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.