Original air date: November 17, 2013
Review (with SPOILERS): The Governor was such a cartoonish villain by the end of Season 3 that “they” had to do something to rehabilitate the character if they wanted to use him again this season. It simply won’t work for a show that aspires to “prestige drama” status to simply allow the Governor to lurk in the forest, messing with the residents of the prison– driving trucks through the gate, luring in zombies, ringing the doorbell and then running away… That would just be a continuation of Season 3 and we’ve already seen that. So, a change was in order…
Whether the New Governor (NG) is more interesting than the Old Governor remains to be seen, but I’m more optimistic about the guy than I was last week. Last week, I viewed the Governor with dread, but now there is at least a chance the NG will offer something different than OG. I’m mildly curious to see how he gets along with his old thugs now that they’re reunited after trying to start a new life. That’s reason enough to applaud the episode a little bit.
The rest of the show is typical of TWD, with snippets of excellence mixed with really horrible judgement…
For example, I think it was a wonderful idea to focus this episode 100% on NG. The character needed a reboot, so let’s take our medicine and move on with the show. Great idea; except they didn’t finish and will have to come back next week it seems. Are they going to give us TWO whole episodes covering this guy and his character arc? I’m not sure NG is that interesting. I’d rather see what Carol is up to. It’s thinking like this that lead to the Star Wars prequels, with George Lucas deciding that we needed to see Darth Vader’s whole story.
Another problem is just how heavy-handed the story-telling was. This was right up there with Rick destroying his pig farm by feeding the piglets to the zombies and burning his farmer shirt. It’s nice that NG sees a chance to try again with a new family, but I’m left wondering if he would have felt the same if Meghan didn’t look so much like his own Penny. What if the surviving sisters/child were African-America? Would NG still have been moved to symbolically burn the picture of his own family and push it out the window to land in the pile of discarded butter beans?
Let’s talk about the NG’s cosmetic look. I really thought the longer hair and beard kinda made David Morrissey look better. He had a Snake Plissken thing going on for about 20 minutes. It was good. He actually looked like a guy to take seriously in the zombie apocalypse. But then after the commercial break, he’s back to being clean shaven looking like the OG. What?! Even if the shave was in the original script, why didn’t someone speak up and say, “I think this beard-look is good for David. He looks more rugged. Why don’t we keep it?”
The characters concern me too. Even if there is nothing glaringly bad about Lily and Meghan in this episode (more on Tara below), these basic characters come from the first TWD novel. That novel was pretty bad, despite having an interesting plot twist. I went through a phase reading zombie novels off the Kindle 99-cent bookstore a couple of years ago and THAT novel was among the worst I read. Why would anyone go back to that novel – that everyone agrees was crap – and pull characters? It just makes no sense.
And Tara… Fist bump?! The guy just did the necessary on your zombified dad, your niece is traumatized and you fist bump? How does that scene make the final cut? I try to imagine what circumstances would lead to that horrible scene with the fist bump. It would have to be something like the lead writer is “dating” a stripper and in a moment of passion told the stripper that she could “write a scene for TWD.” And now he can’t cut the scene or the stripper will tell the lead writer’s wife.
Ultimately, TWD had a decent amount of momentum over the first five episodes. They weren’t perfect, but they were pretty solid. I question the judgement of pausing that momentum to go back to the Governor. I’m a bit skeptical that the writers think this is raising the stakes. There’s just nothing about this show that makes me feel that I’m in competent hands.
Conclusion: If the show wants to revamp the Governor, a detour like this was probably necessary. It didn’t have to be this slow-paced, but he can’t come back as the same dude from Season 3. Unfortunately, despite this episode’s solid moments, there are still alarming bits of poor judgement with the storytelling. The show just doesn’t want us to trust it.
Grade: C
-Dean Stell