Weekly Comic Book Review

The Story: Will Rick deliver a member of his group to the Governor in exchange for peace?

The Review:

1. A mostly nice episode for Merle & Michonne - Michael Rooker has been among TWD‘s best assets this season.  As an actor, he’s just interesting to watch. Every scene with Merle is always just a little more than the mere dialogue would suggest. There’s always something lurking under the surface, whether it’s betrayal of the group or an unwelcomed sexual advance or the threat of violence.  Even when saddled with this week’s stupid subplot from the writers (about searching the prison for drugs), Rooker is usually able to rise above the material.  He’ll be missed on a show whose stars are capable of little more than reading the lines (with a strained voice to disguise their English accent).

Credit should also go to the way the show has salvaged Michonne.  Remember Michonne during the fall season?  She was just an awful mess of glowering and saying very little.  Of course, it probably didn’t help that most of her dramatic scenes were with Andrea (who would make all of us glower), but still, the writers just didn’t know what to do with her during the fall.  Obviously they rewatched those episodes over the winter break and said, “Yuck.  How about we write some dialog for this lady?”  And it has mostly worked out.  I enjoy Michonne now and like how she slowly and calmly talked Merle into releasing her and trying to settle scores with the Governor.

2. Too much patronizing of the audience. - There is almost nothing more annoying than a TV show that patronizes the audience.  This episode wasted half of its running time with the morality of giving Michonne over to the Governor.  Are there really people in the audience who don’t understand the implications of that?  Let me break it down for you. You see, if the Governor and the prison go to war, MANY people are likely to die, so it might make sense to sacrifice ONE person to avoid further bloodshed.  Do you get it?  We can talk about it again in a slightly different way if you’d like.  You see, is Michonne really even a true member of the group or is she extra because she wasn’t even at the farm?  Even if Michonne is ‘worth more’ from a utilitarian standpoint than one-legged Herschel and his singing daughter, Michonne isn’t family.

Gah! I hate it when writers think that the audience is too stupid to figure out what is going on.  Part of the fun with these dilemmas is when they are vague and you can quietly consider what it means to YOU, rather than having it explained in a raspy dialog by Rick and Darryl.  Of course, the show wasn’t done being patronizing as we had to dive into the amoral cesspool of “gettin’ someone to do yer dirty work” with Merle… Or as the Governor put it, “He’s a wild card, but he’s effective.”  This whole trope of people like Merle being necessary evils because they do the dirty work is beyond annoying.  By the end of the episode, there was some interesting stuff related to Merle, and that higher-level material isn’t served by the patronizing.

3. Glen + Maggie - Just as Michonne has blossomed this spring, Glen has taken a real nose-dive.  He’s always mad and intense.  Clearly when the actor auditioned, they didn’t make him read any lines with intensity.  He did have that really great and intense scene with the zombie when he was held captive in Woodbury, but that intensity doesn’t translate well to his relations with fellow cast members.

Even if Glen’s decreasing Q-score makes him less fun, his relationship with Maggie is still an important part of TWD: If someone doesn’t start to make some babies, TWD will never be more than Rick and the Governor fighting over the last can of pinto beans.  So, it’s nice to see that some ideals like marriage and monogamy are surviving and that TWD isn’t falling into one of those post-apocalyptic tropes where women are forced to become breeding stock.  I worry a little for this show when they fiddle with these higher ideas because they’ve shown a propensity to dive (badly) into the “what makes us human” theme. Nevertheless, they didn’t muck it up this week.
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The Story: The Governor is a dirty, back-stabbing bastard.

The Review (SPOILER ALERT):

1. Tight, horror-themed episode - This was a very good episode.  The real stars of this show are mostly behind the camera and in the editing suites.  That Andrea/Governor cat-and-mouse in the old factory was really HOT and most of the hotness stems from lighting, camera-work, editing, music, etc…  It really makes me wonder why this show doesn’t do THAT all the time.  It’s like a baseball pitcher who has 100 mph fastball, but is constantly dicking around with mediocre curve balls. Just throw the fastball over and over and over until it stops working.

An interesting observation about the old factory scene was how much better it was than earlier scenes of Andrea doing her 5K.  Zombies outside aren’t very scary because you have to construct weird circumstances for the zombies to have a chance (like stopping to rest against a double-trunked tree so a zombie can sneak up and hold you in place for the other zombies).  Zombies in dark places where you don’t have room to maneuver and don’t know where you are going are really scary.  It gets a lot worse when you’re being stalked through a dark place by a creepy psychotic ex-boyfriend with a shovel and a whistling habit.   That whole scene was tense and came out very well.  It kinda reminded me of those late-80s/early-90s thrillers like Deceived or Malice or Blue Steel.

But, even though the big set-piece was the star of the episode, it wasn’t the only good horror moment.  Did anyone anticipate the Governor nabbing Andrea right at the threshold of the Prison?  She was THIS close and then bam!  That particular surprise was made more effective because it wasn’t telegraphed in advance.  If you pay attention, the episode had previously telegraphed several other Andrea surprises such as the tree zombie and a few others in the factory, but they took away the telegraphing camera movement for the big surprise.  They didn’t want us to see that one coming.  Good for them.

There was even a very cool Silence of the Lambs-esque scene at the very end: out-of-context, insanity rock music and first-person zooming camera through the crazy man’s lair to the trapped woman.  Cool.

I wish TWD would just surrender to being a horror show.  I know, I know, “there is so much MORE to the comics,” but this show usually stumbles badly when it tries to do anything else.  Would it really be so bad to be a great horror-themed TV show?

2. Less Rick or just less distraction? - A few weeks ago we had that excellent bottle episode with Rick, Michonne and Carl meeting Crazy Morgan.  That episode excelled because of its reduced scope.  THIS episode shows what can happen when you reduce the scope of the show AND exile Rick & Co. from the proceedings.  Honestly, I’d bet that nobody wants to see that crap at the awful Prison— Glen yelling, Rick scowling, Beth singing…

3. Who burned up the zombies? - It had to be Milton, right?  Maybe it was some other random Woodbury townie who has had ENOUGH, but I’m pretty sure it was Milton.  I’m just curious to see what character arc creators have lined up for him.  Like Merle and Darryl, Milton is a new character who doesn’t come from the comics, so I have no way of predicting what will become of him.  Will he make some heroic sacrifice and kill the Governor?  Will he be the new leader?  Even though Milton is quiet, he doesn’t seem totally benign for some reason.

4. Tyrese given something to do - It wasn’t “awesome” and – frankly – it’s basically Chad Coleman playing the exact same character he played on “The Wire,” but it was nice to see Tyrese figuring into the plot.  It still feels a little tacked on and “extra,” but I’m sure Tyrese will have a bigger role to play before the finale.
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The Story: The big meeting we’ve all been waiting for: Rick & The Governor.

Things We Liked and Disliked About This Episode:

1. The two-hander episode - The structure of this episode was really odd. Almost every scene was a two-hander.  We had Rick/Governor, Milton/Herschel, Daryl/Martinez, Maggie/Glen, Herschel/Andrea, Rick/Herschel, etc.  Herschel was kinda busy.  It was almost like a series of auditions where they kept mixing characters together to find combinations that worked well together.  Some of the combos were really weak; like the Rick/Governor scenes, but some were compelling, which made the episode a little more interesting.  Mostly, I applaud the shows creators for mixing up the formula of the show even if it wasn’t wholly successful.

2. Interesting dilemma for Rick - I like the challenge that the Governor has tossed out to Rick: Give us Michonne and all will be forgiven.  Coming on the heels of last week’s episode where Rick and Carl bonded with Michonne, it actually shows that the creators have some grasp of a dramatic arc.  Granted, it is a fumbling arc as Rick went from irrationally hating Michonne to really liking her a lot in one episode, but that’s about all we can expect from this show.  Hey, we’ll take character arcs however they come in this show.

Let’s see how the show handles this dilemma…  It could go very badly.  The solution is very simple. You sacrifice Michonne for the greater good.  Hopefully, there is no hand-wringing about how doing so would mean, “sacrificing our humanity” or any such crap.  I have a feeling that all the people who worry about “lost humanity” wouldn’t survive the first month of the apocalypse.  Do something useful with the dilemma. Put Michonne in break-away handcuffs like Chewbacca in Star Wars and spring a trap on the Governor, put a bag over her head and dress her in long sleeves and gloves and have it be Carol under the hood to show Andrea how to properly slash a throat, etc.

3. Chained heat! - Two hot things happened at the Prison this week.  For one thing, Merle is not okay with this sitting around crap while “his brother is out there.”  I like how Merle adds a random element to the group.  If not for Merle, it would just be Beth trying to get the others to play sing-along with her.  The other hot thing was Maggie & Glen.  Glen is so fish-out-of-water when he tries to be Rick’s lieutenant, but he works really well as Maggie’s boyfriend.  It was nice to see Maggie snapping out of her post-Woodbury experience.  Did that 4-5 week period of moping around the Prison accomplish anything?
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