Grimes of Vengeance

Recapped by M. Giant · Aired 11-11-2012 · S03E05

Moments after Maggie and Carl emerge from the prison with the baby (and without Lori), Rick flips out and heads straight back in there to split some skulls while everyone else has to deal with the fallout. Daryl and Maggie roar off on his motorcycle in a quest for baby supplies, while Glenn digs graves, mourns T-Dogg, bad-mouths the surviving inmates, and later makes an unsuccessful attempt to get Rick to emerge and rejoin the land of the living. Rick, however, makes it clear that he has no wish to do so, nor would he be enjoyable company if he did. In fact, his rampage pauses only when he finds and mutilates the zombie that clearly ate whatever was left of Lori. That was maybe a bit gratuitous.

Meanwhile, in Woodbury, some kind of celebration is going on. Michonne is not exactly in the party spirit, however, because she would rather break into the Governor's house, steal her sword back, and eff up the first six walkers she sees, which happen to have captives of someone in the town. Even so, the Governor's not ready to throw her out -- at least not until she threatens him with her sword. The Governor enlists Andrea to talk some sense into Michonne, but Michonne insists that she and Andrea have to leave, because Woodbury is not the safe haven it's made out to be. Andrea isn't willing to let go of it yet, and ultimately Michonne walks out of the gate without her. The only question is what took her so long. And then, on Andrea's first night in town without Michonne, she finds herself as the Governor's date for a zombie cage match event. A little late for her to be wondering if she made the right decision now. And she doesn't even know about the Governor's procurement procedures, his fish tanks, or the fact that he's still keeping his walker daughter around the house.

Back at the prison, Daryl and Maggie return with the goods, but the mission isn't officially complete until Daryl has christened Carl's new sister "Lil Ass-Kicker." Rick's still chilling out in the extra-gruesome boiler room…at least until the phone rings, and he answers it. That's where the episode ends, but I don't think any of us will be surprised to learn that that the one thing to survive the zombie apocalypse will be telemarketers.

There appears to be some kind of street picnic going on in Woodbury. Milton brings Andrea a cold drink and everything, although he's not entirely on board with this use of the generators. Andrea asks Milton for a hint about something that's supposed to be going down tonight, and he obligingly says, "Mere words cannot adequately describe the festivities ahead." Michonne watches this cozy tête-à-tête from a distance up the street, and bumps into another Woodburian as she sulks off. Didn't someone say there are like 76 people in this town? And if so, why do they all have to be in the shot at once?

Okay, well, not all of them; the Governor's in his house, carefully brushing what I assume is his daughter's long, dark hair. But if the quiet zombie-snarling undertone doesn't tip you off that this isn't a scene of normal paternal devotion, the fact that a hunk of scalp comes off in the brush might, as does the fact that the Governor's undead daughter Penny tries to take a hunk out of his arm in retaliation. But fortunately for him, she's small enough and weak enough that he's able to get her straitjacket laced back up and the pillowcase back over her head without her breaking any of his skin. He assures her that he still loves her and kisses her on the head-bag before going with her to the window. Through the drawn shades, he can see Michonne looking back up at his house from the street, almost as though she can see him. I think Chris Hardwicke puts it best in the Talking Dead promo: "What the hell else is this guy into?"

After the ads, we come back to the prison and grimy little baby Grimes, still squalling in Maggie's arms while Rick is totally checked out. Maggie hands the kid off the Carl, who carries it over to Hershel while Daryl's already wondering what they're going to feed it. Well, let a walker bite it and soon it'll be willing to eat anyone. Hershel pronounces her healthy at a glance, but in need of formula, quickly. Daryl's not in the mood to lose anyone else and announces he's going for a run. Maggie and Glen immediately volunteer to join him. Daryl asks Beth to look after Carl and Rick -- the latter of whom is still in Tom-Hanks-on-the-beach-in-Saving-Private-Ryan-mode as he dimly registers an axe lying on the ground. While Daryl's giving orders to prepare to move, Rick snatches up the axe and runs back into the prison. Way to make yourself useful during a crisis, homeskillet. At this rate, Carl and Rick will have traded places by the end of the season. Daryl leads his little party to the vehicles, but Maggie's been scouting the shops along the way and knows which stores' baby sections have already been looted. You'd think they might have picked up some formula along the way already; it's not like the new baby is a complete surprise to anyone. The mall that Glen saw signs for is down a road too littered with debris for a car, which means Daryl and one other person can go on his motorcycle. Maggie insists on being the one, so off she and Daryl go, Oscar quickly closing the gate behind them. I know that this show takes place in a world where there was no zombie pop culture of any kind, but really, guys? The mall? Dawn of the Dead ought to be programmed into our species memory if nothing else.

Inside the prison, Rick angrily splits four zombie-heads in quick succession. Feel better?

The Governor mounts a porch to address the townsfolk of Woodbury. He hearkens back to his group of nine and their humble beginnings and where they are now. Andrea watches all dewy-eyed, of course. Meanwhile, Michonne quietly lets herself into the Governor's empty house and takes her sword from the cabinet, which wasn't even locked. She looks much happier to have it strapped back over her shoulder, or at least as happy as she gets. But with the bottom level of her personal Maslow's Hierarchy fulfilled, she quickly gets curious, taking in the governor's family photos and paging through a bound journal of his notes. One page is just a list of names with "Penny" at the bottom, in bold, underlined, and under that a few lines of hash-marks. And then pages, and pages, and pages of hash-marks. Don't ask me what it means, or what the prop department did to piss off the writers. Hearing footsteps approaching the front door, Michonne grabs a handy knife and trues to break into the room (which may or may not be the one containing his aquarium collection), but after spotting the rest of her and Andrea's weapons bags piled in an alcove, she ducks behind a wall while the Governor, Milton, and Merle come in, all unaware of her presence. Milton's complaining about the party's use of resources, partly because he's already short on power for an experiment he's been running all week, and he wants it postponed for ten days or even six. The Governor refuses, and they leave none the wiser, having collected the twelve-packs they came for. As for Michonne, she clearly left via the window while the guys were debating.

She emerges into a lot behind an old warehouse, where there are guts spattered all over the walls. There are also a half-dozen or so walkers locked behind a grate. So Michonne does what anyone would do in this situation, which is to break the lock and then walks into the middle of the yard to wait for them to come at her. And as they approach, she slices and dices all of them, each in a different way. Okay, now she looks happy. But a moment later, someone comes out the door carrying a gutbucket and, taking in the scene, drops it on the ground in what is clearly deep annoyance.

When we come back, she's apparently been taken into custody. The Governor comes in, holding her sword in its scabbard, and asks, "You get off on that?" Obviously she did. "Pokin' around other people's things?" Okay, probably not that part. He says they have nothing to hide, which Michonne says isn't usually said by people who actually have nothing to hide. The Governor concedes that point and says, "We all have our secrets." "Like Penny?" Michonne goads. The Governor looks busted, but quickly figures out she doesn't know anything about Penny but the name and goes back to his good ol' boy act, saying that Michonne wants to leave and Andrea wants to stay, so he figures Michonne is trying to make him kick her out so she doesn't have to decide herself. He says he was about to return her sword, "because you fit in. We've enjoyed having you." Okay, if we didn't already know he's a liar, we'd know it now. He picks it up and walks around the table, saying that following rules it what keeps people alive. "You've broken the rules. If I don't do anything, I invite anarchy." So he offers to keep quiet and give her a job on the research team, But while he's in midsentence, she jumps up, twists the scabbard out of his hand, and has the blade drawn and at his throat before he knows what happened. After a good long pause for him to think about what he's done, she backs away and walks out. Merle comes in after her exit and asks, rather sardonically, "How'd it go?" "She's all personality, that one," the Governor chortles, and tells Merle to send Andrea to him. Yes, her admiring gaze would certainly serve as an effective antidote.

Glenn's out in the prison yard digging a grave when Oscar and Axel come up to report that they have the walkers distributed evenly around the fence and to offer to help him dig. Glenn isn't exactly friendly. They express their sympathies about the loss of his friends, and he thanks them by saying, "I need two more." Congratulations, guys, you've gotten far enough into Glenn's good graces that he's willing to dump his work on you.

Glenn walks up the hill to where Hershel's waiting inside the layer of fence, and accedes to Hershel's unspoken request to go get Rick out of the prison. "A third of our group in one day," Glenn says. I'm not going to quibble with his math, even though they started the day with 9.9 people (counting Hershel) and now have eight (counting the baby as 0.1), because Carol still remains missing and they're presuming her dead. "Because of one asshole," Hershel agrees. Glenn says he almost wishes they'd killed all the prisoners on sight. Of course given how quickly Daryl and Rick scattered, he probably hasn't heard about Oscar saving Rick's ass inside. Hershel seems to think Axel and Oscar are good guys, though. Glenn, unconvinced tells Hershel about T-Dog's van tour of every senior he knew when the shit started going down. "Saved my ass a thousand times. He wasn't just a good guy. He was the best." Yeah, Merle and Andrea might disagree on that. I'm really kind of bummed they're not ever going to be able to take that up with him. Hershel agrees that T-Dog was the one who closed the gate and saved the rest of them. "It's wrong, but I'd trade any number of people for one of ours any day," Glenn says. Spoken like the future Governor of Woodbury.

Andrea shows up at the Governor's house, and he tells her all about Michonne's misdeeds. To her credit, Andrea points out that Michonne couldn't steal something that belonged to her, and wonders why the Governor has "captive biters." The Governor doesn't care to go into that right now, because he would rather complain about Michonne's move on him with the sword. "She wouldn't do that unless she felt threatened," Andrea says. Which may be correct, but not in the way Andrea thinks. The Governor insists that he doesn't want Michonne to leave, but "we're not barbarians." No, barbarians are less creepy.

So then stupid Andrea goes to Michonne and says, "We gotta talk." Michonne retorts that they gotta go, but Andrea says she needs to stop freaking everyone out. Michonne's already freaking out herself, saying nobody ever leaves, "unless they make you." Andrea isn't following her logic, or willing to trust Michonne, In fact, she's blaming her for sabotaging tis great gig they've fallen into. "This place is not what they say it is," Michonne insists.

With a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other, Glenn's inside the prison following the trail of Rick-cloven skulls to the man himself, spattered with blood from his haunted eyeballs to the blade of his axe. Glenn tries to coax him out, but Rick isn't even responsive until Glenn makes the mistake of touching him and gets slammed up against the wall and then roughly pushed away for his trouble, so Glenn decides that Rick can go back to his... reaping, I guess. Yeah, probably better for everyone involved to leave him to it for now.

Out in a field somewhere, there's a complicated artifact that's been erected. I can't tell if it's a wind-powered generator with solar-panel boosters, or a solar-powered noise maker, or an art installation. Either way, there are these tall, finned cylinders that spin in such a way as to generate a creepy howl not unlike that traffic-blocking sound above that grate in the very center of Times Square. There's also a pit, and when Merle and Milton and a couple of other guys that I assume round out the "research team" show up with a tow truck, they haul a net full of several walkers out of it. Now the tricky part is to let them out of the net and wrangle them with neck-snares like the kind Hershel made Rick use. Milton fucks up, though, and the first one out clamps its teeth on his arm. Luckily for him, he's reinforced the sleeves of his jacket with duct tape. "I tell you what, I take back everything I said about that jacket," Merle says boisterously, clearly having the time of his life. She's pulled away, and Merle sticks his bayonet attachment in her eye, which Milton doesn't appreciate. He kind of wanted to save that one. As for another one, they hold it down with Merle's bayonet crammed across its open mouth so they can start pulling its teeth with a pair of pliers. As you do.

Daryl and Maggie pull up outside a small playground, hop off, and walk up to a house that was converted into a commercial day care center at some point. [Note: Daryl, God bless him, is in a fabulous poncho! Unfortunately, the also took his stupid bike instead of a car that could carry actual cargo, so he's not entirely forgiven for his stupidity. -- Rachel.] Maggie breaks a back window and enters what used to be a nursery. She starts loading up baby supplies from the changing cabinet while Daryl follows her in and looks at all the paper hand cutouts on the wall. [Note: He zeros in on one that reads "Sophie" -- sound familiar?] On to the kitchen, which is not empty, and instead has some kind of evil creature making a lot of noise. But the snarling, scratching thing in the pantry turns out to just be a possum, which Daryl shoots and says, "Hello, dinner!" [Note: It should also be stated Daryl is holding a little doll for the baby. Squee!] Maggie opens the cabinet and finds two whole cans of formula powder, which will easily get the baby through until she can eat solid food, as long as she cuts her first teeth in a week.

Andrea and Michonne are headed for Woodbury's wall with all their stuff, but Merle hollers out to them and asks where they're going, blocking their way like a frat boy who's waiting for his roofies to take effect. They say they're leaving, and Merle complains that he'll have to arrange an escort this close to curfew, with the party still going on and everything. Michonne just glares at him like she knew this was going to happen, so he goes to talk to the guard on the wall. Andrea goes up to Merle and says the Governor claimed they could come and go freely. Merle suddenly gets dead serious and tells her to step back. "See? There's always a reason why we can't leave yet," Michonne whispers to Andrea. But a moment later, Merle opens the gate wide for them, advising them to find shelter before nightfall. Michonne says this is all a bluff, but Andrea says she's being paranoid. "And why would they bother?" While Merle stands there holding the gate, increasingly impatient, Michonne and Andrea argue about staying or going, and Andrea says she can't go back out and return to their old miserable life. "And you... I'm afraid you're gonna disappear." She says the idea of a place like this is what kept them going all that time, and now they're here. Michonne, not possessed of Andrea's fancy lawyer-arguing skills, finally just asks, "Are you coming or not?" Andrea weasels and whines about Michonne's ultimatum, but she's clearly not. "You'll just slow me down anyway," Michonne says as she walks out the gate alone. Now, that's not classy. Andrea calls out to her, but she doesn't look back. As soon as Michonne's clear of the gate, Merle impassively closes it behind her, with Andrea still inside. I don't know if the Governor set out to divide them, but he could hardly have done a better job than they did themselves.

Later, the Governor comes and finds Andrea sitting alone on a bench and makes a few sympathetic remarks before offering her a drink and some company. And she smiles, takes his hand, and follows him back to the party. Because she is a moron.

It's dark when Glenn, up on the guard tower, hears Daryl's motorcycle returning and spots its approaching headlight through the woods. He calls down to Oscar and Axel, the latter of whom lures walkers along the fence away from the gate while Oscar opens it for the bike. Glenn shoots one or two down just for good measure.

Inside Cell Block C, Carl's trying to calm an obviously hungry baby, whose mood isn't improved even by getting passed along to Daryl. Using water from a canteen, Beth and Maggie whip up a bottle in record time and Daryl gets to feed it to her, so I guess now he gets to be her favorite too on top of everyone else's. Daryl asks if she has a name. Carl's been brainstorming day-brighteners like Sophia, Carol, Andrea, Jacqui, Patricia or Lori. Way to kill the buzz, kiddo. Fortunately, Daryl just christens her "Li'l Ass-Kicker."

Meanwhile inside the prison, Rick's odyssey of vengeance has led him to the boiler room. There's a puddle of blood and brains on the floor, and Carl's knife, and a trail of blood leading to the room, but no more Lori's body. Rick follows the sound of zombie-slavering in that direction, and I'm thinking Carl, you idiot, especially upon my first glance at the undead creature sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, with a grossly distended belly. But the Buddha-like walker isn't Lori, but the male walker that must have eaten her remains. Which is so gross. [Note: Also, since when do zombies get full bellies after eating? The less continuity this show tries to have, the better.] Rick slowly walks up to it (and lucky for him it's sated enough that it doesn't put up much of a fight), sticks his revolver in its mouth, and pulls the trigger with a scream. Then he pulls out his own knife and, in a sick reversal of what Maggie had to do last week -- which was pretty sick to begin with -- stabs the dead creature in the belly savagely, multiple times. Jeez, Rick, I know you were mad at Lori over the whole Shane thing, but don't you think she's been punished enough?

It's also nighttime in Woodbury, and with Andrea on his arm, the Governor leads her to the top row of a set of bleachers overlooking the scene of Michonne's earlier triumph. Lynyrd Skynyrd's playing on a PA ("Saturday Night Special" rather than "Ooh, That Smell," which would be a bit too on the nose), and torches are burning, and Andrea's so not comfortable with any of this even before the lights come up, revealing a half-dozen walkers chained to railroad ties in the small, makeshift arena. Merle and another guy dance around in the circle formed by them, and Merle promises to the crowd that he'll kick the other guy's ass. So this is some kind of MMA cage fighting match, with the cage made of zombies. Oh, and some guy puts his kid up on his shoulders for a better view. Andrea gives him such a filthy look you'd think she was sitting behind him.

The fight begins, and after a minute of some brutal action that has the crowd on its feet, the referee calls the end of the first round. And for the second round, the chains holding back the walkers are lengthened, so the circle is tightened. Don't ask me what keeps the beasties from turning around and going after the crowd instead, other than the blocking they got from the director. Andrea's about to rush off in disgust, but The Governor gets her to stay long enough for her to tell him this is sick. He laughs that everyone's having a great time, and then sits her down and whispers, "It's staged. We pull out the biters' teeth, It's all for show." Andrea still thinks it's crazy, and isn't impressed with the Governor's reason for keeping walkers, now that she knows what it is. "We're shining a light on the monster under the bed," the Governor says, in an attempt to make everyone feel better about it all. Andrea says this is teaching people that walkers aren't dangerous. "We're teaching them not to be afraid," the Governor insists. Finally Merle beats his opponent and stands triumphant with one foot on his chest. Andrea sits there thinking, probably wondering which way Michonne went.

By M. Giant

Morning dawns at the prison, and Daryl visits the fresh graves in the yard, placing a familiar white flower at the one that I assume is Carol's. What exactly did they bury, though? In any of these holes? Like, besides Carol's headscarf, which she's going to want back.

Rick sits in the boiler room in whatever funk he's currently in, and looks nothing but annoyed at the oddly amplified cries of a baby echoing through the prison. But when those cries are interrupted by the ringing of an old-fashioned, Bakelite telephone, that gets his attention. He gets up and steps over the remains of the beast that ate his wife, and picks up the receiver. And his first word of the episode -- "Hello?" is also the last. Seriously? "Hello?"

M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.