The Governor and Eye

Recapped by M. Giant · Aired 12-02-2012 · S03E08

Just what we need: another group of survivors. Tyrese, Sasha, and a family of three fight their way through the woods and blunder into the prison's busted-ass rear entrance, but not without the mother sustaining a bite. Inside, Carl seems to be the temporary leader of what's left of the group. Hearing the screams from the bowels of the prison, he goes down, rescues the new group, and locks them up in the anteroom outside Cell Block C with food and water, and a recently dead comrade for them to take out. So things at the prison seem fairly well under control for now.

The Governor orders the execution of Glenn and Maggie to prevent Andrea from learning of their presence, but they don't go quietly. In fact, Maggie kills one of their captors, which buys them just enough time that Rick and his rescue team are able to save them from immediate death. But getting back out of town soon proves more difficult than getting in; the alarm has been raised and the group is going to have to shoot their way out. Daryl learns that Merle is responsible for Glenn's injuries and wants to see him, but agrees to be there for Rick on the way out.

Michonne has her own agenda, though, and while Rick and his people are working on their escape, she sneaks into the Governor's place and awaits his return. But before he gets home, Michonne discovers his creepy den, with the tanks full of heads and the walker-child locked up behind the grate. She's about to take her out when the Governor stops her. There's a hell of a fight which the Governor loses, along with an eye, but Michonne's delivery of the coup de grace is forestalled by the timely arrival of Andrea, who somehow has remained ignorant of the nature of the intrusion into Woodbury all this time.

Rick and his group fight do fight their way out, but at a cost; Rick suffers a Shane-flashback, Oscar is killed, and Daryl stays behind to provide them with covering fire and is unable to make his escape. Michonne reunites with Rick, Glenn, and Maggie outside the walls and tells Rick he'll need her help, whether he chooses to get the injured Glenn back to the prison or return for Daryl. And the Governor assembles the townspeople and makes a speech all about the terrorists who attacked them, naming Merle as one of them (probably because he now knows Merle lied to him about having killed Michonne) and displaying Daryl as a prisoner in the arena. But whatever he's got planned for them, it's going to have to wait until February.

It's a foggy morning in the Georgia wilderness, and distant screams echo through the woods. A walker plods toward the sound, until a large man (The Wire's Chad Coleman) jumps out from behind a tree and brains it with a pickaxe, as well as the other one following it. He runs toward the sound of a rushing river and almost into a shovel swung by a human woman, but they know each other from another group that's apparently been separated from each other. The man, Tyrese, tells her he spotted a tower not far off, and they run back to collect the several other members of their group from a pitched battle with more zombies. But they don't make it clear without another woman in the group getting bitten on the arm. They drag her along and, after some debate, all the way inside a torn chain link fence and through a shattered brick wall... which leads inside the prison. That place is getting more crowded all the time.

Andrea stands in front of the Governor's mirror and looks at an old family photo of his, possibly noticing the resemblance between herself and the late Mrs. Governor. When the man himself enters the room, Andrea tells him that she's going to help Milton cremate Mr. Coleman this evening, and waxes schmoopy about how Woodbury is all about people helping people. The Governor lets her go without bothering to straighten her out on that score.

After she's gone, the Governor sits in his den with the zombie-heads in fish tanks and opens the grate in one wall. He turns on a boombox playing a lullaby and calls to his daughter, Penny, who, after some emitting some snarling noises, comes rushing out slavering with the bag over her head, brought up short by the chain around her neck. The Governor removes the bag and almost seems able to calm her down somewhat by singing along, but the walker-child's attention is focused on a bowl of bloody meat, much to the Governor's eventual frustration. Back on the girl's head goes the bag, back in the cell goes the girl. Maybe leave the bloody meat in the kitchen time, Guv.

In the dungeon, Glenn has given Maggie his shirt, but there's still the dead walker in there and Glenn's face is still covered in blood, so it's not as homey in there as perhaps it could be. He wants to know what happened with the Governor, and she assures Glenn that he barely touched her. "All this time running from walkers, you forget what people do... look at what they did to you." There's no mirrors in here, Maggie. Try to keep up. They hold each other for a bit, and then Glenn painfully gets up and rips loose the walker's arm, then breaks its forearm wide open and hands the severed wrist with the jutting bones to Maggie, presumably for use as a weapon. What ever happened to giving a girl flowers?

By M. Giant

Rick, Daryl, Oscar and Michonne watch the outer wall from the hiding spot we left them in at the end of the episode, until Michonne gets bored and disappears into the bushes. Thinking she's ditched them, the remaining members of the group lighten their loads, and Michonne comes back and indicates they should follow her.

At the Governor's house, he's talking to Merle about how smart it is to take over a prison. Not because he's planning to move Woodbury there; he'd rather take out the group there and let the walkers have it back. "No one'll be the wiser." Merle points out that group includes his brother, so the Governor says Merle will make Daryl their inside man. "Nothing happens to Daryl?" Merle confirms, and the Governor readily agrees. As for Maggie and Glenn, the Governor doesn't want to risk Andrea finding out. Not sure how that's going to work once Daryl is in the fold, supposedly. "Take 'em to the Screaming Pits," the Governor orders with regard to their captives. That sounds like a lovely spot.

Michonne quietly leads the other members of the group in through the back door of the place where she had her last, unhappy interview with the Governor, but there's no one there. Michonne suggests checking the Governor's place , but the guys aren't exactly satisfied with her lack of knowledge of the hostages' exact whereabouts. Indeed, Rick pulls them aside and says, "If this goes south, we're cutting her loose." Oscar wonders if it's a trap, but Daryl correctly interprets it as the blind leading the blind. Suddenly there's a sound at the door, and an anonymous Woodburyan lets himself in, figuring to roust some curfew-breaker. So imagine his surprise when he finds his face full of Rick's gun muzzle and his hands zip-tied. Rick asks where his people are, but of course the man has no idea, so they gag him and knock him unconscious. Ignorance may not be bliss, but around these people it's good for a concussion.

Back at the prison, Axel is chatting up Beth while she holds baby Judith and Carl looks on suspiciously. He seems a little too interested to learn that she's seventeen, so Carol asks him for a quick sidebar. Away from the kids, Carol tells Axel to stay away from Beth, since they're not repopulating the earth right now. Axel shrugs that he hasn't seen a woman for a long time, Maggie's with Glenn, "you're a lesbian, and I was just talking with her." Carol straightens him out on that middle part, and he leers, "My, my, this is interesting." "No, it's not," Carol says. She's right, and I just wish it hadn't taken two seasons for someone behind the scenes of this show to get a sense of what's interesting and what's not.

Merle and another guy open the dungeon, probably expecting a docile and defeated pair of prisoners. Instead, Glenn and Maggie rush out in attack mode, Glenn mixing it up with Merle while Maggie jams her arm-bones into the other man's jugular, slashing deep and sending him sinking to the floor while the machine gun in his hand goes off. The group hears the gunfire -- hell, the whole town does -- and they start making their move while other townspeople rush to the wall, which is where they think the trouble is. After more fighting, Merle finally gets his bayonet to Glenn's throat, but Maggie gets the drop on him and orders Merle to let Glenn go. "Okay!" Merle smiles as other armed men come in, locked and loaded. Does this mean they don't get to go to the Screaming Pits?

Somehow Rick and his group have found their way through the town's catacombs (don't ask me why a small Georgian town has both a Main Street and catacombs) to a space adjoining the one where Glenn and Maggie are being held on their knees, although they hang back out of sight while Rick reads the situation. Getting his Bond-villain on, Merle tells his guests he's glad they could catch up. Maggie tells Glenn she loves him, and bags are thrown over both their heads as they're dragged to their feet. Rick and the group realize this is their moment, and they throw some flash-bang grenades and then quickly drag their people free from the smoky room while Merle and the Woodburyans cough and choke in the blinding smoke. No, Rick and his people don't have gas masks, but this must be a kind of weapon that doesn't work on the people who are using it.

Out on the street, Andrea offers to go check it out, but the Governor says he's on it. "No need for anyone to panic," he says. Right on cue, a woman screams, "Someone help!" The man Rick's group encountered earlier is sitting in the doorway, and he tells the Governor that "six or seven guys" he'd never seen before just came through there with guns. A worried crowd is gathering, wondering what's going on, but the Governor tells them all to get inside and lock their doors. Except the members of the guard, to whom he gives orders to shoot to kill.

Rick and his group manage to get as far as a restaurant before hearing the alarm and ducking into a closed restaurant with quilts over the windows. "Rick, how'd you find us?" Maggie demands. Right now they're more worried about where Michonne is. Well, except for Rick, who says she's on her own, because they have to get their people back. Glenn tells Daryl, "This was Merle... He did this. He threw a walker at me. He was going to execute us." Daryl asks if this means his brother's the Governor, which evokes a whole alternate universe for a moment there, but Maggie says that's someone else. "Your brother's his lieutenant or something." Daryl asks if Merle knows he's with them. "He does now," Glenn says. "Rick, I'm sorry, we told him where the prison was. We couldn't hold out." Rick says there's no need to apologize; they just need to get back. Daryl wants to see Merle and try to work this out, but Rick says this isn't the time. "We're in hostile territory." He tells Daryl he needs him. "Are you with me?" Daryl says he is.

In Milton's lab, Andrea watches as the Governor locks and loads. Merle and whatever's left of the research team come in, and when Andrea asks what's going on, Merle explains, "Some assholes want what we have." Yes, their friends. The Governor and his goons are ready to roll out, and Andrea wants in on the shooting, but the Governor wants her to do the door-to-door checking to make sure everyone's safe. Andrea's too good for that, of course, but the governor insists. Not that Andrea's remotely happy about it. And not that she won't jump on the first opportunity to do the opposite.

Michonne is, where else, back in the Governor's place. She draws her sword and sits down on a chair in the dark to wait for him to get back, with the weapon across her lap. Don't fall asleep, Michonne. You're likely to lose a finger.

Rick's group is ready to move. After throwing a smoke grenade out the door, I guess to give away their position and attract as much attention as possible, they move out into the street, where they start exchanging fire with the people on the walls. Andrea sees the silhouetted figures in the cloud and of course starts shooting into the smoke, without possibly having any clear idea of whom she's aiming at. How many times does she need to shoot poor Daryl, anyway? Fortunately she misses everyone. The Governor spots her and joins her as the firefight moves down the street. He asks her if she's okay, and she says, "I saw them." The Governor does a panicked double-take at that. While Rick and his people regroup in an alley, Andrea tells the Governor about the young black guy in a prison jumpsuit, because of course the only one she saw was Oscar. He tells her to get off the street and joins the townspeople moving in on the intruders' position.

In the alley, Daryl tells the others he'll cover them, promising to be right behind them. They throw another grenade, and the gang hurries to the wall while Daryl keeps shooting. Oscar gives Glenn a boost while Rick provides them some covering fire of his own. Moments after he's emptied his machine gun, a figure comes looming out of the smoke at his left, pumping a shotgun in slow motion. It's Shane, now wearing a full beard and a Wolverine haircut for whatever Jon Bernthal is acting in these days, and he's got Rick in his sights. Lucky for Rick, the weapon misfires, and the stray round catches Oscar instead as he's helping Glenn over the wall. Told you to look out for being the black guy in the group, Oscar. As for Tyrese, I just hope his affairs are in order. Rick draws his revolver and takes Shane down for the third time, but now that he's dead it's just another guy. I understand that the line between dead and not-dead has gotten pretty blurry in this world, but Rick's really getting sucky at seeing it. Speaking of which, Maggie screams; Oscar's dead, shot through the chest. She puts a bullet in Oscar's head, and Rick follows the rest of them over the wall. Thus leaving Daryl behind, still shooting into the smoke at where his brother is shooting back at him somewhere.

It's also nighttime at the prison, and Hershel tells Carl and Beth that Judith's finally asleep, and that they have enough formula to get her through another month. Assuming they don't spill or spoil any, which as a parent I can assure you happens all the time. In the wee bleary hours of one morning I forgot to put the nipple on the bottle and when I turned it over to feed M. Tiny, I literally threw a drink in my baby's face. He took it pretty well, though. Anyway. Carl says he and Carol will go for more at the end of the week, and when Beth points out that Rick and the others will be back by then he glooms, "We don't know that. Right now Judith is the only family I got." Suddenly they hear a scream -- which sounds like it's coming from inside the prison, even though Carol and Axel are supposedly on lookout at the guard tower (what they're actually up to, I shudder to think). Hershel says they'll check the tower first and go from there. Carl grabs his gun to go check it out the noise instead, batting aside some pretty weak resistance from Hershel.

Carl makes his way through the bowels of the prison, following the sounds of the screams to right outside the boiler room. The memories of that place don't prevent him from efficiently head-shooting a walker that jumps out at him from nowhere, and he proceeds to the area, where Tyrese and his group are in yet another pitched battle with marauding zombies. Carl shoots the last of the ones they're currently dealing with and yells, "Come on! Hurry!" They all move out, followed by walkers, dragging their bitten comrade, Donna, while Sasha and Carl fight a rearguard action. Carl says they have to leave her, but Tyrese refuses, and keeps schlepping her through the corridors in a fireman's carry, the better for her to take a chunk out of him when the mood strikes her.

Michonne is getting nothing from the Governor's front door, but after hearing some noises from behind the door to his creepy-ass den, she gets up and kicks that one open. There she finds the pyramid of fish-tank heads, and seems to recognize the helicopter pilot at its apex. Of course the source of the noise is behind the grate, so Michonne does what she does: opens it up and waits for whatever to come out. Seeing it's a little girl, she drops her sword in horror and tells Penny to come to her, apparently deaf to the soft zombie-snarls coming from under the head-bag. She undoes the chain at Penny's collar and pulls off the sack, which is of course when she first realizes what she's dealing with as Penny lunges at her. She grabs the girl by the back of the neck, turns her away, and raises her sword, and just then is when the Governor shows up in the doorway, screaming, "No!" with his gun leveled.

Michonne moves so that Penny's between herself and the Governor, and the Governor begs Michonne not to hurt her, holstering his gun and then laying aside the gunbelt. Penny is a surprisingly effective human-shaped shield considering she's three feet shorter than the target. Michonne watches the Governor in horror and confusion, but a moment later, the point of her sword comes bursting out of Penny's mouth. So much for the shield. Without bothering to pick up his weapon, the Governor rushes Michonne in blind rage (spoiler!) and disarms her, commencing a rather savage fight whose highlights include Michonne strangling the Governor with her scabbard and the Governor bashing her head against the wall before smashing it through the side of one of the fish tanks. When he tries to pull her free, she pulls down several of them with her, so there's water and biting heads all over the floor on top of everything else. She gets in an elbow and goes for her katana, but he grabs her before she can reach it, so instead she pulls loose a shard of tank -- cutting her own hand in the process -- and sticks it into his right eye, then goes the extra mile by breaking the point off inside. He lies there screaming and crying and Michonne raises her sword again to dispatch him, only to hear a second screamed "No!" from the doorway.

This time it's Andrea who has a gun aimed at her, and Michonne's sword draws up short. "What have you done?" Andrea whispers in shock. They slowly circle each other, weapons pointed at each other's faces, until Michonne's at the door, at which point she lowers her blade and walks out without a word. Andrea goes to help the Governor, but is brought up short by the heads in the tanks and on the floor. But he looks so pathetic cradling his re-dead child with a chunk of glass still sticking out of his ruined eye that she crouches down to comfort him. And also because she's a moron.

Carl leads Tyrese's group into the anteroom outside Cell Block C, by which time the bitten woman appears to have died. "I'll take care of it," Carl says, holding his gun so that the giant silencer on it nearly touches the woman's forehead, even while she lies on the floor and he's standing up. Sasha asks who he is and who he's with, and Carl says they can help them. "But first thing's first." Tyrese declines, saying they take care of their own, and he pulls out his clawhammer. The bitten woman's husband and her grown son hold each other off to the side while Tyrese raises the tool over Donna's bandana-covered face, but before he swings it they're distracted by how Carl has just shut the door and locked them in there. Sasha gets pretty upset, demanding to be let out, but Carl doesn't budge, telling them they'll be safe in there with food and water. And I assume that our people have some other way to get outside from the cell block. Beth and Hershel are visible to the new people, but keeping mum. "Back away from the door and let the man go," Tyrese tells Sasha, so clearly someone already respects Carl. Probably helps that he didn't know the kid a few months ago. "Look around you. It's the best we've had in weeks. His house. And we've got other things to do." He tells Carl they don't want any trouble, and they get back to it. Beth asks Carl, "Shouldn't we help them?" "I did," Carl says. His transition to bad-ass is nearly complete.

The Governor's at the clinic, where the doctor says the eye is badly damaged. I'm no doctor and I could have told them that. The Governor wants out of the building, but first Andrea would like a word. "What the hell was that?" she demands as soon as the doctor leaves the room. 'Why was she here? Why were you fighting her?" The Governor says Michonne came back to kill him, implying that Andrea might have a better idea of why than he does. Andrea asks about the fish tanks and heads. "I made myself look at them. Prepare me for the horrors outside," the Governor says. Sure he does. He doesn't have an answer for Penny, though. Milton bursts in, asking what happened. Merle comes in a moment later, fresh from the fight, like the song goes, and says the intruders made it over the wall. "I'll go after them in the morning," he promises. The Governor gives him a pretty scary look with his remaining eye. You think he's figured out that Merle lied to him about having killed Michonne?

Rick, Maggie and a pretty rough-looking Glenn return to the group's former hiding spot just outside the wall to wait for Daryl. Michonne pops out of hiding, not exactly a sight for sore eyes, and Rick and Maggie hold her at gunpoint, demanding to know where she was. Rick disarms her and asks her, "Get what you came for?" Michonne asks where the rest of them are. "They got Oscar," Glenn says, and Maggie asks if she's seen Daryl. Rick starts to threaten Michonne if anything happens to Daryl, and she interrupts, "I brought you here to save them." And nothing else, right? Just pop in and pick up the Governor's head as long as you're out doing errands? Rick dismissively thanks her for the help, and she says he's got his work cut out for him, whether it's getting Maggie and Glenn back to the prison or going back in to get Daryl. "Either way, you need me." So clearly Michonne's still got scores of her own to settle in Woodbury.

The town -- including Andrea and Merle -- is gathered in the arena, although it's quite a different mood from before. The Governor walks into the middle of the circle with his eye bandaged and launches into a speech. "What can I say? Hasn't been a night like this since the walls were completed. I thought we were past it... I failed you. I promised to keep you safe. Now look at me. I should tell you that we'll be okay. That we're safe. That tomorrow we'll bury our dead and endure, but I won't. Because I can't. Because I'm afraid... I'm afraid of terrorists who want what we have! Want to destroy us! And worse, because one of those terrorists is one of our own. Merle!"

By M. Giant

The Governor points an accusatory finger at his pointy-armed henchman, and the men immediately surrounding Merle aim their weapons at him. "A man I counted on, a man I trusted. He led them here. He let them in." Merle is relieved of his bayonet attachment as the Governor accuses, "It was you. You lied. You betrayed us all." Merle doesn't seem to have much to say for himself. A prisoner is frog-marched into the arena with his hands tied behind his back, not that there's any question who it is, and Merle is pushed into the circle as the captive is led right up to the Governor, who rips the bag off his head. "This is one of the terrorists," the Governor says, revealing Daryl. "Merle's own brother!" The Dixons look upon each other for the first time since the series began, while Andrea watches shocked from the bleachers.

"What should we do with them, huh?" the Governor asks of the crowd, which starts chanting to kill them. The Governor goes up to Merle and quietly says, "You wanted your brother. Now you got him." And this half of the season ends in close profile of the Governor's good side, as we commence the wait until February to find out what happens . I was hoping more of it would happen tonight, but after the best half-season of this show yet, I probably shouldn't complain.

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.