The Walking Dead: S03 Ep08 - Made To Suffer

What happened?

Rick lead an infiltration of Woodbury to rescue Glenn and Maggie, which proved successful though came at the cost of one of their number and Daryl getting captured. Michonne went alone and encountered The Governor in a fight after she killed his 'walker daughter' - only Andrea appearing stopped the fight.

The Governor lost an eye, and apologised publicly to his people. But then he surprised Merle by naming him as the traitor, and then presented him with his brother. In front of the baying crowd the two estranged brothers were left to an uncertain fate.

Thoughts

There were quite a few elements of this episode that I didn't particularly take to. Overall, of course, I thoroughly enjoyed it - but I thought by The Walking Dead's own high standards it wasn't quite attaining its own precedent. And for an installment that served as a kind of mini-cliffhanger before the break I was hoping it would raise its game a tad.

The scenes at the prison were a case in point, feeling like they were were shoehorned in to dangle new people and problems for our heroes that would tide over for the second half of the season. The episode opened with a small gang of unknowns hacking their way through the woods, clearly desperate, and stumbling upon the crumbled wall of the prison for an easy access point. I got the impression that this glaring break in the perimeter could pave the way for a serious problem in terms of the prison's fortitude against outsiders. Not so much from walkers but from the likes of The Governor and his men, deciding to take their revenge.

So the new people meeting up with Carl didn't really capture my interest, aside from one of them being that guy from The Wire who I liked. That they came lumbering in already encumbered with a person bitten that they weren't instantly killing just made them look weak, and problematic. Carl, as with his group, was well-versed in the need to put a bullet through the head of anyone bitten or dead, but these new guys aren't quite there.

It's not that I have a particular problem with the new people, but The Walking Dead is starting to feel slightly cluttered with many faces and not enough in-depth characterisations. Splitting the action between Woodbury and the prison has already shortened that feel of really living with these characters and getting to know them, so further populating their ranks is not going to alleviate things. It's a small complaint, really and, I suppose, if the reverse was the case and the cast was smaller I may find the show less fast-paced and interesting.

Carl has certainly grown into a mini-Rick, which feels a tad unbelievable but is still interesting to see. As we've already seen how much Rick himself can mentally unravel then there could be a terrible price for a small boy to undergo the same burdens and responsibilities. So there's that going on. And otherwise, at the prison, the new convict guy wasn't exactly charming the group by making sleazy overtures towards the females in the group. You'd think a guy would be smarter than that. Barely a day with the new group and the moment all of the alpha males have left he is sniffing around the girls. I suspect he's not going to last long.

The other new convict sure didn't last long, shot on the exit out of Woodbury. To be fair, the odds of them all getting out of there unscathed with that much gunfire being laid down wasn't great. Smoke bombs or not, the chance of not getting shot on that street with bullets being sprayed all over the show had to be minimal. Credit to the music during the shootout sequences. Rather than going down the route of trying to make the action more rousing, the music opted for a repeated, minimalist tune that created a real sense of dread. With the smoke suffusing the street in a white haze there was a surreal, otherworldly quality to proceedings. It was stylish. It didn't feel real, which might have affected my reaction to it. But it was definitely enthralling and that sense of dread really gripped tight.

You just knew something, with someone, was going to go bad. And the moment Daryl elected to stay behind you knew he was going to be at the centre of it, especially after Rick took some moments to make it absolutely clear how much he needed him. Yeah, the moment anyone becomes essential on this show is the time when you can bank on them being rendered powerless. Or dead.

It did feel a little contrived that Daryl got captured after he and Rick and the rest had near-effortlessly (too conveniently, if you ask me) managed to infiltrate Woodbury and locate Glenn and Maggie and - just in time, no less - get to them and get them free. Not that I am complaining that Glenn and Maggie did escape; I would have been totally devastated if either one had them had been executed. Yet, you know, I still like my much-wanted rescues to feel well-earned. Rick to the rescue just didn't quite feel authentic. Again, another minor quibble in an episode of minor quibbles.

Michonne is another of those quibbles. I could have used just a little more explanation about why she chose to go rogue and investigate The Governor's room. Oh, I realise it's because she got a whiff of something rotten about the place the last time she was there and was fuelled by a feel of unfinished business. I get that. But why not tell Rick? If she was rocking a totally independent woman vibe I'd buy into it, but at the end of the episode she was back at Rick's side and making a clear plea for why she was still a necessary part of his group and deserved a place. She's sending out mixed signals, which does complicate her as a person but, for me, it wasn't a good kind of complex character shading. It was just confusing.

Nothing to quibble about when it came to Michonne's dust up with The Governor, though, in what was the standout scene of the episode. I definitely feared for her survival the moment she hit him where it hurt and killed his 'walker daughter' (still not sure what the deal is with her, either - I assume she was his real daughter all along). I didn't see The Governor being killed off at this stage so I was glad to see Michonne managed to just about get out of there, and even had a face off with Andrea to boot.

Andrea has certainly nailed her colours to the mast. I felt for sure the moment she saw the fucked up world of The Governor, with his walker daughter and the tanks of heads she'd realise this guy wasn't anything like how he portrayed himself. And yet she stayed. I think she stayed because she wanted to believe in him, in Woodbury. He tells her that he set up the walker heads in tanks to make him face the atrocities of the outside world (I don't believe that - I think that's the product of a sadistic monster, pure and simple) and that he couldn't bear to part with his daughter and it's good enough. Quite how she'll react when she learns that the people she had been shooting at were Rick and the rest, and that Maggie and Glenn had been captured and kept secret from her. . . Well, time will tell. That all depends on if that particular secret ever reaches her - and right now the only person likely to spill those beans was standing with his brother, surrounded by an angry mob all cheering for his death.

Daryl, at the episode's end, certainly looked to be in a bad spot. One possible out could come from Andrea, who might plead with The Governor to not go ahead and have him killed. Otherwise it could be that Rick may return to help him, though that seems even less likely. I actually thought that the episode was going to end with the two brothers being pitted against each other, made to fight. But The Governor (seeing even less now down to just one eye) has decided that Merle had to have been the traitor. Again, that's a curious one. It's an explanation that would make sense to everyone else, but The Governor is no fool and he knows Michonne was part of Rick's gang so it ought to have occurred to him that she was the one that got the group in unseen. . .

Maybe. Maybe this set-up of accusing Merle houses a few more twists as part of The Governor's design. The one thing I find impossible to believe is that the next episode will start with either Daryl or Merle or both of them getting killed off. Somehow, some way, they'll survive and then have to deal with each other and the rest of Woodbury. The prospect of having yet another person captured and tortured has been well-covered now, so hopefully the resolution will be as refreshing as it is unexpected.

A final hint at where the second half of the season may go reared itself in the shape of Shane. Rick imagining his one-time friend appearing to shoot at him clearly displayed that the mental strain isn't gone. Rick was a man that had a conversation on a telephone with figments of his guilty conscience just days earlier - now he's seeing dead friends attacking him. This paves the way for his mental state to be questionable going forward. And with an enraged, one-eyed Governor no doubt seeking payback he's going to need all the faculties he can muster.

What was the best part?

As I mentioned, Michonne and The Governor scrapping was the clear highlight. The brutality of the well-choreographed fight was blunt and brutal. The savage grunts and growls as the two of them worked to gain the upper hand totally sold it for me, and I liked the extra layer of black humour as rolling heads of snapping-mouthed walkers littered the floor for added peril. With these two big characters it would have been tough to have either one of them taken down, but Michonne won on the technicality of jabbing The Governor's eye out. Credit to him, though, he took it like a man and could still sob about his dead walker daughter. He's not the type of guy to let a gouged out cornea get in the way of his emotional turmoil.

What do I think will happen next?

Daryl and Merle surely won't be killed. Andrea is perhaps their best chance at some salvation, having made a connection with both of them, so she may plead for a more fair trial. Beyond that I can't see an obviously easy exit, but then it wouldn't be much of a cliffhanger if I could, would it?

Rick's return to the prison will have him discover the new people who will tell him about the gaping break in the fence at the rear of the prison that will certainly get his concern. Will he leave Daryl in Woodbury? I don't see that he has much of a choice, but there's no question he can bank on The Governor coming after him now he's got his attention. . .

The Walking Dead: S03 Ep07 - When The Dead Come Knocking

What happened?

Michonne tells Rick about how Glenn and Maggie have been taken, and so they and a few others venture to scope out Woodbury and see about reclaiming their people. Meanwhile in Woodbury, Merle and The Governor employ interrogation methods to eventually learn that Rick's people are holed up at the prison. Andrea also oversees an experiment to try and determine if the walkers retain any semblance of their former consciousness after they have turned - the results seem to conclude that they do not!

Thoughts

Season 3 is shaping up to be, by a clear margin, the strong outing yet for The Walking Dead. Whilst I thought the first season felt a little tame in places it served as a strong introduction. Season 2, carried the sense that it dragged a little too long at the farm and had a little too much moral debating but still, for me, kicked ass. But this season has taken things up another notch. Every episode has something cool and the lulls in the action are usually timing devices before a surprise or action beat kicks in. And what has really been good is that all the tension has slowly been winding us up to the point where this episode ended - with Rick and The Governor at the threshold of crossing swords.

Merle's torture techniques opened the episode, and right from the get-go it was clear we were supposed to hate the guts of the man for hurting our lovely Glenn! Having Maggie able to hear her love getting the snot pounded out of him only generated further anger. But if The Walking Dead has been toying with the idea of presenting The Governor as a horribly flawed but righteous man then that was tugged loose when he decided to take a crack at breaking Maggie for himself. Rather than go for violence, as Merle did with Glenn, he went for something altogether worse.

Making Maggie undress and threatening to rape her showed us that there is a distinct lack of compassion in his heart and a ruthlessness to do whatever it takes to get what he wants. In truth this wasn't anything that came as a surprise - his assault on the soldiers, or sending Merle and his men to get Michonne after she had left already indicated he was a nasty, untrustworthy piece of work. But I did get the feeling that The Walking Dead has been making some efforts to get us, the audience, on his side, identifying with him. However, by the end of this episode, I don't believe we're supposed to feel any kind of conflict about who we're rooting for.

When it comes to the showdown between Rick and The Governor, we're with Rick all the way. When Glenn told Merle that his people would be coming for him we wanted it to be true, and to result i  Merle getting his ass handed to him by a Rick-shaped size 10 boot.

Getting Glenn and Maggie out of Woodbury won't be easy, yet there are one or two uneasy alliances in The Governor's ranks. He did check that Merle was still to be counted on despite the fact that Daryl, his brother, is effectively the enemy. Whilst Daryl has come a long way in proving his loyalty to Rick ("It's what we do," he remarked, when Rick thanked him for getting baby supplies whilst he was going out of his mind) I didn't get a matching sense of allegiance from Merle to The Governor. Mind, I don't see Merle ever finding a warm welcome from Rick's group, either, so he'd be just as well to stay true to Woodbury.

Quite how the two brothers will react when they meet is just as interesting as to how Rick and The Governor will square up. Fingers crossed Daryl doesn't do something stupid, but with Carol back in the fold then it's hard to imagine him turning his back on Rick and the rest now. No, I suspect it's going to come down to a more straight out piece of brotherly squabbling with deadly results. If Merle is going to be taken down by anyone then, yeah, I'd say Daryl will be the one. 

Meanwhile there's Andrea, who I figured would become queen to The Governor's king, and there's little here to dissuade me from that view. Only Michonne could really be the one that might be able to bring Andrea around to Rick's side of things, but then Michonne is hardly a fully paid up, card carrying member of Rick's clan either.Yet. There were small beats that suggested Michonne would be converted. Like how she witnessed the group's joy at finding Carol was still alive, and also how she watched Rick's well-drilled group take out the walkers in the woods. There was admiration in her expression. Probably he didn't realise it, but Rick telling her they would patch her up and send her on her way was precisely the kind of reception she could trust (as opposed to The Governor's false warm welcome).

As the fun scene in the cabin showed, she's an able and dependable asset and she slotted right in with the group. She took down the gibbering man with the shotgun in the cabin and didn't flinch when Rick came up with the bright idea of feeding the fresh cadaver to 'the alamo' of walkers at the front door so they could escape out of the back. Michonne fit right in, no question.

The small subplot with the terminal patient- Mr. Coleman - willing to die under controlled conditions and try to replicate the behaviour he had been taught after he turned did make me think there would be some evidence to support the theory. I didn't like the idea, however. But I thought that since the show was taking time out to present this, and doing so in some detail, I didn't feel like it was possible that it would just go without some new revelation. I'm glad it didn't. I'm glad that Andrea simply had to step in and put the walker down, proving her opinion that the moment they turned they become monsters.

It's not that I wouldn't have found it believable - the personality and memory of a person is all found in the brain, and it's fundamentally brain functionality that powers a walker, so it would make a certain sense that the same brain, re-activated after death, could retain some trace personality and memories. I do just prefer the walkers to be these instinct-driven 'monsters'. Going down the route of the walkers retaining humanity is never going to be a good move - other zombie movies have done similar things (Day Of The Dead with the 'Bub' character and rather a lot of Land Of The Dead, for anyone interested in my source references) and it is always, always a weakening of the premise.

No, keep the walkers as the mindless, ever-hungry, ceasless horde, thank you very much.

What was the best part?

Showing just how far he has come, and how much the winter has shaped him, Glenn's battle against the walker unleashedin the room whilst he was strapped to a chair was gripping stuff. Merle scarcely gave Glenn much of a fighting chance, which is what made the scene work even better. The zombie was let loose and Glenn had to think and act fast to get out of it alive. Dodging its lunges, using a bare mattress as a shield and then eventually shattering his chair to use as a weapon. Boom. One chair leg through the skull later and a bloodied, animalistic Glenn was a fully-fledged zombie-slaying hero. A superbly choreographed and shot scene with a satisfyingly enjoyable end. A small triumph in a rather grim episode.

What do I think will happen next?

Here's an interesting concern. Whilst The Governor sends people out to the prison to see what's what, Rick and the gang may have their best chance yet to get in to Woodbury and get back Glenn and Maggie. Will it be a totally stealthy, clean in and out swipe? Maybe. But probably not. A worst case scenario could be, however, that whilst Rick and the rest are away then the prison is infiltrated and The Governor's gang get their hands on Rick's baby daughter. In trying to imagine the most awful thing that could be done, my mind latches on to that. And I also fear for Maggie's safe return. Whilst the two new convicts are the most likely to get killed (on account of being new and barely known) if any more of the core group are at risk, she's the one I think. I really hope I am wrong on that. As well being a major blow to the group, it would be just about the cruellest thing to hit Hershal and Glenn. Even for The Walking Dead that would be a step too far, right?

Fringe:S05 Ep04 - The Bullet That Saved The World

What happened?

Whilst Olivia and the team attempt to track down the next piece of Walter's puzzle plan, Broyles tries to prevent The Observer Windmark from finding them but all he can do is send warning, through Etta, that they have been discovered and need to move. Whilst the team manage to amber the lab, when they are reunited with Broyles The Observers find them and give chase. Etta is captured and killed by Windmark, and a devastated Olivia and Peter are forced to leave her and escape.

Thoughts

Anyone who thought Fringe might play things safe and go for a crowdpleasing finish have had their beliefs stomped on. I, for one, was one such person that had lost a little faith that the show had the guts and the edge that it used to have. With the gang all back together, and in particular Peter and Olivia becoming parents to Etta, I thought Fringe was basking in its most cosy set-up yet. And then they went and did this. Pulled the rug right out. Never mind the bullet that saved the world - this episode was the bullet that pierced the heart.

This was an episode that had actually done enough of interest already to qualify as a good one before it sprang the cruel surprise. Walter's reveal of the Fringe investigation relics from yesteryear buried beneath the lab was, sure, perhaps a little hard to swallow (the question of what did happen to all the stuff was never actually addressed in the show, to be fair, but it was just one of those things you assumed got taken care of after the credits rolled!) but it did pave the way for the show to revisit itself with a callback to incidents from previous episodes getting a second airing. Indeed, I was a bit surprised that the lab got ambered so quickly afterwards and sealed up the treasure trove of Fringe experiments - I thought that was a pot of gold the show could keep dipping into for a good few episodes here and there, using these strange events, creatures and effects to combat The Observers.

Since the show is in its final season that would have been a nice way to tip the hat to episodes past, but it seems it's not to be. All we got here was a return of the gas that seals up a person's orifices and some cool weaponry, and that was about all. Oh well. It transpired that the action sequence itself, when the team laid down an assault on the station to get at the clue, was absolutely awesome though.If this was the one and only time we got to see our heroes wreak havoc with Fringe experiments against their enemy then at least it was done with style. Most other episodes, this would have been the climactic showdown and marked the highpoint. Fringe had other tricks up its sleeve. . .

The return of Broyles was nicely handled. His make-up still looks weird, but it was heartening to see that he was still fighting the good fight in his usual poker-faced, ambiguous way. He's certainly a good match for The Observers, managing to keep his thoughts scrambled and unreadable. Etta herself could also do the same trick and she did promise that she would teach Peter, Olivia, Walter and Astrid how to do it, too. When she said it you just felt like, sure, that would happen: Olivia and the rest would learn how to do such a thing and then they would be able to handle themselves amidst The Observers. Not for one second did it cross my mind that Etta wouldn't be around to do such a thing and this was just one such subtle way the episode was plotting its big surprise.

The reunion scene with Broyles and Olivia was moving and heartwarming. Whilst it had probably been mere months since Olivia last saw him, she only had to see all the lines on his face to be able to read the toil of years he had experienced of the world without her. They hugged and, for a very brief moment, with the gang all back together, you had that belief that this small resistance band would be the ones that could take on and beat The Observers. That brief moment ended the moment The Observer showed up.

Even the scene where Etta eventually met her fate felt like one she would get out of, in the grand tradition of many a close call our Fringe heroes have narrowly escaped. Her pushing the thoughts of love on show for The Observer to be confronted by - of unconditional devotion from Peter and Olivia that is alien to these aliens - felt custom-built for her to lower his defences so that she could make a telling strike with the knife in her hands. Fringe wanted me to think that. It was set up and played to be exactly like that kind of moment - and then Windmark grabbed her wrist before the knife found his throat. Not so fast.

Just when you thought Fringe was playing it safe for the final season. . .

The show was aware that the audience had come to take certain things for granted. I was guilty, as a viewer, of being so blase. And Fringe used that against me. Far from feeling cheated I actually smile and give credit where credit is due. Like when a magician pulls a trick under your nose that leaves you baffled. When you get genuinely hoodwinked and surprised there's no sense bitching about it.

Etta's death is sure to have a devastating effect on Peter and Olivia. They fought the good fight before they were ambered because they were not giving up on their daughter; it drove them on and kept them focused. If she is absolutely, definitely gone (and in Fringe we must always leave the door open for the extraordinary and unthinkable to be possible) then only pure revenge will be the fuel to sustain the shattered parents. What I think could be more interesting is that, like Walter before him, Peter becomes a father that is willing to do extreme and damaging things for the sake of returning what he lost. This could mean a literal opening of the door to an alternate universe all over again, or maybe straight out time travel? Like I said, you can't close the door on the extraordinary for this show.

This episode was a neatly constructed spring trap. From Peter at the beginning risking everything purely for the sake of jewelry for his daughter, to Olivia reminding us that she only went and saved a universe or two with the bullet that killed her that she survived, we have been lulled into thinking everything works out for our heroes and their plans rarely go wrong - at least not in such a way as to be really, permanently awful. If Etta really is dead and gone and never coming back then this episode will mark a cold, brutal moment in Fringe - and for a show in its final run, that could easily coast to a finale where everything works out for the best, it's really great to see that it's got the stones to storm down the hard and sharp plot directions.

For the first time this season Fringe has pulled back my respect and gained my serious interest. 

What was the best part?

Tough call, because the infiltration and escape from the station was a well-sustained and well-directed action sequence. Plenty of thrills and energy, and grisly deaths thanks to the gas that blocks all holes. However, little did I know that the episode was going to spring the death of Etta on me - and the scene itself was terrific. Etta seemingly allowing Windmark to get a glimpse of what it is to be human and have love, almost like a taunt, and also that moment where you thought that blade would find its way to the target and Etta would escape - only it wasn't to be. 

Full credit to Fringe on this one. I didn't think it had the cojones to pull something like this, but it's only gone and done it. . .

What do I think will happen next?

Interesting dilemma this, as I feel that Olivia and Peter are going to have to try and overcome this major hit and fight even harder. The only way I see them gathering themselves together and continuing the battle is if there is some chance they can change what has happened, can alter history and get Etta back. Otherwise what are they fighting for? The only other motive left to them is pure revenge - but seeing how the group handles this blow and pulls together will be fascinating stuff.

The Walking Dead: S03 Ep06 - Hounded

What happened?

Rick maintains a close vigil by the phone when he believes he is being contacted by people who may have a safe place for the group to go to. However, it turns out he is imagining the conversation and the realisation brings him back to the group, and to hold his new baby. Meanwhile Maggie and Glenn are captured by Merle, during his hunt for Michonne, and taken back to Woodbury (where Andrea has been getting very close to The Governor). An injured Michonne makes her way to the prison, carrying baby supplies. . .

Thoughts

Well, from the last episode, I did have my suspicions that something was up with the ringing telephone.  I did mostly think it was going to be Carol (turned out what happened to her was less interesting than anticipated) but I was also drawn to the idea that it was going to be in Rick's mind. And the moment Hershal came down to see Rick and listened to the phone himself (almost certainly hearing no dial tone) and was then told to leave, and did so, I knew something was definitely, as they say, up.

I liked how the 'surprise' was handled, though. It was important that Rick realised it for himself during the conversation, that he was talking to the ex-members of his flock. Fundamentally he was talking to his conscience, and only then could he face up to 'speaking' with Lori. It was interesting that his sub-conscious had considered them all in a safe place, that part of the way he was coping with the guilt of their deaths was in a deep-rooted belief that they had gone to a place where they could no longer be hurt. You can call that heaven, or just simply a release from the horrible real world - net result is the same.

It did cross my mind that The Walking Dead was going to pull a cheap trick by having Rick perhaps discover that the telephone wire wasn't connected and that would be how he, and us, would have it confirmed he was talking to voices in his head. I'm glad that didn't happen. As stated, it was more important that Rick found this out for himself. It was vital really in accepting that he could, quite literally, have gone quite mad and then get back to sanity. Let's just stop and take a second and acknowledge that Rick was basically having a minor schizophrenic episode, so to have it snatched away with a little surprise twist and then have him shrug and carry on wouldn't have felt believable.

No, it was much better that they pulled the surprise that these were the voices of characters that have been and gone, and that they interrogated him (which, let's not forget, was him interrogating himself!) on the mental burdens he carries, like how many people he has killed. Lori asked him what happened, and he had to admit that he loved her and he always did, but he just couldn't put it back together. The mystery surrounding what happened between them turned out to be a decision Rick had made, where he had to push Lori away whilst he committed to keeping her alive. He couldn't let sentimentality cloud his clear-eyed plan to get her somewhere safe.

The tragedy was he thought there would be time afterwards to put everything right. The lesson is that there is never as much time as you think, and you can't rely on tomorrow.

So Rick returned to the fold and cradled his new baby girl and, whilst it is perhaps a tad implausible, I'll happily forgive it because it's a relief to see him back. God knows it looks like they're all going to need him, not least of all Maggie and Glenn. Michonne's arrival at the prison, for once herself looking extremely vulnerable but having the good sense to bring provisions to get her sanctity. No doubt she will relay to Rick and the rest what happened to their friends and, for sure, they're going to want to know about Woodbury and where it is and how it is they are going to get Maggie and Glenn back. However, the idea that they could stage a rescue attempts feels quite unlikely. What I think is more likely is that either Maggie or Glenn, at the hands of Merle, will give up the information about the prison and Rick and his group may have to face the unwelcome prospect of The Governor and co dropping by. . .

It's fair to say that the chance of them forging an uneasy friendship seem highly unlikely. With Maggie and Glenn kidnapped they have shown their hand about what kind of people they are. Rick and the rest are suspicious of people that offer them friendship, so they aren't going to be duped by those that attacked and took their people. Hopefully Rick will trust Michonne, take her in and get her patched up. Fact is they could definitely use her on their side for when things get rough!

Andrea has literally got into bed with the enemy, and I thought it was interesting how her character had a less savoury aspect revealed. She's always had an unsympathetic quality about her and whilst that has occasionally been tiresome and annoying, to see it come to the potential fruition it may lead to here is pretty cool. The possibility is that she could become the queen to the The Governor's king, and whilst he is keeping her in the dark and keeping a happy front I suspect she might be inclined to go with him on his more despicable actions. As he knows, and she admitted, she likes the killing. He observed that despite her protests she remained at the staged zombie brawl. Just a tip in the right direction and she could be quite the menacing force all of her own. She's the type that couldn't be counted on to do the right thing when put in a position of power.

The acid test will be in how she reacts to Maggie and Glenn. Will she consider them friends that she lost and still wants to help, or outsiders that once abandoned her who no longer have her loyalty? I rather fancy it will be the first, when it comes down to it. She may wrestle with her conscience for a while and make all the noises about wanting them treated right, but when it is expressed that they may present a threat to Woodbury she could easily change her tune.

Merle is back to his snarling, hatable character of old and it's nothing less than fun. In the best way he's a great villain; tough, nasty and eminently detestable. The measure of a good villain is in how much you want to see them get their comeuppance. I absolutely want Merle to meet a miserable end. . . but not quite yet. I still want him to encounter Daryl, for one thing, but the show needs him. Whilst The Governor contains all the growl it's Merle that provides the bite. Without Merle then The Governor is a dog with no teeth.

Daryl was on fine form this episode. His conversation with Carl about losing their mothers was candid and touching due to its lack of sentimentality. He said it how it was. And Carl admitted that he had been the one to finish Lori off, to which Daryl was sympathetic in his matter of fact way. For once there was some happiness in his life, when it turned out that Carol was alive after all and had just shut herself away in a cell. Thankfully he didn't put a bullet in her skull when he finally went to check out what was making the noise. . . Daryl scooped her up in his arms and carried her away in a nice parallel to how Rick held his own child for the first time. Strong bonds confirmed, clearly drawn lines about who is important. This decimated group can scarcely take any more loss, which is precisely why the kidnap of Glenn and Maggie will be a heavy blow and, more importantly, the new threats and dangers The Governor and Woodbury hold seem even more intimidating.

It's getting closer and closer to the two sides meeting. . . Oh I can't wait!

What was the best part?

You have to enjoy Michonne's ambush and battle with Merle and his men, rudely interrupted by a posse of walkers entering the fray to mix things up even more. That was terrific stuff. But Rick's emotional acceptance of the weight of his conscience, talking on the phone with Lori, was satisfying mostly because The Walking Dead didn't cheapen it by making it into a telegraphed 'surprise' twist. Instead the surprise that all the previous voices had been characters we'd known and lost was a startling turn and laid out the truth that these phone calls had been all about Rick confronting himself and, most importantly, forgiving himself. He's been carrying these guilt ghouls in his conscience and there has to be a point where he can let himself off the hook. Perhaps with a new baby in his arms he can try and face a new dawn with a clean slate.

What do I think will happen next?

I think Merle and The Governor are going to go to torture town with Maggie and Glenn, perhaps getting the information out of one by threatening the other. Individually they might possess the will to keep their secrets (although Glenn is notoriously bad at keeping his mouth shut!) but if, say, Maggie had a gun put to her head and would be shot unless Glenn spoke up then I don't see him keeping schtum. How will The Governor play it? Go straight out on a prison assault? Or try and offer Rick the false hand of friendship? 

I don't really see what Rick and his group have that The Governor might want, except perhaps the baby. The Governor lost one daughter and there's Rick with a fresh baby girl, days old. . . It's a chilling thought, but exactly the kind of terrible direction The Walking Dead has the audacity to make us face.

The Walking Dead: S03 Ep05 - Say The Word

What happened?

In Woodbury preparations are underway for a town party. Michonne’s distrust causes her to persuade Andrea they should leave but she is made to appear unreasonable. Andrea stays, and Michonne goes alone. However, Andrea’s warm feelings about the place turn when she sees that the party arranged by The Governor involves a staged fight with walkers involved.

Ric goes into meltdown following the death of Lori and enters the prison alone with an axe, attacking walkers. Meanwhile Maggie and Daryl venture out to procure milk and find a nursery school has some of the things they need. They return safe to feed the baby. Ric, alone in the prison, is suddenly broken from his daze by an unexpected event: a telephone ringing.

Thoughts

A lot of questions and a lot of confusion. And if you thought the biggest question would be about who was on the phone then you’re wrong. I had more perplexing matters (which may actually answer the phone question!) on my mind. Namely: what happened to Carol?

I thought that possibly I had missed a major event in the previous episode. The way the likes of Daryl and Carl were mourning the loss of T-Dog, Lori and Carol, and there were three graves for them (well, more like memorials) I started to think I had totally overlooked the death of a major character in the previous episode. I remembered T-Dog’s demise. And of course I recalled Lori’s final moments. But Carol? Last we saw of her she was heading out of the door because T-Dog allowed her to escape, and then Daryl later found her bandana and assumed the worst.

I just assumed Carol would emerge, alive and well, and offer some relief from the grief. In all honesty I’d clean forgot she was missing until people started discussing she was dead. And she didn’t emerge to prove otherwise. She didn’t show up. So where did she go? As of now I have to assume that The Walking Dead hasn’t just killed off one of its longstanding characters off-screen. That would actually be a terrible thing to do, and extremely clumsy to boot. So that means Carol is surely still in the prison somewhere and has just got herself trapped, most likely. Penned in by walkers. And maybe, just maybe, she just happened to get herself trapped in a part of the prison that has a telephone. . .

So that’s the first and most practical answer to the question of who is on the phone. It’s Carol. And whilst news of her survival won’t be enough to assuage the guilt-ridden grief crisis Rick is experiencing it might just temper it, softening the hard edges, and bring some life back into his blank staring eyes. Alternatively, mind, it could be that the phone isn’t really ringing at all. Rick’s mental strain may have snapped at the boundaries of sanity and he’s picked up a telephone to speak to a voice on the other end when the whole thing is in his head.

I’m 50/50 on that being a good plot or an annoying one. I don’t really believe it will happen, although I can’t help but think about how quick Rick seemed to be snapped out of his stupor by the telephone. Glen appearing to grab him by the shoulders and scream in his face didn’t work – but just a call on the phone and he’s right back in the room. If it’s Lori on the other end then we’ll know for sure!

I am more inclined to believe that the voice on the other end of the phone (if we hear it at all) will be someone new. Possibly it could be someone in some kind of command, suggesting a location Rick and his group could head to. If we don’t hear the voice then we will, as viewers, be put into the same position as the rest of Rick’s group upon hearing such a thing: how could we trust it was real?

However, as the situation proved when it came to getting provisions for the baby, the sheltered walls of the prison are not going to be an easy place to raise a baby. The scarcity of baby supplies (and just how under-prepared the group were for the basics, such as sheets and clothing, let alone food) means keeping the baby fed and healthy is not going to be easy. With Lori dead the simple matter of baby milk has now become a serious issue. They may be able to plunder the surrounding area for stuff but it is never going to be replenished, so the need to cast their net further afield will become apparent unless they move. So Rick marching back into group having had a chat on the phone with a man who has told him about the promised land, if that comes to pass, will present an interesting dilemma.

Meanwhile, over in the promised land town of Woodbury, The Governor notched up a few more questions about what’s going on with him. The business with the walker girl he called his daughter initially seemed clear-cut – this was his real daughter that he hadn’t been able to let go of. That may even be the way of it. Yet what about the names in the pad? For some reason I got the impression they were connected, the young girls and the girls’ names, as though he had been working through a list of them as, potentially, replacement daughters. . .

OK, that sounds pretty weird now I am writing it down. But this is a man that keeps a wall of walker heads in jars so, you know, weird isn’t off the table for debate. Yet whilst there’s a strange logic to him taking these young girl walkers and finding one that most reminds him of the daughter he lost it seems odd that he would know their names and be crossing them off when they didn’t work out. So, sure, perhaps the girl is his real daughter and he just keeps her around because he can’t bear to be apart. That just leaves the question of who the girls in the pad are and, most disconcertingly as an insight into The Governer’s state of mind, what prompted the pages of scribble that followed.

Another question about The Governor. Why does he talk like an Elvis impersonator? That’s not quite as throwaway a remark as it may first seem. It may be intention. The Governor is all about image and façade, impersonation, from the secrets he keeps to how he hides his real name.

As Michonne forewarned and Andrea is starting to find out, The Governor, like the town he keeps, isn’t all he seems to be. I did think that Michonne ought to have made a better stab at trying to persuade Andrea to her point of view. She seemed so certain in her opinion that things weren’t right with the place and, yet, didn’t offer up anything tangible to suggest otherwise. If she had really seen The Governer with his walker daughter (it was ambiguous if she had seen anything) then it might have been an idea to mention that as part of her arguments for leaving! Yet between finding walkers in cages (we’ll get to them!) and the hint that the soldiers had been slaughtered by The Governor and his men, Michonne really doesn’t have much to back up her claims.

I did like the remark Andrea made about how Michonne as a person was disappearing. Since we’ve been introduced to her there has been very little sense of who she is and so a comment like that puts a nice underline on it. Michonne feels like a sketched-thin character because her personality has been dissipated and faded behind an arrow-straight will to keep moving and survive.

Andrea’s behaviour was a bit odd. I mean, she took the trouble to pack up her stuff and commit to leaving. And the only thing that stopped her from going was when, contrary to what Michonne said, they were actually allowed to leave! Just take a second and consider that. What Andrea wanted to happen, to justify leaving, was to be prevented from leaving! Had their way been barred then Andrea would have demanded they go. But since they were free to go she elected to stay and let Michonne go alone, ultimatum honoured. Andrea has always been a sometimes contradictory (that’s a kind way of saying inconsistently written) character.

I am sure we won’t have seen the last of Michonne. She doesn’t strike me as the type of person that will fall on her sword and turn back to Woodbury, mind, but if she potentially encounters Rick’s group she could be the one that brings the two factions together. Previously I assumed Merle would be the agent of that inevitability but he seems rooted in town unless he gets further information about his brother. Michonne could find Rick’s group, mention Andrea, and since they may be in dire need of home comforts to care for their baby they could be drawn to the place and Michonne might just show them the way. . .

So to the first sprinklings of unease about the town, at least from Andrea’s perspective, surrounding the choice of entertainment The Governor endorses. The initial brutality of it, with the baying crowd, was nicely undercut by The Governor’s confession that it was all staged. (Did anyone else instantly start thinking about WWE during this scene!?) Just when you thought the mask had slipped to reveal the monster he backed it up with something reasonable and justified.

We were kind of led to believe that the walkers we saw Merle rounding up and pulling the teeth out of (a moment I did have to shield my eyes from the screen for) were used for the fight show, as replacements for the ones Michonne slaughtered. However, I can’t help but wonder if there’s more purpose for them. It was curious how the scientist guy evaluated them, looking in their eyes, making me think he was looking for particular walkers to try and ascertain some that perhaps maintained a semblance of humanity, something he could work with. I mean, why be so selective about walkers that were just going to be used in a throwaway show that was staged anyway?

The scientist guy was also overly-concerned about the use of power, and how he perceived it was being wasted. Possibly I’ve got a flavour for Michonne’s paranoia, but I couldn’t help but think he had ulterior motives for his concern beyond just the town running low on such resources. Such as? I don’t know. Just something.

After the high-tension and shocks of the last episode it was always going to be a hard act to follow, so this episode did have a little bit of a ‘filler’ quality to it – although it’s still, for me, head and shoulders better than most other shows around at the moment. I noticed this episode did seem to have quite a lot of comic book framing – characters’ faces, wide-eyed, front of shot in a stylised moment. The Walking Dead does have a certain kind of style that makes it definitely identifiable but not one that can’t be riffed on, with the occasional turn to handheld cams for gritty action or perfect composition shots as though hand-drawn to be iconic cell frames. Without the ringing telephone jolting Rick, and us, into a sharp focus for what will happen next it wouldn’t have generated much must-see zest but it’s still in fine form.

I suppose the only real misgiving I have is that the show is having to spread itself over two locations, with so many characters, and it feels like it’s not quite managing to give everyone screen-time justice, like Hershal and his daughter are barely memorable other than as bystanders. Getting to cut away to a different location kind of allows the show to get off the hook. Previously we were always in the same place, with the same crowd, and thus everything that was happening generally affected all that was occurring. It’s a small shift and one The Walking Dead is just about juggling without dropping the ball. I’d certainly prefer this than a one prison episode, one town episode flip-flop structure – but I still maintain that the show will improve when the two factions come together.

What was the best part?

Whilst I did enjoy seeing the unlikely tender moment when Daryl took charge feeding the baby, it was over to Michonne to steal the crown for the episode’s golden moment. Skulking around The Governor’s private quarters she happened across a cage full of walkers. Reunited with her sword, she did what came natural. What I particularly liked about the scene was how it allowed Michonne to open the cage and then strike a hero pose, sword readied, waiting for the walkers to meet her blade and looked for all the world like it was about to cut right there, leaving the rest to our imagination.

Instead we were treated to seeing Michonne in action, deftly hacking down the walkers with effortless aplomb. Her personal skills may need work but there’s no doubting that the woman can handle herself!

What do I think will happen next?

On the telephone will most likely be Carol who, surely, turn out to be trapped or confined somewhere in the prison. Even if she isn’t on the phone I feel that must be what has happened to her. So if it isn’t her on the phone then I suspect it’ll be someone we’ve never met yet and who, if Rick brings it to the group, everyone else will find hard to believe even exists. And possibly they may not!

The Walking Dead: S03 Ep04 - Killer Within

What happened?

The prison is sabotaged by the convict Rick had condemned to death, releasing walkers into the compound. Lori, Maggie and Carl are separated from the group inside when Lori goes into labour. Problems in the delivery mean Maggie is called upon to perform a cesarean that Lori knows she won't survive but she demands it so that her baby will. When the baby is free Carl shoots Lori in the head to ensure she won't return.

Rick and the group manage to clear the prison of walkers at the cost of T-Dog's life, also, and then Rick is forced to take in the devastating truth when he learns what has happened to Lori and what his son has done.

Meanwhile, Merle has reached a decision to go and look for his brother. The Governor asks both Andrea and Michonne to stay, yet while Michonne remains mistrustful Andrea convinces to stay on for a little while longer.

Thoughts

I think the correct response to this episode can be succinctly captured in one word: 'Wow'.

The episode title, Killer Within, was put to work in myriad ways, but perhaps one of the most sophisticated interpretations was to do with Rick himself and it's worthwhile dealing with that issue first. The episode began with Rick committing once more to another act of what was becoming a commonplace hard, firm leadership with brutal decisions. The two prisoners had failed to stick to their end of the bargain and wanted to join the group and Rick (with Daryl's complicity) decided that wasn't going to happen and they had to hit the road.

As someone said, it was a certain death sentence, but Rick now houses a 'killer within' and will allow such things to pass. I touched on it previously, however, about how it was that Rick once condemned Shane for having that same brutal survival mentality. At the time I thought The Walking Dead was simply showing us how times have changed and shaped Rick's decency into something more compromised. Now, however, with this episode, it feels like the show has been quietly setting Rick up to eventually face up to his actions with a harsh penalty.

Rick was tough on the man that would, at the start of this episode, set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the terrible outcome. There was a choice, at that moment when the man begged to be let back inside - Rick could have let him in or, as he did, shut him out. The moral rights and wrongs of the matter can be debated indefinitely, but what is definite is that the man released walkers into the prison and messed with the power and, after that, tragedy followed. Rick's conscience is going to carry that and, I suspect, not going to forget it.

Will it prompt a change of heart? A way of making him review his harsh decision-making? Like, will the two prisoners he was intent on setting loose be allowed into the fold now? I suspect they will - they proved themselves. More at stake is how Rick will be able to forgive himself, because that's not going to come easily. Far, far from it. Something like this isn't a thing that you just eventually get over - this kind of event can forge irrevocable changes in a person.

Andrew Lincoln's performance when he saw Maggie emerge holding the baby was absolutely sensational. You could read the progression of his thought processes. The baby was Lori's, yet Lori wasn't there. That meant. . . Well, that meant the baby had proven to be a 'killer within' - another angle on the episode's title. And as Rick stumbled upon the realisation Lori was gone he then saw Carl, the traumatised boy, and the logical progression of what his son must have done to ensure Lori stayed dead also slowly registered. The horror of it all sank in. He had lost his wife, and his son had had to be the one to put a bullet in his mother's brain.

Bad day all round.

It's worth mentioning the question of whether Carl actually did commit the deed. I personally think he did. I think keeping the grisly act off-screen was more a matter of sensitivity than ambiguity. After Lori had said her heart-rending goodbyes to her son and passed away she was left out of focus when on-screen. We never saw her dead face. I think that was a conscious, artistic decision from the director and a nice touch.

Mind, I don't think we have seen the last of Lori. I save scope for there being some kind of flashback showing us in more detail what it was that drove a wedge between Lori and Rick. As it was, Lori and Rick last saw each other with a fence between them. Lori managed a semi-smile, perhaps because she thought Rick was looking at her - but it was rendered unclear if Rick was returning her gaze. Such a moment was significant at any time, but that it turned out to be their last moments of possible connection just makes it absolutely devastating.

It really was a battering ram of an episode. Such was the crushing avalanche of emotion about Lori's death, and the manner of it, that it's easy to forget that also tucked away was the gruesome demise of another of the show's longstanding characters - T-Dog. To be frank he's been more than just a little bit sidelined, particularly during the second season, so his departure won't leave much of a vacuum. Most other episodes it would have been a seismic event, and it did look a particularly horrible way to go, but in this episode it was a sleight of hand before the real gasp-inducing reveal.

The plot ticking over with Andrea and The Governor took a couple of interesting turns. Contrary to my certainty last week, The Governor actually did reveal his real name to Andrea (although possibly he was lying!). Indeed, all round he was a slightly nicer character here. I suspect this is mostly because we saw The Governor in the presence of either Andrea or Michonne, people he is looking to recruit and keep on side, so it's only expected that he wouldn't show any mean elements. On saying that, I think I was perhaps guilty of painting him purely in shades of black from my first impression when The Walking Dead clearly has intentions of giving him more depth than that. I doubt they'll go so far as to try and make him likable but, sure, understandable in his misdeeds would be welcome.

Merle has elected to go off and seek out Daryl and, I suppose, he will almost surely be successful as it seems he will be the catalyst that brings the two factions together. He's another character that seemed to be painted with a softer brush this episode as well, actually. Michael Rooker is another member of the cast that gives a terrific performance so I hope the show doesn't just drop him out of the world whilst he goes on his brotherly hunt. We've only just got him back so let's at least keep tabs on him!

This was easily the best episode of the new season, and a highpoint of the whole show - well-earned mainly because it had the guts to kill off a character that you would have almost certainly considered untouchable, especially at this stage in the game. Once again The Walking dead knows how to land its big plot bombs at perfectly judged moments and, most importantly, how to literally execute them for maximum impact.

Like I said, wow.

What was the best part?

Without question it was Lori's goodbye. Very moving moment, with her hugging her son for the last time and telling him he was the best thing she had ever done, and that he had what it took to survive this world. Tender stuff. Which made the violent birth of new life tempered with the ordeal that Carl shouldered in shooting his own dead mother through the skull just feel all that more vivid. It was a scene that swept you through tears, shock, relief and than left you agog as you realised all that had just happened.

What do I think will happen next?

I suspect Rick is not going to take too well to fatherly duties. Indeed, I wonder if he is going to have a longterm problem bonding with his new baby at all. This 'killer within' was obliviously responsible for the death of Lori, for one thing. Irrational as it is, Rick may struggle to come to terms with that. Furthermore, in the back of his mind, the idea that the baby is Shane's might take seed and germinate. For Lori he was prepared to take the baby as his no matter what. With Lori gone? What reason would he have to claim the child as his when it may have no more blood relation to him than it would to anyone else? These and many other guilts and rages will be flowing through Rick - dark days lie ahead.

Fringe: S05 Ep03 - The Recordist

What happened?

Searching for the next videotape Olivia and the Fringe unit find a small community living in the forest that have dedicated their lives to recording as much of history as possible before The Observers - or The Invaders as they are called - can erase and change the record. The cost of this is prolonged exposure to an incurable virus that mutates their skin.

When the final piece of videotape is located deep in the mine and The Observers have managed to work out what the Fringe unit are up to, it falls to one of the community members to retrieve the tape at the cost of his own life.

Thoughts

I'm not going to go on at length about this episode because I feel like it's one that's better forgotten sooner rather than later. Frankly, I thought this was one of the worst episodes of Fringe that I have ever seen. I thought the community in the woods thing, gathering data, just felt weird in a bad way rather than an interesting way. And I also thought that the make-up effects on their skin looked weak. Seriously, it looked like bad low-budget sci-fi from the 60s. Anyone new tuning into Fringe for the first time would have seen absolutely nothing that would make them think this was one of the more sophisticated shows around.

The plot itself, with the father misdirecting the gang so he could emerge to do the heroic thing, was wholly predictable. It was so predictable I think my brain went into snooze mode, watching it go through the motions, to the extent that I can barely even remember how the conclusion went.

Shit title, too. 

The characters seemed to have little memory of events that had occurred previously. I thought that Etta was particularly bland this week, and considering she was at her most interesting last week that was a shame. Oh there was a whole subtext going on about Olivia and Peter living up to the ideal that Etta and other surviving members of humanity had held for them, and there's definitely something interesting to be mined out of that idea, but that wasn't in evidence here. The idea that Etta is meeting her long lost parents and near-comic book level of hero all in one mix, countered by the reality that they are just people all along is a contrast that has a lot of potential. I don't want Fringe to stop exploring that. In the same way Olivia and Peter need to recognise that Etta is not the little girl they lost but, instead, her own woman who has shown tremendous resource and survival capacity.

Not that she showed much of it this episode. Mostly Etta just hung around on the sidelines, letting everyone else do their thing. Ho-hum.

So, anyway, after all was said and done, the gang got another piece of videotape and ostensibly that was the only thing to take away from this episode.

That's it. That's all I've got to say about it. I'd really like to muster up the energy and interest to write more, say more, and for all that my dopey brain can't recall I'd like to go and read a bit about this episode and see what others made of it. But I can't be bothered. And this blog is as much about my reaction to the TV shows I watch as it is a resource for analysis and reaction. So my reaction is one of deep can't-be-arsed and, fingers crossed, a hope that this was just a blip piece of filler and Fringe will be back on top of its game next week.

What was the best part?

When it ended.

Oh, all right. The part where the kid flicked through the comic book and showed us how Olivia had been interpreted by a new generation was interesting. If it paves the way for her being considered something of a hero brought back to life that's a concept I can get on board with. 

What do I think will happen next?

The hunt for videotapes continues. The Observers are evidently hotting up the trail and turning the screw, which needs to happen to give this mini-quest some urgency. But I feel that Fringe needs to hurry this all along and get the plot wheels turning. It does have something interesting and unexpected up its sleeve yet, right?

Misfits: S04 Ep02

What happened?

The gang discover that Finn has been keeping his girlfriend tied up and bound because she had a power to make him into her slave. When Finn learns that Seth has the power to take other people's power he sees a way for him and his girlfriend to have a future, but Seth is not interested. However, when Finn lets his girlfriend use him as a slave again then Jess steps in and gets Seth to take the girlfriend's power once and for all.

Finn is subsequently kicked out and he joins Rudy in using the community centre as a place to call home. Seth, meanwhile, states that was the last use of his power he would do and Curtis encounters a new probation worker, called Lola, who does not seem to be quite what she says she is. . .

Thoughts

On the whole this episode wasn't quite as entertaining as the previous one, but I still liked it. I think it's biggest problem was the focus on Finn who, once it transpired he was merely keeping his girlfriend tied up because she was using him as a slave, lost a lot of his initial intrigue. I did empathise with him, to an extent, but the trouble was his girlfriend came across as nothing but a spiteful girl that really ought not to have stayed with him. It wasn't made entirely clear but I had to assume that her power to control Finn was purely for Finn alone; she couldn't make anyone else do her bidding. In that notion then she had a reason to stay with him, but otherwise there wasn't any indication that she would have stayed with him - even if he hadn't tied her up and made her shit into a bucket.

The episode worked well to indict Finn as rather weak-willed and lacking in self-esteem. His power to control objects with his mind seems to stem from the fact that in real life he is someone that suffers from a lack of power to control what happens around him, or the people he meets. His power is a manifested inversion of his personality, and that's quite cool.

The point that the girlfriend was behaving badly, and that Finn was willing to accept it, became the point where Jess decided that she needed to intervene. It didn't feel quite believable that Jess would have invited him back to stay at hers (it's curious that she seems to have stepped into the world of Rudy and Finn at the bar without there being any trace of what life and friends she had before!) but if Misfits is trying to create a new coupling out of the two newbies then, yeah, it might just work. We have still to learn what it was that Jess actually did to get herself on probation and quite what she's all about. She seemed to lose a bit of her edge this episode but, for now, I am still interested in who she is and what she's really all about.

The episode did serve the purpose of properly getting Finn into the gang, albeit hooked up with Rudy who is a one-man whirlwind of depravity. Well, actually, two men. Well, actually, as the preview for the next episode showed, three men! Really looking forward to seeing how that works out, and the next episode also had other elements seeded here that suggested there was much to look forward to. That's the other problem this episode had - it was a bit of bridging exercise between the start and where this series was going for more interesting fare. Well, hopefully.

This episode there was the brief curiosity of the new barman, Alex. When Jess blatantly flirted with him he went from friendly and laidback to uptight and wary. His change in behaviour was brushed aside by Curtis as him being gay, but I suspect that's not it at all. Quite what the truth of the matter is I don't know but it was a small nugget tucked away for a later episode I am sure.

More blatantly was the arrival of Lola, the trainee probation worker. Again, she was just seeded here so she can feature more prominent in the next episode or more. I don't for one second buy that she is who she says she is, but quite what her agenda is and what she wants from our misfits awaits to be seen. It certainly won't be anything good - it never is! We still don't know why the current probation worker is such a snarling ball of hate, either. It could be a power, it could just be the way he is. I'd rather it was a power, though - him to just be that way without motive or reason seems somewhat unjust.

Rudy was busy stealing the episode in every scene here, though. His antics with the blind girl (with a racist guide dog that could speak to her, no less!) were a scream. I actually liked the concept that she would be a racist in the first place, without apology or sob story attached. She just was one. So it wasn't quite as terrible when Rudy made a makeshift condom out of clingfilm that covered a bowl of dog food. It was truly outrageous, and exactly the kind of thing that Misfits plies its trade from. At least with a character like Rudy he can always be called on, even in a subplot, to make up for any shortfalls throughout the rest of the episode.

Ultimately a forgettable episode but it did a lot of work that will hopefully put things in motion for the rest of the series. Rudy and Finn living together, Alex the barman, Lola the probation worker. . . Yes, lots of threads to be pulled on to no doubt reveal something abhorrent and amusing in equal measure.

What was the best part?

Rudy bagged the standout scene, banging the blind girl with the clingfilm condom which was then concluded with the reveal that the blind dog had a psychic connection to the girl and was telling her what was happening. Absolutely bonkers. Whoever thought of that needs both a pat on the back for congratulations and to perhaps seriously consider what is wrong with their mind!

What do I think will happen next?

The next episode paved the way for what looked like an interesting development with the apprentice probation worker, Lola, and I know that another Rudy will be showing up - one that looks to be an evil counterpart. For Lola I can only imagine she is there to use the misifts gang for their powers in some fashion. Maybe she has somehow gotten wind of the number of bodies they have buried over the last three series (and this one!) and wants to get them on her side for nefarious purposes - or she wants revenge.

Alex the barman, as a prediction, won't be gay. But he will have something horrible about him - be it physical or otherwise - that causes him to prevent anyone from getting to know him intimately. That's my best guess. I appreciate it's not great. But whatever.

The Walking Dead: S03 Ep03 - Walk With Me

What happened?

Andrea and Michonne are captured by The Governor and taken to his small town of survivors. Whilst Andrea is taken in by the amenities and apparent decency of this tiny civilisation, Michonne keeps a wary mistrust. It's a mistrust that may not be groundless, as The Governor slaughters a military unit in an ambush to take their weapons and is seen in his private room, staring at a wall full of severed heads in jars.

Thoughts

This, friends, was the first episode of The Walking Dead that didn't feature Rick. It was a rather bold departure for the show, particularly when it was ostensibly resting on Andrea's shoulder to take the leading role when she hasn't really been always a favourable or central character. What the episode did have in its locker, to spread the burden, was a couple of other big hitting characters and scenarios to make us forget about Rick and Lori and the prison they were setting up home in.

The return of Merle was one such big moment. Bringing him back properly, not just as an hallucination (which was not-so-subtly referenced in his first appearance), was a smart move. It also typified on a smaller scale what this episode was doing. With the introduction of Merle what our thoughts naturally turn to is the character not present - Daryl - who we know will one day come into contact with his brother.

I did like that Andrea spoke up and informed Merle that Daryl and Rick had gone back to look for him. And whilst it was in keeping with his character that he wasn't going to rejoice and be eternally grateful for their efforts, he did at least keep a measure of composure in his reaction to hearing about it. Quite how calm and collected he would be should he actually meet either of them in person is another matter. He considers Daryl to be the soft-hearted one, but maybe he's in for a surprise when he sees what a skilled and ruthless survivor Daryl has become. Yes, Daryl has developed a measure of compassion and loyalty but give the man a weapon and he's as deadly as can be.

A straight out fist-fight between the two brothers? Hard to call, but I'd say Merle's brute force (not to mention his false 'hand'!) give him the edge.

So the appearance of Merle did bring about thoughts of Daryl, off-screen. Likewise the introduction of The Governor and his small town, false utopia only makes us think about Rick and his little clutch of civilisation and what may happen when the two worlds eventually collide. In response to that I find it hard to imagine Rick and co abandoning their weapons and independence to be a part of The Governor's community. Whilst the place does present a powerful draw in terms of its amenities and security, I just don't see Rick letting his guard down as easily as Andrea has done.

The differences between Andrea and Michonne were interesting to see. The only thing I am missing between the two of them is a sense of what they mean to each other. Andrea complained that conversations between them had been somewhat one-sided, which does serve to maintain the mystique around Michonne. Yet they have gone through an entire winter together, evidently through some tough scrapes and close calls, but there was little feeling of that between the two of them. The most prominent question to emerge out of this episode was the identity of the two zombies Michonne walked around with (which, it transpired, served the purposes of masking her from other walkers - which I predicted last week, and to carry around her bags - which was an obvious practical purpose that never occurred to me!).

Michonne cut their heads off without blinking when she thought they would be the difference between getting caught or not. Only later did it emerge that these two walkers meant something to Michonne. She said otherwise, but I didn't buy it and I don't believe I was supposed to. What it highlighted was that Michonne has her own survival instinct. She spent pretty much the entire episode looking wary, which wasn't exactly much of a stretch for the actress but, in that town, a precautionary attitude seemed to be a more sensible approach than Andrea's fast acceptance into this potential paradise.

What to make of The Governor and his small town. Well, as a viewer, you'd have to be massively naive not to figure that things were going to be wrong on some level. I think this episode only scratched the surface about what messed up things are waiting to be exposed. But before picking things apart The Governor, for all of his faults, ought to also be credited for clearly marshalling together quite the feat. A secure town, with hot running water and fresh sheets. It may be a facade based on horrors unknown but, never-the-less, if the residents mostly live in ignorance about the atrocities that are committed to keep their way of life then The Governor has still pulled off something special.

And if you want to get symbolic about it, can't this town be considered a microcosm about much of the privileged Western world? We live in a society of peace and civilisation, but it is propped up and founded upon violent acts that got it in place and keep it that way.If this is the message The Walking Dead is mining here then I think it's very fertile ground and will be very interesting to see the show wrestle with this sort of morality.

The Governor himself is the lynchpin of the morality, and it's clear that he is a man that has a darkness at his centre that will make him a formidable presence on the show. The moment he crushed the  banter when Andrea was asking him his real name. . . "Never say never," she joked when he said he wouldn't tell her. He leaned in, meaningfully, and just said, "Never." It was like slapping her across the face. It begs the question of who he was before the outbreak, but perhaps the reason he doesn't want anyone to know his real name is because he doesn't want anyone to know about the man he once was because that man no longer exists.

Or it could be that he believes he is no longer the man he once was, and the only way he has managed to mentally cope with the things he has seen and done was to bury it behind this 'Governor' persona, like a mask, so that he doesn't have to live with it fully.

Me, I just think he maintains the name 'The Governor' and nothing else because it generates that extra element of dictatorial control over his people. He isn't just a regular man with a regular name - he is 'The Governor' and what he says goes. The implicit dominance of the name 'Governor' renders all under his jurisdiction as 'the governed', subjugated by virtue of his title.

He's certainly a fascinating character, and I absolutely cannot wait for the moment when he and Rick come face to face. We haven't really got much of an idea of geography, so we don't know how close or far the small town is from the prison. I am going to go with the belief that they are relatively close together, fundamentally because it makes the most sense that they are reasonably close together in order to get the two factions interacting. The Governor will surely try to question Andrea more to try and work out more about the people she was with, where they came from and where they may have gone. But if he tries to take the approach against Rick that he did with the soldiers then he will surely discover he is not a man so easily taken. However, I suspect when the time comes for confrontation, The Governor might try to play the nice guy approach to lure Rick and his group in. . .

Still, no matter. I don't ever see Rick becoming a head in one of The Governor's jars!

What was the best part?

This wasn't an episode that was particularly littered with big standout moments - it was more of a slow build, cranking the tension handle, before the curtain came down to reveal The Governor in his private room. The opening scene with the helicopter crash was probably the best part - with Andrea and Michonne hiding in the trees and this unseen group picking through the wreckage. Between Michonne hacking down her zombies and the return of Merle it was a scene that totally pulled all Walking Dead fans into the episode and, as was crucial to the success of this instalment, made the absence of Rick and the rest of the lead characters a matter that was temporarily acceptable.

What do I think will happen next?

The Governor will want to know more about Rick's group, mainly because they could have things he wants to take for himself but, also, because he wants to keep his place secure and eliminate all other threats. He took Andrea and Michonne in as he perhaps perceived that they were people he could weave into his society. He took the military men out because they would be less likely to take orders from him and thus undermine his authority. And they had lots of guns. Now he knows that Rick is likely still out there, this potentially dominant outsider, he won't just sit back and let that pass by on the chance they may never encounter one another.

Michonne remains an interesting wildcard, though. I don't think she's going to be an easy sell on settling into this place, which may mean she wants to leave, and perhaps wants to persuade Andrea to go with her, and will encounter resistance to doing so from Andrea and other members of the community. Or The Governor may see that she is a possible rotten apple and he will want rid of her without letting Andrea go.

The preview for next week did show that Rick and the gang are back in the mix, and butting heads with the other prisoners they allowed to keep to their side, but all of that drama is but a sideshow to the main event of what happens when Rick and The Governor learn of each others' whereabouts and  meet up. I don't really think that will happen very soon, but it'll happen sooner rather than later.

Fringe: S05 Ep02 - In Absentia

What happened?

The quest to recover Walter's forgotten plan leads the group back to his old laboratory where they discover a camera has been ambered. Whilst Etta and Peter infiltrate secret areas of The Observers base, Olivia gets to know one of the human loyalists. Etta takes him away but releases him due to the pity she saw in her mother's eyes - he in turn vows to join the resistance.

Walter recovers the camera and watches a video of himself explaining that the clues revealing the masterplan to take down The Observers have been scattered around and that whoever is watching the video must find the courage and resolve to find them and complete the scheme.

Thoughts


I said last week that the first episode of this new season felt like it was rushed and cut corners to get through what it needed to do. I also said that it felt like Fringe used its first episode to put down a marker about where things where at now and to give the new season a platform to build from. Well, if this episode is any indication, my feelings have borne out because this felt like a far better, more confident return to form for the show. The characters had room to breathe and develop, there was no high-octane action tension to rush events through – it just felt like an altogether more assured outing.

The episode started with a similar dream sequence like Peter’s from last week, concerning the arrival of The Observers, only this time depicted from Olivia’s point of view. The scene showed that some kind of explosion must have immediately followed that rendered both Olivia and Peter injured and, during that time, they must have lost Etta. I am getting the impression that this may have been the very last time they saw her, thus why the recurring dream is so strong for both Peter and Olivia.

Peter also remarked that it had been just a few months for them, but years for Etta – suggesting that the resistance movement Olivia and Peter and Walter mounted before they ambered themselves was quickly started and quickly over. The world has endured The Observers for a long, long time compared to the brief period of oppression our heroes experienced. This disparity between Olivia and Peter as parents, particularly Olivia as a mother to Etta, and the fact that Etta had fundamentally grown up into a tough world and had barely known them, was primarily what the episode began to explore.

Olivia had the more pivotal encounter with Etta, which I shall get to, but it’s worth mentioning that Peter had his moment where he saw the rage that existed in his daughter as they walked through The Observer laboratory and glimpsed various experiments in progress. When she saw her friend (who I can only think of as Desmond!) as just a head she lost her cool and wanted to blow everything to get some payback. Only Peter there to hold her down and promise her that their time would come stopped her, and a good thing it was too. I did particularly like that moment, though, as not only did it show us the difference between Etta and a traditional heroine but it really made me buy the idea of Peter as father and steadying hand. It’s taken a while but he’s grown into himself. Strangely, I buy the idea of Peter and Olivia as parents more easily than I did them as a profoundly in love couple. The notion that they are together and in love as a trio, and that it’s essential they remain together for each other, feels much more vital. The stakes are higher now than they ever felt like when it was just about Olivia and Peter getting and staying together.

The main plot of the episode has, ultimately, made Fringe feel a bit like Harry Potter in search of Horcruxes! They are now in the hunt for pieces of video (possibly, or maybe it’ll be other clues) that will allow them to piece together Walter’s masterplan. There didn’t seem to be much of an indication from the video that was recovered about where the next clue could be found – but possibly there’ll be something embedded subliminally, or in slow-motion, or there’ll be something cryptic in the words Walter used. Obviously he’s not going to film himself spelling out where to go for the next clue in case the film were to fall into the wrong hands!

Fringe has been down this route before, during the third season, when the gang were set on trying to find all the different bits and pieces that would make the machine that Peter eventually climbed into to connect the universes. So a treasure hunt isn’t breaking new ground, and as a quest to give this new season structure I am quite happy about how it will play out. It may become particularly fraught should The Observers get wind of the fact that there is a plan scattered about the place that could defeat them – then it will turn into a more competitive race so I can well see that becoming a factor. There’s no doubt that The Observers would make formidable opponents in such a competition!

The emotional heft of the episode was found in the interrogation of the security guard. Etta’s no-nonsense approach to interrogation was against Olivia’s softly-softly approach, but I feel Etta made a fair point about how the world had changed and that this man was not worth her pity. The fact that he did turn out to be lying about the family he had told Olivia about was a particularly lovely touch. I liked that he had been wily enough to lie, and I liked that Olivia had fallen for it. She has a lot to learn about how people in this new world work, but the very fact that she isn’t so tainted the way an entire generation has been was the very thing the security guard saw in her eyes that made him want to fight on her side.

Likewise, Etta seeing the pity for her reflected in Olivia’s eyes, caused her to show pity of her own and it worked out to be a good move. So whilst it was a relatively quiet return to the action for Olivia, and she misread her subject, she still came out of it looking like the best hope for mankind in the fight against their enslavement. These kinds of reactions just pave the way for Olivia to really step up and become a true saviour that will vanquish oppression. Whilst I do hope Fringe is going to pursue a more interesting and convoluted path before it finishes forever I certainly won’t mind seeing a bit of good old-fashioned, good guys beat bad guys action. It can’t be too long before we see Olivia go into kick ass mode and start showing the future how she can rock it old-school. It may certainly cause Etta to look at her in a totally different light!

What was the best part?

I really enjoyed seeing Peter and Etta go beyond enemy lines and give us a glimpse into the twisted world of The Observers and their experiments. Presumably they have some kind of agenda, some reason to be conducting the things they are doing, but God only knows what it is. All I know is I liked the extra sense of tension it added to things – and then Etta seeing Desmond’s (I know, I know!) head in a jar and getting ready to open up a can of inappropriate whoop ass was an extra nudge towards everything turning to shit that loaned the episode an extra injection of high drama.

What do I think will happen next?

Well, the treasure hunt is afoot. So now the gang will be following Walter’s videotape breadcrumbs and try to track down more pieces of the plan. I fully expect there to have been some kind of cryptic clue within the videotape that Walter, or someone, will decipher and they will figure out where they have to go next. I also expect this breadcrumb clue-hunting to occupy the next few episodes at least, before things get to move onto the next phase. The drama will come from how long it takes for The Observers to get wise to what our heroes are up to and either try to stop them, or beat them to it.