So with the degutted rat and the little girl saving Tyrese with two direct head shots are we heading back to Jon's earlier theory that the little girl actually killed the people and not Carol?

I think so.

Toy Story/Walking Dead Plot similarities (lol) http://imgur.com/a/qIIsm#0

That has been my belief as well.

On board here as well, will be interesting to see if/how they develop this and if it leads to storyline with Tyrese, the girls and Carol running into them.

I actually believe the rats and the two murders are separate. I still believe Carol did that, but that another prison inhabitant (probably the older girl) is responsible for the rats. Although I do think the story line between Carol and the girls is there to lead us (wrongly) to believe that the psychopath girl (hypothetically) is responsible for the murders.

I just struggle to believe that Carol would hide the presence and nature of a potential serial killer in the prison with those she has grown with, survived with and loved, and on top of that would also willingly accept blame and banishment instead for herself. That takes several massive logic leaps to accept.

I thought about this when The Governor rolled up on the prison with his new group. Most of these people seemed to be unsure of themselves and didn't appear to be battle tested for the most part. I guess it is possible they have gotten lucky and missed out on run ins with other factions but it didn't seem likely.

Given what she has been teaching them and the bond she has seemingly grown with those girls, though, leads me to believe that she could justify the girl doing it - and then help her out with disposing of the bodies. It's far-fetched, but I still feel that Carol's blind acceptance of the banishment still felt funny. She wouldn't want to put that girl in harms way by exposing what she did.

I agree with this part especially, Carol promised to take care of those kids. I could see her initially trying to deflect blame from them, but if she's forced out of the group, then she can no longer take care of them, and the truth will likely come out anyway the next time psycho kid does something else.

well I think Tyrese is running with lil ass kicker -- it's the scene right after Michonne walks away from the gov'ner, we see him running like he's tooting the rock and his gun is on his back...

I guess to me it's difficult to think the girl did it because she was the one that was drawing a personal connection to the zombies and giving them names, that doesn't equal killing people.

I settled in this morning with my coffee and dog to watch last night's "Agents of Shield", but apparently there was no "Agents of Shield" last night, so I re-watched the last episode of The Walking Dead again.

This is right:


I also paid more attention to the pre-fight interaction between Rick and The Governor. Rick's last plea to him was that they had all done some pretty horrible things to survive, but that they were still alive and that they could "come back from this" and "change" and, therefore, the two groups could live together peacefully in the prison. The Governor says "Liar" and then hacks at Hershel's neck setting off the battle.

I think that's the payoff from the prior two episodes focusing on the Governor. He had sort of given up after Woodbury, was pretty much willing to die, found that family and thought that he could change. He had a new "wife" and "daughter" and thought he could start anew. The problem was that he just entered the exact same vicious cycle that led him to where he was at Woodbury. He got attached to his new "family". He then was driven to protect them at any means. They join Martinez's group. He tries to hang back, not really be in control, but is slowly pushed in that direction. Despite trying to avoid the same pattern of behavior - by bludgeoning Martinez to death after he offered part of the leadership to him and trying to run but getting stopped by the zombies in the mud - he really can't. He realizes that Pete is too weak and soft to lead, so he kills him. He believes he understands what it takes to survive in this world. Once the zombie got into the camp, he realized that the only way to keep his "family" safe was to take the prison with its fences and walls.

On the flipside, you have Rick who, also, tried to change. He tried to give up any leadership, farm not fight and all of that, but wasn't at all successful. He couldn't really "comeback" from what happened and couldn't really change either despite trying to.

So, the Governor having lived through that knew, at his core, that there was no coming back from what they had done and that people can't change, particularly in that world.

I don't know but I'd swear I saw it while room surfing here last night. It was definitely AoS, looked like they were about to meet The Human Torch best I could figure. Was that a repeat/encore maybe?

Must have been a repeat. There was an earlier episode about a guy who could control fire and a drug that amped his abilities.

I agree with everything here. I look at the governor's killing of Hershel instead of Michhone as the post-apocalypse version of "suicide by cop". He knew he wasn't going to make it out of that one alive.

I felt the Governor was far simpler in that moment than you guys are making it out to be. He was always a control freak. He could see Rick's speech was having its effect on his group. They were all looking sideways at one another, questioning. The Governor was losing control and he knew it.

So he did the only thing he thought could keep himself in control--he stopped talking and started the fighting. Pure desperation.

I tend to agree here as well. He seemed to hesitate for a moment himself when he pulled the sword away, then it hit him that he was losing control of the situation so he escalated it as he always has, with violence.

I think this interpretation discounts the prior two episodes and his "liar" that he spoke right before the first cut.

That being said, I don't think the two interpretations are really at odds. Part of his inability to change and that he had come to realize that there is no "coming back" from what they had done was, in part, that despite his efforts to the contrary the only way for him to keep his people safe was for him to be in control and the way he kept control and, in turn, his people safe, was through violence.

Rick, more or less, came to that very same conclusion a few episodes earlier, but either was deluding himself or still hasn't given up hope that there is another way in that world.

Or maybe he was just grasping at straws, trying whatever strategy he thought had the best chance of working, whether he believed what he was saying or not.

Went out to eat last night at a nice restaurant for my anniversary. Is it wrong if this is the mental image I had at the restaurant?



It's the restaurant's check holder, btw.

Just a reminder that this starts back up tonight.

Man - Rick is in a tough way.

Hopefully this is a half season of fat trimming. Let Rick/Michonne/Carl/Glenn/Maggie/Daryl and like Carol join up and everyone else can be zombie concentrate

Development for two characters, useful & necessary. Not sure there's an option from a practical standpoint other than doing this in isolation, I mean basically 3 characters (plus an animatronic head) is all they had to pay tonight, along with the extras. Next week, presumably we get the rest without our mini-group from tonight.

I'm fine with the episodic nature stuff, I think that's a good change of pace but I'm slightly nagged by the fact that it's a decision that was probably made for financial reasons as much as storytelling reasons.

Loved "the door" scene on the porch, that was awesome. Like the fact that the apparent catch phrase for Carl faded away, a sign that he kinda got the message reality was sending him. Rick's last line was, maybe cheesy, but fun. And I think we need an occasional bit of that just like the characters do, I imagine that dark humor would be even more commonplace in that universe than what we're shown.

I was just glad to see that the Governor was deader than dead and that the prison was useless. :)

The Carl deal is typical growing pains...and eventually I could see him turning against his dad but it would probably be a temporary insanity thing....not to far fetched as it seems to run in the family. :)

All in all, good start. Glad to see Michonne character development, if she's going be a main character, she needs that.

LMFAO ... "If Lori had one of these Shane would still be alive"

One of the best Talking Dead lines ever.

Uh-oh, Talking Dead next week includes "a surprise cast member guest"

Somebody is getting the redshirt treatment :(

Maybe a zombie can eat Chris Hardwick.

Was I the only one yelling "bite him!!" when the little shit was fighting the zombie in the house? I'm glad he came around at the end, but I was done with his attitude 10 mins into the episode...

(Yes, I have teenage kids...) :)

I thought the timing in his showdown with 3 zombies was awfully convenient. The zombies took turns rather than converging on him at once.

Nope - I was too! Plus, for such a "smart" kid he sure made some dumb decisions in that episode.

Really enjoyed that episode - and really excited to see where things go the rest of this season.

I thought this last episode was pretty weak.

Over the last season or so, I've considered Carl one of the Most Improved Characters on any television show. He had gone from an annoying, little brat who wandered off and did stupid shit, to a maturing kid, who really became more of an asset than a liability.

Sadly, he decided to revert to annoying, little brat this episode. I know what they were trying to do, it was just handled very poorly. Carl's speech to the passed out Rick, bringing up Shane (Carl was there when Shane tried to kill Rick), the "I win" and all of that was lamely handled and didn't really resonate. Instead of showing Carl maturing and handling in a nuanced way - they just had him revert back to what he was and then (apparently) circle back to the more "mature" Carl at the end. Pretty pointless.

The Shoe Stealing zombie was pretty terrifying. One of the more tense single zombie encounters we've seen in a while. I did like the touches at the BBQ place and the house and what not. It's nice to see a little more of the landscape.

The Michonne dream was quite jarring. I thought it was a commercial for a second. I don't mind seeing a little more of her back story, but, again, it could have been done a lot better. Her stuff was better than Rick/Carl, but not by too much.

It was a down episode. I saw that Kirkman wrote it. He's not the best writer in the world. Carl's speech to the passed our Rick is very indicative of the types of odd speechifying you see in his comics sometime.

Let's hope the next episodes are better!

I agree the Carl stuff was kind of pointless in the sense of "didn't we already see this evolution? Why do we want to see him revert back just to then again revert forward again?"

But I liked the Michonne piece & also didn't know wtf it was at first (if I had DVR'd it I probably would have gone past it).

Nicotero described the episode as "a straight lift" from two comic book installments.

Black dude from Leverage needs to get on a new show. Really like that dude. I imagine they'll have several more Michonne flashbacks this half season

I think that Carl reverting is very indicative of showing his age. Like all teenagers they are capable of moving from smart to stupid in the blink of an eye and the aura of invincibility is pervasive. So in that regard, the development of his character shouldn't be strictly linear.

Having said that there were a number of logic jumps where something happened that seemed counter intuitive to what someone in that situation would actually do, but I understand that reality doesn't always make good tv.

I was stunned by the number of commercial breaks. Seemed like 30 minutes of show sandwiched in between some commercials.

Happy to see some of Michonne's back story. Looking forward to the direction they take things with the other characters.

I'm still holding out hope that they'll bring out a new version of Leverage with Hardison, Parker and Elliott leading the way (basically have Nate and Sophie move on, maybe a guest spot or two).

I could go for that. I wonder what the Netflix numbers look like for it. It couldn't be that expensive to make especially if you retire the highest paid actor(Hutton). The show basically can have whatever larger arc you wanna give it

Loved Leverage, and loved seeing Aldis Hodge.

As happy as I was with last week's episode, I think this one might go the other direction & be arguably the most disappointing episode of the series to date for me.

Waaaaay too much crammed into one episode, the Maggie-crying-on-the-bus scene felt incredibly forced (and seemed to fail to account for us seeing the previews). I thought Glenn's storyline was a dream sequence for several minutes before figuring out what happened. I still don't know who Daryl & Amy found being zombie chow.

And then the bus? ....

IMO it was that young dude Amy liked. I think their sequence took place after the big zombie fight. That was the same place, right?

I disagree. I loved this episode.

Same here. I was so-so on last week but enjoyed this one. The only issue I had was them spoiling the bus scene because of the previews showing that Glen was alive and elsewhere.

There's way too many speaking roles going on right now. I think they have something like 14-18 main "named" characters. Even something like the Sopranos, which had a huge cast, never really got that audacious. Game of Thrones probably effectively writes more characters than TWD, but they're also dealing with 4-6 distinct groups and settings.

I think you really see the lack of a budget on display here when the writing tone is wildly inconsistent from week to week. The show is always saveable but it needs more direction and they need to nail down POV characters better.

I liked the episode last night well enough, and am hoping they'll nail down the pecking order Of the characters better.

+1

Non dola-
If you're going to attempt to service this many characters you need to go to like 1:15-1:30 like Sons of Anarchy(imo which is as similarly hamstrung with tonal shifts from minute to minute) or we need a helluva lot more episodes than simply 8 and 8. At least give us 8 in the fall and 13 in the spring after NFL is done

That was my son's theory ... but what was up with the small shoe then?

Okay, I finally found it, I think -- I'll treat it as non-spoiler since I believe Beth (who I've called Amy for the last 24 hours) said the names early on, I just failed to catch them.

comicbook.com recap says they were looking for "Luke & Molly" ... I guess I never knew their names, thinking of them mostly as "extra kids".

edit: If you as vague about them as I was, those are the other two kids that were with Psycho Girl & her sister when they saved Tyrese back at the prison.