What happened?
Andrea realised The
Governor intended to declare war on Rick’s group and so slipped out of Woodbury
in a bid to get to Rick at the prison. After The Governor learned from Milton
what Andrea had done, he set out after her and managed to capture her before
she could make her presence known to Rick. She was taken back to Woodbury and
strapped into the torture chair he had originally devised for Michonne.
Thoughts
In a couple of ways
this episode seemed to be cut out of the template of a horror movie. Honing
itself mostly down to Andrea – the prey of the title – and The Governor’s
pursuit and monstrous plans for her, this episode played out and ended like any
number of horror movies you’ve seen. Like A Nightmare On Elm Street ending
with Freddie Kruger supposedly defeat only for the nightmare to continue, and
his arm to yank the mother off the doorstep. Similarly, the heroine of the first
Friday the 13th having survived, floating on a lake, for the shock
surprise of young Jason Voorhees to rear up out of the calm water and snatch
her away. If you’ve ever seen The Descent you’ll know that the bloodied,
screaming female survivor doesn’t clamber out of the hole in the ground to
salvation – instead it’s a cruel trick, a joke. There was actually a ‘Ha ha!’
graffitti’d on the wall behind Andrea when she left the factory having escaped
The Governor. She didn’t know it, but the cruel joke was yet to be sprung. Andrea,
arriving at the prison having escaped her hunter, at the vital moment where she
calls to Rick her voice is smothered by The Governor’s hand. Just when you
thought the worst was over, bang! The horrible ending slams hard before the
screen goes black in classic horror movie style.
There were plenty of
horror movie references littering the episode, too. The walker Andrea left hung
on a meat hook straight out of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to The Governor’s
whistling whilst he built his torture machine invoking Hostel; all
deliberate and all feeding into the tone of a one-off slice of standalone
terror amidst the regular, ongoing drama. Viewed in this respect this was a
strong episode and effectively did its job whilst also keeping the show plots
ticking over leading in to the final two shows of this season.
Andrea’s capture by
The Governor wasn’t quite the ending, of course. The final vision of Andrea
strapped to the infernal torture dentist chair was where the episode tapped
into a more classical type of horror, more of an Edgar Allan Poe vibe. I recall
the end to one movie based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, where amidst the action a
woman was locked into an iron maiden (an upright case of internal spikes and
few holes). Many things happened after that, where our heroes eventually
thwarted the villain and vowed to leave his terrible place and seal the door,
and after that door slammed shut the camera zoomed in to the woman we’d
forgotten about: her wide eyes blazing out from within the iron maiden, trapped
and certain to never be released.
The horror is not in
the manner of such a death, not that it isn’t horrible. No, I think the horror
that really taps into your fear centre is the thought of being in a situation
where certain death is an eventuality and, most crucially, there is no hope of
you getting out of it. That’s horror, folks. And the ending of this episode was
just such an Edgar Allan Poe moment where Andrea was revealed as a terrified
woman trapped in an infernal machine before the credits rolled. If this had
been a movie it would function as a perfect ending to a horror film. You’re left to imagine the lingering, torturous end that
Andrea would endure at the hands of The Governor before her certain death.
Of course, this
being a television show, the horror of Andrea’s predicament is tempered by the
fact that there’s more episodes to come and, with them, comes hope for Andrea
that someone, somewhere will find her and help her. The Walking Dead can’t
avoid that but, you know, hope can be perverted. The show could choose to
present the possibility for Andrea to be saved and then, you know, not save her.
It sounds unimaginable but, damn, it would certainly be horrifying.
As is you have to
imagine that her best chance is Milton. When Andrea suggested he come with her
to the prison he was conflicted about staying with Philip, who he has known a
long time, betraying he wants to leave Woodbury (seeing the torture chair
probably cemented the view that his one-time friend had become seriously
unhinged) but feels trapped since no one knows him at the prison. I thought
last week he would be a potential ally for Rick’s group and this only seems
like an event that is having the foundations laid out.
Milton is also,
surely, the most obvious candidate for the mysterious unknown person who
torched the walkers The Governor most likely planned to unleash on the prison.
The Governor certainly thinks so (having tried to trick the black couple into revealing
their guilt) when he remarked that he had already worked out who did it to
Milton. I’m not 100% sure it was Milton. Mostly I am but, for me, there’s an
off-chance possibility it was the black woman that did it. I looked at the
scene a second time, when The Governor threw out the test, and she didn’t speak
when The Governor asked his question but she did look like she was about to.
The gang that Rick
scared out of the prison, the people that I didn’t actually catch the names of so
I can only, unfortunately, refer to them as the black couple and the father and
son, got a little more exposure. The black couple have always been marked out
as good, decent people (the type that would have fit in perfectly with Rick’s
gang). The father, it was shown, has issues with how he feels shamed by not
being there to save his wife. But he also has issues of his own. When being
dangled over a pit of walkers his responses was to urge the black guy to do it,
drop him in.
Yeah, he’s got
problems all right. He’s not the type of guy you want to depend on or hang
around with.
Like Milton, the
black couple seem like decent people who may, after the battle between Woodbury
and the Prison, find themselves rebelling against The Governor and fighting for
the other side. It’s not so clear cut for them since they’ve been scared off by
Rick already – but in the right moment, if there’s a time and a place, a more
reasonable Rick could apologise for what he did and invite them back into the
fold. I wouldn’t understand the point of having them introduced, and their
characters developed, for them not to become more permanent members of the
show.
Last point is with
the first scene. A flashback to Andrea and Michonne, during their winter
together, where we discovered that the disarmed, de-toothed walkers that
Michonne used to lead around with her were men she once knew before they were
dead. It was clear she had little love for either of them so clearly they had
seriously wronged her in some way. The irony, by the end, was that idea of a
fate worse than death being meted out. Michonne avenged the wrongdoing of these
men by dragging them around as her walker slaves. Andrea, at the end of the
episode, would be bound in a chair designed to keep her alive and made to
suffer – a fate worse than a quick death.
What was the best
part?
It was a small,
brief moment but I really liked it. When The Governor was hunting Andrea and
she ran through the door and spotted the stairs were full of zombies it looked
like she was trapped between a rock and a hard place. The Governor thought he
had finally caught up with her, but instead she deftly turned the tables and
went through the door, onto the other side of it, and pulled it close to her to
let all the walkers come streaming through towards The Governor. Ingeniously
simple and a pleasure to watch.
It was a successful
moment because it actually created a question mark over whether The Governor had
actually survived (him fending off that many walkers looked like an
insurmountable situation) but, mostly, created the idea that Andrea had got
through the closest scrape so that when she arrived at the prison she would
have achieved her mission. This one moment paved the way for the shock surprise
of The Governor appearing at the crucial moment and cruelly snatching her back
to Woodbury.
What do I think will
happen next?
The battle between
Woodbury and the Prison will surely transpire during the next episode. I
suspect Rick won’t show for the meeting that has been arranged, the one where
he is supposed to give up Michonne, so instead The Governor will take his heavy
arms and perhaps more walkers and stage an assault on the prison. If that comes
to pass I anticipate an episode of tension and an extremely horrible
feeling like Rick and his people are hopelessly outnumbered and their fate
looking grim. I’m looking forward to it, perversely, mainly because I am
sure I am going to loathe seeing The Governor turn the screw on our heroes.
The last episode,
perhaps, will see Rick take the fight back to Woodbury where he may recruit
allies in the likes of Milton and the black couple and, perhaps, discover
Andrea. I can’t decide right now if it’s possible for The Governor to survive
beyond this season. . . I suspect he just might, but quite where Rick and his
group will be laying their heads once all of this battling is done is one I can’t
predict right now. The show has never stayed in the same place for more than
one season – from the camp in the woods in season one, to Hershal’s farm in
season two, now we have the prison in season three. I don’t foresee them
staying there, but if not there then where? With little asskicker in the group
they can’t go back on the road and hope to survive like they used to. . .
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