*SPOILERS AHEAD (and walkers … and an emotional catharsis …redemption … and more walkers)*
“When my girls were born, that’s when I figured out what it was to be a man. You know, a real man. You protect ’em, keep ’em safe, you just try to make them stronger till they can look out for themselves. But this here [the apocalypse] … I never counted on this.” (David to the Governor)
One of the most poignant recurring themes of season four of The Walking Dead has been the existential dilemma of whether you can ever truly go back from the dark places, of which there are plenty in the morally questionable world of the apocalypse.
Far from being the idle musings of Francophiles, books by Jung and Freud at their feet, scratched musings in their tatty, much loved Moleskins, it’s a vital, real world practical question for the survivors, asked by people who must confront it minute by minute, day by day, in those quieter moments when the cacophony of the fight for survival recedes and their thoughts, unbidden, turn to why they are still alive (and not simply that they are).
Rick (Andrew Lincoln) has had to confront those demons, most notably in a conversation with the almost-a-walker woman he met in the forest early in the season who opted for un-death over trying to figure out an answer, and in his semi-successful, short lived guise as Farmer Rick.
And now the Governor (David Morrissey, who we last saw laying waste to his former comrades, his mind snapping like a tinder-dry stick underfoot, is living this never ending not easily question in the most unforgiving classroom of all – the open road.
When we first see him again in “Live Bait”, it is in the immediate aftermath of the demented massacre he unleashed on the unsuspecting citizens of Woodbury, his mind off with the pixies, and his body only saved by the quick actions of his two surviving henchmen, Ceasar Martinez (Jose Pablo Cantillo), who sensibly leave him during the night to forge his own path.
You can understand him running from his former leader – the Governor is a shattered man, a husk of his former self, clearly dangerously lost in his own thoughts (and prone to burning down Woodbury until it’s a walker-infested smoking ruin), and resembling, when next we see him months down the track, a bearded, glassy-eyed rambling shell, almost more walker than human, his desperation accented by judicious use of Ben Nichol’s hauntingly atmospheric track “The Last Pale Light in the West”.
He is saved, in more ways than one, by a family holed up in their former apartment – a cancer-stricken father David (Danny Vinson) whose close to death and dependent on oxygen tanks to survive, daughters Lily (Audrey Marie Anderson), a nurse who develops a relationship with a changed though still shell-shocked Governor, and Tara (Alanna Masterson), and most importantly for the mental and emotional health of the man now known as Brian Heriot, Lily’s daughter Megan (Meyrick Murphy).
It’s the latter relationship that turns out to be the most pivotal for both “Brian” and Megan, both finding in the other something lost many years before.
For the Governor, it’s a second chance to be a father again, though this is the last thing on his mind at first when he flinches at any thought of prolonged contact with Megan, having lost his daughter Penny (Kylie Szymanski, “Say the Word” / Savana Wehunt,”Made to Suffer”) twice over – first to her hellish walker state and then at Michonne’s hand when she dispatches the undead vestiges of the now long lost child.
“I’m glad to have something to do. No one ever said how boring the end of the world would be.” (Lily to “Brian” when she’s tending his wounds after his run to the retirement home gets a little hairier than expected and they bond just that little bit more)
And for Megan, still pining for her dad who left three years earlier for cigarettes and lottery cards and never came back, and traumatised into silence by the events of the apocalypse, it’s regaining the father figure she still pines for.
Initially the idea of the man who acted with cold blood brutality in season 3 resuming his role as a protector figure seems laughable but as the two warm to each other, and in fact, come to need each other, you understand that the Governor is simply trying to reclaim what was once his – the role of loving, caring father.
And it really is incredibly, surprisingly touching to watch him move back into that role again, the hard, cruel man of season 3, and the lost, aimless soul of earlier in the episode, dropping away to reveal the man he once was, and clearly wants to be again.
It’s masterful writing by The Walking Dead team and showrunner Scott Gimple who must have recognised you simply couldn’t go to the crazy well again, at least not in the manner that ended season 3 so spectacularly.
But it’s here that we confront the question posed repeatedly throughout season 4 – can you ever really go back?
Is it possible to return from killing your own people, torturing innocent souls, and behaving like a tin pot dictator from a third world country on the perpetual brink of chaos?
For a moment there it all looks possible until David dies, and Lily and Tara, unaware that the virus can turn you without being bitten, almost lose their lives to their re-animated “father”.
It’s only the quick-thinking of the Governor, who bashes in David’s head with three or four powerful, skull-crushing movements, that saves Tara, Lily and Megan.
But of course Megan, having watched her grandfather “die” in the most violent of ways, and not understanding what had happened to him and why the Governor had to act like he did, immediately retreats from him, visibly crushing her newly restored father figure and the hope he had in their nascent father/daughter relationship.
It is testament to David Morrissey’s consummate skills as an actor that he can convey so much emotional depth with one small gesture or facial expression, and he uses that talent to great effect here, leaving you feeling desperately sad for an almost-redeemed man who, for a time at least, looks to have lost the precious role he had barely regained.
It’s a heart-wrenching, beautifully acted and written scene, and one of the highlights of the season so far.
And it suggests that the Governor/Brian has come back in some way at least, fetching a backgammon set here, an oxygen tank at a walker-infested retirement home there (in the only real action piece in this character rich slow burner of an episode) for his new family, feeling emotions he probably thought had been left far behind.
In fact, it soon becomes apparent, when Lily essentially orders the Governor to take them with him on the road – do they know what they’re asking? How bad it is out there? Probably not but they have come to trust this new man in their new lives and he has, to my great surprise, felt he has a new home with them – and he agrees, albeit reluctantly, that he has come a very long way indeed.
So far in fact that he lays his life on the line to save them after their van breaks down and they find themselves exposed on the road with a small herd of walkers after them.
The lengths he goes to save Megan in particular are heartwarming, not a word I ever thought I would use in conjunction with the Governor.
“Live Bait” was a complete, brilliantly written, surprise and proved that it is possible to come back and possibly, just possibly stay there.
Of course as the reappearance of Martinez and Shumpert/The Bowman (Travis Love) at the end of the episode makes all too clear, there is only so far you can come back before your past, and your many sins come back to claim you again.
* It will be interesting to see how much of the Governor’s happy new world survives the events of next week’s action-packed episode “Dead Weight” (see trailer + sneak peek below).