The Walking Dead returned from its mid-season hiatus with an episode, “The Suicide King”, which was equal parts bang, and unfortunately, for some of the characters and situations, whimper.
While Glen Mazzara has now shuffled off his showrunner coil – it seems that he and AMC parted ways over differing visions for the show – he oversaw the final eight episodes of season 3 so ‘The Suicide King”, and the episodes that follow very much reflect the strong, action-oriented drama that characterised the first half of what has been an enormously impressive season.
This episode fit the mold to a tee, beginning with a short, sharp assault by Rick’s team on Woodbury to take back Daryl and Merle, who were on the verge of being made to fight each other to the death while fighting off the walkers on chains that the Governor, now less one eye and whatever small modicum of sanity he had left, seems inordinately fond of, and keen to use as often as possible.
While the crowd bayed – rather limply it must be said; I have seen more enthusiasm at post-Christmas sales – for vengeance, Rick, Maggie and the crew threw smoke bombs a-plenty, grabbed the two men and made their getaway with Merle’s help, leaving a hole in Woodbury’s fence which would cause havoc later on.
(The moment when a walker, with one of the uglier, pastier faces I have seen on their kind and a very creepy knowing look in their decaying eye, found the hole and looked through it was one of the more unsettling shots of the episode.)
Arriving at their rendezvous point with Glenn and Michonne on one of those eerie deserted Georgia roads that make the perfect setting for any apocalyptic scene you could name, all hell breaks loose.
Glenn, for obvious reasons is beyond angry to see Merle (who everyone hates and not without cause) with Daryl (who everyone, including Carol, loves) and lunges at him, closely followed by Michonne with her katana.
And herein lies one of the weaknesses of the show at the moment.
Michonne only seems to be animated when she is lopping the heads off walkers, or taking on one of her quite numerous human adversaries.
I get the whole brooding, sullen thing – the woman appears to have gone through a lot post-the breakdown of civilisation but hell, hasn’t everyone? – and to an extent it works well for her character.
But it begins to be self-defeating as far as character development goes when good people such as Rick’s group, who have demonstrated they have only the best of intentions, and have cut you more slack that a limp walker chain, are treated with the same palpable disregard as those who are quite obviously out to do you harm.
Whatever admiration I had for her kickass approach to defending herself is being whittled away by the unwillingness of the show’s writers to extend her even a sliver of reasonable humanity (which she clearly has since she looked after Andrea so selflessly and willingly while they were alone together on the road).
Glenn, on the other hand, fresh from his psychologically-traumatising torture by Merle, dealt out with the Governor’s tacit consent, gives a bravura performance as a man roiling with barely contained ready-to-explode anger over the inhuman way both he and Maggie were treated.
His furious reaction to Merle’s appearance was every bit the reaction you would expect from a victim confronting his tormentor.
As was the way he rounded on Rick when he made it clear that he would not, under any circumstances, tolerate Merle returning with them to the prison, an opposition so vociferously expressed that Rick had no choice but to acquiesce, triggering Daryl’s decision to go it alone with his brother.
You could tell that Daryl didn’t want to leave the group, and took Rick’s entreaty to stick around seriously but in the end he had to go with “blood” over his new family – Daryl is nothing if not an honourable man – and so he and Merle walked off into the trees, leaving the rest of the group, and a few staggering far off walkers alone on the road.
Back at the prison, the new arrivals, still locked in a small section of the prison until Rick returns to determine their fate, are anxiously pleading their case to stay to a sympathetic Hershel (although two of the party Ben and Allen propose it might be better to take on Carl and Carol and take over the prison, a plan quickly condemned by the remaining two members Tyreese and his sister Sasha), glad as they are to have found sanctuary at last.
Tyreese it should be noted is emerging as a man of great humanity and sound judgement, and echoes the refrain once sung by now-departed Dale, that if mankind surrenders basic decency and respect for others, then it is doomed, walkers or not.
Of course the more pragmatic members of the group such as Ben and Allen dismiss this out of hand, but it brought to the surface again the simmering debate between survival of the fittest, and civilisation and it’s good to see the writers continuing to bring these pertinent themes to the fore every now and again.
The scenes at the prison are, for the most part, action-free, focusing instead on quiet character moments such as between Carol and Beth, who is mistaken at one point by Sasha as Rick’s new daughter’s mother – talk about awkward (surely the explanation for an absent mother would been obvious; Sasha exactly which apocalypse have you lived through?) – and Carol and Rick when he breaks the news that Daryl didn’t return with them, an unwelcome announcement that naturally causes Carol a fair amount of grief.
Things hot up in the final scene though, when Rick goes to meet the new arrivals, who he is not inclined to keep around, and on the verge of letting them stay, swayed by Hershel’s impassioned reasoning, sees the ghost of his dead wife Lori standing up on the next level.
As you can imagine, this doesn’t do all that much for his fragile state of mind, and brandishing his gun around, he dementedly begins screaming “I can’t help you! Get out!”, which everyone interprets as marching orders to Tyreese and his party (since they can’t, of course see Rick’s ghostly vision).
It is lunacy of course to get ride of four able-bodied souls when these are in short supply but then Rick is increasingly not swimming in the stream of sanity and no one else, let alone a visibly on-the-edge Glenn, is disposed to challenge him.
I suspect that Tyreese and the others will return but you have to wonder how safe they will feel once they do return.
For that matter, it is debatable how safe the members of Rick’s group feel but then they are kind of stuck there so will have to make do till either Rick comes to his senses … or events unfold in another fashion.
But it’s not only the good people of the prison that face a threat from the ever cascading madness of one of their own.
The Governor lurches from unstable act to unstable act, furious that he has been bested by Rick’s group twice, and determined to get vengeance.
This leads to an almost callous disregard for his own people who are left to fend off the invading walkers, and in a great panic try to storm the fortified gates to escape.
They are stopped by Andrea who frankly is becoming a pale imitation of her former ballsier self.
Despite finding out that the Governor sanctioned Glenn and Maggie’s imprisonment and torture, and having to be the one to quieten down the mob mentality of the freaked out citizens of Woodbury (rather lamely it must be said; the fact that the mob goes from torches and pitchforks to quiet resignation in five seconds begs believability) after the Governor abrogates that role, she seems to want to remain at the compromised township, and even more bizarrely, with the Governor.
As far as bad relationship and habitation choices they go, they are both at the top of the pile, and Andrea’s unwillingness to move beyond them is compromising the integrity of her character.
Let hope the writers give her back some of her character’s robustness and soon.
Overall though it was a cracker of an episode, advancing the ever-escalating battle between the two camps, both led by men possessed of questionable mental and emotional states, and sets the scene well for what I imagine will be a battle royale to come.
It’s beginning to look more and more like the walkers are the least of everyone’s problems.
Here’s what’s coming up in the next episode, “Home” …