Original air date: December 1, 2013

[SPOILER ALERT]

Let’s approach this episode from a “glass half-full” perspective first.  There was a lot wrong with the episode as it relates to the entirety of Season 4– and we’ll talk about that a little bit, but for now let’s keep it positive.

Back when TWD first started on TV, you could hear fans of the comic hyperventilating, “Wait until they get to the prison…” anytime there was a complaint about anything in Season 1 or Season 2.  There was also a lot of collective “what-the-hell-are-they-doing” when the show visited the Centers for Disease Control and Herschel’s Farm before finally showing the prison at the very end of Season 2.  We comic fans remember the prison fondly because there were some great comic moments that happened there.  I won’t spoil them, because most of them didn’t appear in the TV show.

The thing that we forget about the prison is that it overstayed its welcome in the comics too.  They first arrived at the prison in issue #13 (October 2004) and didn’t leave until issue #48 (April 2008).  That’s 3.5 years in one setting and the comic fans did complain at the time.  Terms like “stuck” and “mired” were getting tossed around.

So, is it any real surprise that the TV show made some similar mistakes in terms of lingering on the prison?  In all ways, the TV show has been a pale imitation of the comic, so you wouldn’t really expect anything more from the show.  Perhaps the concept of two flawed men of the apocalypse leading their warring tribes into battle is just too sexy for fiction writers?  They just lose their minds and get lost in the moment.

But, the prison is gone now.  We have reason to look forward and be optimistic.  At the very least, the status quo is gone.  Rick’s gang is scattered hither and yon in the wake of The Governor’s attack and it will be entertaining to see how/if they survive and reconvene.  Let’s do a quick group inventory: (a) Darryl & Beth, (b) Rick & Carl, (c) The Bus of Redshirts and Glen, (d) Sasha, Bob, and Maggie, and (e) Tyreese & Carol’s daughters.  I didn’t catch Michonne’s direction, but I’m thinking she’s on her own again.  Basically, the gang is split up all over the place.  Furthermore, Carol is still out there somewhere and I’ll bet that we haven’t seen the last of Lilly and Fist-Bump Tara.

Honestly, when the show returns in the spring, they can probably get a decent amount of storytelling just from the fate of these small groups.  Fun things always happen on the “away missions” and now everyone is on an away mission.  How will Glen and Maggie get back together?  What happens when Tyreese and the girls run into Carol on the road?  You KNOW that will happen, right?  Rick wasn’t able to tell Tyreese about Carol before the tank started blasting.  That has potential to be a great episode.  Imagine the songs that Beth will sing to Darryl while he roasts raccoon meat over a campfire!

The beauty of post-apocalyptic storytelling is that you have fewer rules.  You can’t drive a tank through buildings in a normal story because the police would show up to stop the fun.  In the post-apocalypse, you can just drive a tank over stuff and really see what happens.  Let’s hope that show’s writers don’t waste this opportunity to do something new and bold.  Past performance indicates they will screw it up, but let’s see.  At the very least, we have a HUGE sense of unknown going into the spring and that is wonderful.

Now let’s talk about how the glass is half-empty.  Do you feel a like you want your money back for those two Governor episodes?  How about the 4-episode flu saga?  Did you catch the riveting dramatic moment where Lilly said to the Governor something like, “I don’t even know who you are anymore!”  She longs for those moments from two episodes ago when “Brian” played chess with her daughter for 20 minutes and her heart swooned because she had found true love and a protector for her daughter in the wastelands of the apocalypse.  Sigh…

The problem with the resolution to this episode is that nothing that’s happened this season so far really matters.  They flashed a lot of stuff in front of us: Rick’s foray into pig farming, Brian trying to turn over a new leaf, Herschel’s vigil over the sick, etc.  None of it mattered.  None of it really affected the ongoing saga.  And most of it wasn’t that pleasant to watch.  The point of character development is to develop and change characters in a meaningful way so you can tell interesting stories.  Of all the characters on the show, Herschel’s was the most poignant and he’s dead.

Honestly, you can imagine Scott Wilson’s character arc.  A career character actor who has done a lot of excellent work, he was probably initially tickled to be on a hit TV show.  He got to go to ComicCon and stuff like that.  But he probably recognized the morass that was TWD and realized that – at the age of 71 – he didn’t have time for this bullshit.  Just kill me.

As for The Governor/Phillip/Brian…this was a flushing of the toilet.  Just get him out of there.  It should have happened last season.

So, the finale is a mixed bag.  On one hand, there is reason for optimism just because we’ll get something new.  Will the story continue to roughly follow the comics?  Will they do something wholly new?  Even if the story isn’t riveting, novelty has its own attraction.  However, I’m concerned that with the same people in charge, we might get a story of how Tyreese gets diarrhea and depends on Carol (a.k.a. “The Karen Killer”) to bring him some diarrhea medicine and somehow that will be a powerful metaphor for something.  Or we’ll get another story where a character will change their name for no apparent reason and never really explain.  Or we’ll get another story where Rick weakly proclaims to some roadside bandits that he “isn’t in charge anymore” and that he has to discuss with his Board of Directors consisting of Carl and Lori’s voice from the Telephone.  Sigh…

Overall, it’s a good news/bad news situation.  The prison is behind us now, opening up storytelling opportunities.  The problem is that the writers have no instincts to capitalize on opportunity.  Unless you hear news of massive firings in the TWD writing room, keep your optimism muted. Until spring…

Grade: B-

– Dean Stell

Grade

Conclusion