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!
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