a similar comment. "How is it that the Governor keeps getting laid but Daryl hasn't gotten anything?!"

Ladies love the eye patch.

I could do without the return of the gov as well.

I was kind of pissed to see him return, but I thought the episode was very well done.

Don't want to see back-to-back governor-themed episodes though.

I think if we got another Governor episode like this last one, that would be way too much. But from what I have seen in the previews, this next one seems like it will have much more action and interesting things going in, with Martinez and his crew back in the game.

I hated seeing the Governor come back, but I liked this last episode. I'm wondering how much of my hatred of the Governor was a spillover of my annoyance with Andrea. Now that she's gone, maybe I can tolerate another story arc with him.

Zombie got his ankles broke:

This is where I stand as well. I thought the governor's town went on a little too long last season but it is nice to have a storyline outside of the prison. Plus there is more possibility of death and destruction when you don't have all the headline actors in this new town.

so hey, guys, I know you have this totally secure home and all the food, guns and ammo that you'll need, but why don't we just hop in this truck that hasn't been used in a year or so and see what happens?

#yolo

Really didn't like this episode very much. Boring. It's hard in a single episode to build up enough emotional capital for me to believe that all of a sudden these 4 people are a band and are agreeing to head out together as a group.

Plus, why don't we fuckin' try to go somewhere else besides where everyone else has already tried to go? How are these people always running into each other? Are they in the same 2-3 square mile radius? How about you try driving north, haven't tried that yet!

yeah, I actually kind of enjoyed the idea of following a different group, but they totally mailed it in. these guys have just been sitting in an apartment for a year without any trouble at all and haven't even needed to explore the other apartments, in a town that seems magically zombie free. then this Nick Nolte guy comes along and runs a bunch of suddenly urgent errands for them and then they up and leave. I get that this was all to get the governor mixed up with another kid, but it was done terribly.

and yeah, such a small world.

I believe that would be Atlanta ... Rick says been there, done that.

Greater starting population density is not a plus in a post-zombie world.

That leaves out a key point: dad/grandpa died.

They want out of that apartment, once he was out of the picture they seemed quite ready & willing to take off (almost eager in fact)

OK, how about West? Or Northeast? The middle of South Carolina is probably reasonably deserted. And nobody lives in Alabama or Mississippi. It seems like they are driving for a while, but actually only end up about 8 miles away from where they were before shit breaks down.

The show would've been better off killing off the Governor at the end of last season. Right now, he is just kind of pissing me off. I really don't care about him as a character at all anymore. I'm not sure if that's a function of the acting or the writing or what. But Scott Wilson fucking nailed it as Hershel last week, and this week David Morrissey just seemed to lumber about with very little emotion. I understand what they were going for, this is a shell of a man trying to figure things out... but I didn't think it worked at all. But the first half of this season was very strong, so I am willing to hang with it, even though I don't like where the show is at, and apparently will continue to be at for another week.

Along with the memory of zombie grandpa's head being completely obliterated by an oxygen cannister in the bedroom. Might cause some bad memories for the family. :)

I also think that if this episode was supposed to like...redeem the Governor in the eyes of the viewing population then that's pretty insulting, to suggest that although he gunned down all of those people and totally was a dictator, we're supposed to forgive him because he saves 3 people.

Fuck no. I still want him to die.

I don't think it was supposed to redeem the Governor in the eyes of the audience. It's just to give him some depth and make him more of a real person rather than a mustache twirling cartoon of a villain.

I am really interested to see what they do with next week's episode. If they are going to put the Governor and the prison back into conflict by the the mid-season break, then something pretty significant will have to happen.

I think the problem with the last episode that it was a bit lazy. There were a lot of cliches and a couple of fetch quests. I think all of the actors were fine and I don't mind seeing the Governor in a different light, it just could have been done better.

In the Talking Dead episode the "celebrity" guest suggested pretty much that very thing: that the Gov redeemed himself by saving the little girl ... a suggestion to which both Morrissey & host dude reacted with shock/ bewilderment/rejection. But yeah, I believe that's out there for at least part of the audience.

What I actually expect(ed) to happen is where I figure we might end up: we're pushed to consider the possibility of redemption and THEN he'll go totally batshit evil again. That is one of two things I believe I'll personally end up knocking about his return, he either

a) teases redemption & goes full blown evil once again (which seems like a tease for tease sake)

or

b) he ends up dying at least semi-heroically & even more credence is given to the notion of his redemption (which feels like a cliched TWD thing to do at this point)

Option c (he sticks around indefinitely) is the one I really don't want to see happen, but is actually the least predictable of the three posssibilities.

Maybe it's just impossible to please the fans on this one, which does call into question the wisdom of bringing him back at all.

What did cross my mind is that some shit goes down and then The Gov tries to get his new "family" into the prison. Or he goes full-blown evil and runs a kamikaze destruction scheme on the prison, setting up the cliffhanger and making Rick and the group nomads once again.

he's going to die doing something batshit crazy to protect that little girl, the only question to me is whether he does some honorable thing that 100% clearly saves the girl so they aim for total redemption, or he goes double insane over the notion of protecting her and does something unnecessary that only he thinks he has to do to protect her, and they go for some kind of tragic death with that.

Either way, I am not interested and hope it happens damn soon. As H_B said, they're trying to write their way out of the ridiculous over the top "moustache twirling villain" image they left for him last season. I feel like that would probably take a really long time to properly accomplish, more time than anyone would want to see spent with him. So, just get it over with please!

It's a lazy show! I know there's alot of love for this show, but it's really lazy. The writing isn't mind blowing. It's fairly predictable.

Even though the results weren't great, I'm glad there was a episode i didn't have to see Rick gardening, Glenn being Glenn(to bad he didn't die) , and Carl running around doing whatever he does.

Lazy. I think it's pretty lazy when there's 2 people trying to keep the zombie wall up. TWO people. What, no one else thinks that's important!!! They send a carfull out whenever someone needs something, which makes sense, but only 2 people to do the job of 10-20 and save the whole place...

Lazy

I agree with the comment about it being lazy, and also about the fence.

The writing vacillates at times. The show can be lazy at times too, but not always.

Rick did the gardening thing for like 2 episodes or something. Carl pretty much stopped running around doing whatever he does after the end of the second season. Glenn being Glenn is typically a pretty good thing.

As for the 2 people keeping the zombies off the fence - Carl and Rick I presume you're referring too - they didn't have too many other people to help. Carol had been exiled. The other able bodied people were out looking for the meds. Everyone else was either sick or trying to help the sick people.

The only thing as lazy as the writing can be for this show sometimes is the criticism thrown at it!

I hate the governor, and the montage with some Creed soundalike as background music was straight-up laughable.

Also, the new girl has a pretty strong resemblance to Maggie.

Your right, i exaggerated a bit, Rick has gotten back to being more proactive, and Carl seems to be in it a tad less now.

I'm not being paid though, and if you blindly love the show so much, you won't care about how lazy and predictable it's become.

I see no chemistry from Glen and Maggie, yet they spend so much time on it. In a jail full of people(how many, i don't know, but 50ish is my guess) only 6 or 7 are trusted to do anything! I get it, it's a TV show, and they need to concentrate on a main group, but stop trying to integrate all these secondary characters, without giving them stuff to do when it would make sense. Boardwalk Empire, a show with a shit load of characters that never seems to take the lazy way out.

The governor became a cartoon character, and while last episode ended up being a predictable cliche, at least it was different, and they tried something. I'm fine with that.

Everyone..EVERYONE!!! At that point, it's get the fuck out time. If that many people are truly sick, then it's over, and it's a bit ridiculous that Herschel, Rick, Maggie, and whoever is not sick at this point...

I think the combat capability of the remainder of the prison inhabitants is also a legitimate question. Look at the "lessons" Carol was teaching the kids, and the discussion about how many of their parents wouldn't approve. If these are mostly refugees from Woodbury, I think it's pretty reasonable to think they simply don't have the experience at this point to be of much value outside (or inside for that matter).

Plus, from a practical standpoint, somebody would have had to go get them apparently, it didn't appear anyone would standing watch of any kind at that point.

Or, you know, an island. Unless I missed the part where they could swim, that's option 1, 2 and 3 for me. (If they can swim, I'm finding me a medieval castle - something built to withstand a yearlong siege would seem to be a pretty great choice.)Lost fell down this path, but iirc at least poked fun at it a couple times by having Jack or Kate get called out for calling a background character by the wrong name. I do agree that you could at least have a few somewhat familiar background characters doing menial tasks like killing zombies or transporting water without needing to build them up into real characters or even give them lines.

Yeah - island is the obvious solution. Kind of boggles the mind that that hasn't come up at all.

The island sanctuary idea is pretty standard in zombie movies.

As for why it hasn't come up yet in the show, it could be because they are in the middle of Georgia. Maybe they try to make a run for the east coast, find a boat, go to an island, problem is the coastlines are usually more heavily populated which means even more zombies.

The Walking Dead Video game explored this as the characters attempted to get a boat and get away from the mainland.

There aren't any lakes big enough to have little islands in the middle of them in Georgia?

At least there they could establish a base for the kids & those unable to defend themselves before venturing out for supplies.

Google Maps - not sure how accurate it is as far as any sorts of little islands in lakes, but:

Chatahoochie State Park has a huge lake over by it. BT Brown Reservoir on the other side of Atlanta. Lake Redwine. Newnan Waterworks has a big reservoir.

I legitimately see an island on Google Maps in the middle of Lake Kedron. Cole Reservoir has a big island.

Few. The most obvious being Lake Lanier.

I guess it depends on what size you're looking for. I'm not thinking something where they can be self-sufficient, but just somewhere they can sleep without being in danger, and where they can leave those who can't defend themselves while the others go off on runs (having the advantage of being able to take a boat to various points on the shore to avoid tons of zombies building up at one point to try to eat you would help too).

But I guess you need a deep enough lake to drown any who try to walk over to you...

Zombies don't drown. They don't really swim either. They kind of just try to walk along the bottom of the lake/ocean without much success, but some may find their way to the main land. In the ocean, the current may wash them up.

Kenny and his god damned boat!

Yeah - I was just using "drown" as shorthand for "keep the zombies away" - I had worked through that thought in my head.

+1

Dude would not shut up about it.

Spoiler-free commentary about The Walking Dead -- I think I could have done without the return if this is all they're going to do with it. It feels, honestly, like some lazy writing to pad the number of episodes for this season (this is lifted, in part, from the source material except they've split it into a "comeback" sequence). As happy as I was with last week, I'm feeling sort of let down by where it went.

This week and last week were big let downs for me. It almost feels like this is a rival zombie show with much weaker story, dialog, and characters. I really wish they would have just had the governor appear in a random group of zombies one episode. You peer into the crowd and see a Zed with an eye patch. That would have been the way to go with him. The gov just seems too forced. I didn't like him the first time around and I like him even less this time.

I don't understand at all. I didn't like how insane Governor vs Prison worked the first time, why would I want to see it again? Any work they did on the Governor in the last episode was undone about halfway through this. They fucked up this character last season, it didn't work on TV the way it apparently did in the source, they can't spend one episode trying to rehab that and expect feelings to be ok/different. Ugh. I loved the first half of season 3 and the second half turned into a train wreck. Looks like that's happening again here. Very, very frustrated.

I agree, the last 2 episodes, in the span of this season have really been boring and uninteresting. I just have no interest in this arc at all. Last season was just drawn out too long to just bring it back for the mid-season break. Very disappointing.

I agree that I was really drawn into the Gov. last week and liked where it might go but the all too quick WWE turn back to the old character left me disappointed.

I really hope this doesn't go the Heroes route because it's starting to get confusing and boring..

They could have easily fit the last two episodes into half of one. Dragged it out a bit long...at least it looks like they are going to get things moving again next week.

I liked a lot of what this last episode had to offer. Some good writing, some solid acting, some very excellent scenes: the creepy ass cabin, the bodies with the signs nailed to them, the zombies in the mud, the zombie chained underwater, etc.

The problem with the episode, as I see it, is that it's like the Governor's origin story about a year late. A lot of this stuff should have either been explored last season or just left alone. It's like they decided to deconstruct the Governor character just to re-build him again exactly the same way so that we'll have the inevitable big stand off that everyone was expecting at the end of last season.

Curious, though...

FWIW, my son initially thought the zeds that were "stuck" were actually the victims of the Great Woodbury Massacre. Not sure why he got that impression but it actually struck me plausible for a moment until we failed to recognize anyone afaik. I now figure it to have been a random location, neither meaningful nor otherwise untoward.

As for your other question (which I believe I can answer in the clear w/out spoiling anything)

Yes, I believe there is another culprit for the violence in that camp of strangers, not anyone we know.

edit to add: I did think one of those scenes provided the prospect for a much better ending to the arc than we got