Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Recapped by M. Giant · Aired 02-24-2013 · S03E11

There's some fallout from last week's attack, as you might expect. Rick and his group are bunkered down inside the prison, painfully integrating Merle into the group and living as though they're already under siege. The Governor is raising an army in Woodbury, drafting everyone capable of holding a weapon, including asthmatic teenagers. And Andrea…Oh, God, I just can't even with Andrea.

But I guess I have to. Having gotten wind of the Governor's attack on the prison (which he claims they started), Andrea decides she needs to go see her old friends to try to bring the two sides together. The Governor won't let her go, so she enlists help from Milton to help her sneak out. Of course he goes right to the Governor, who tells Milton to help Andrea, which he does. They go out and capture a walker for Andrea to use as a Michonne-style pet for the journey, and while they're doing that, they meet Tyreese and his group. Andrea proceeds to the prison, where her clean, blonde, fancy self gets a load of all her dirty, grieving, desperate ex-cohorts and decides she knows better than everyone else even more than usual. She tries to lecture them into sitting down with the Governor so they can all be friends, which gets the welcome you'd expect (and a richly deserved verbal smackdown from Michonne). So her self-appointed mission is a failure. But Carol gives her another one: go back to Woodbury, sex up the Governor and kill him in his sleep. Which would be awesome, so of course Andrea's not going to do it.

Also, Rick's getting pressure from inside the group (including Carl) to shape up or step down; Milton brings Tyreese's group to Woodbury, where they volunteer to help the Governor attack the prison with the inside knowledge they gained during their brief stay there; and Andrea ends up carrying out Carol's entire plan to the letter. Except for the Governor-killing part. Seriously, I can't even with her.

After last week's attack, Rick, Daryl and Merle appear to have already gotten past the walkers in the outer yard, because they're already in the cell block -- or rather, Rick and Daryl are, while Merle's locked outside it in what I'm just going to go ahead and start calling the guest room. Everyone's arguing about whether to run or stay. Rick says they're staying and Glenn backs him up, but he's just about the only one. Merle says they should have skated when they had the chance, but the Governor probably has scouts on every exit route by now. "That truck through the fence thing? That's just him ringing the doorbell." Which is what I thought last week. "If he takes the high ground around this place, shoot, he could just starve us out if he wanted to." Everyone quickly falls to bickering, and Hershel insists, "I said we should leave. Now Axel's dead. We can't just sit here." Rick starts walking away, and Hershel angrily levers himself to his foot and bellows, "Get back here!" Rick actually stops, and Hershel reminds Rick of how he declared the end of democracy at the end of Season Two, which means that their dictator needs to get his shit together already.

Rick goes out to an elevated, fenced-in, and wooden pallet-reinforced lookout post to take in the lay of the land outside. The outer yard is still full of zombies rattling the gate to the inner courtyard. Beyond them is the crashed truck they arrived in, a stretch of empty outer yard, the outer fences and the woods. Rick stares through binoculars and listens to the slavering from outside. Carl joins him and after some small talk, he makes a suggestion. "You should stop." "Stop what?" "Being the leader. Let Hershel and Daryl handle things. You deserve a rest." Rick promised not to get mad, so he kind of can't, and Carl heads back inside. I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe Carl should be the leader.

The Governor's in his apartment, going over some demographic numbers with Milton -- namely, the number of people in Woodbury capable of holding a weapon. Milton's total is 26, until the Governor asks him to include "men and women age 13 and up." Milton stutters that it's 35 if they count what the Governor calls "adolescents," and the Governor says to make sure they're all armed and ready to start training. Andrea comes in uninvited, having gotten wind of his attack on the prison, which is the opposite of what he told her he was going to do. The Governor claims to have gone to negotiate and blames them for shooting at his guys. Which they did, after Axel caught the Governor's opening round with his noggin. Milton makes himself scarce, and Andrea says she wants to go see them. The Governor refuses to give her a car or help of any kind, adding, "You go to that prison, stay there." Please. Like Rick and his group haven't had enough lousy breaks lately.

By M. Giant

Out on the street, she sees people handing out weapons and turning the Norman Rockwell main street into a bunker. Martinez is trying to draft some asthmatic 14-year-old, and his mom asks Andrea to intervene. She tells Martinez that they're supposed to be defending themselves, not raising an army. "Wake up," Martinez sneers. "The only way to defend ourselves is with an army." Which they will then use to attack people, in self-defense.

At the prison, they're still debating their move. They don't have enough ammo to clear the outer yard, and Glenn complains about how they're trapped inside, somehow already running low on food and bullets. "We've been here before," Daryl points out. Glenn says that was before there was a snake in the nest. "Maybe we can go through this again?" Daryl says, insisting that Merle's in now. "Get used to it. All y'all." He heads upstairs and Glenn complains to Rick about Merle, saying nobody asked him to live with Shane after he tried to kill Rick. That's true; Rick volunteered. Hershel points out that Merle's military experience could come in handy, and Glenn suggests solving two of their problems by turning Merle over to the Governor. "Give him his traitor, maybe declare a truce." Yes, good luck with that. I'm sure that will satisfy him, especially with regard to Michonne. "Sure, you killed my undead daughter and half-blinded me, but now that you've made the painful sacrifice of handing over the man I sent to kill you, we're cool."

Hershel finds Merle at work duct-taping the blade of a reciprocating power saw to his arm-cap as a fairly poor substitute for the bayonet attachment he had to leave behind in Woodbury. They get acquainted by swapping their stories about Rick's actions leading to the loss of their respective extremities, as you do. Hershel pulls out a Bible he found in one of the cells, and begins citing the verse about cutting off the right hand if it offends you, a quote Merle completes chapter and verse. "Woodbury had a damn fine library. One of the only things I miss about it," he "explains." First of all, I'm sure he also misses being Duke Shit of Turd Mountain, and second of all, having access to a lot of books often leads to spending less time with the Bible, not more. Merle adds that the Governor is going to kill him first. "Michonne, my brother, then your girls, Glenn, Carl, the baby, whoever else. He'll save Rick for last so he can watch his family and friends die ugly. That's who you're dealing with," as though Hershel maybe thought until now that the Governor was more like a persistent telemarketer.

Milton has mustered all able-bodied Woodburyans on a yard somewhere in the town. He introduces the Governor to a little old lady with arthritis, who the Governor politely dismisses, but only after examining her hands for himself. He moves on to Noah, the aforementioned teenager, and from behind him, Andrea blares that Noah has asthma. Noah tells the Governor that he had a BB gun once, but his mom took it, probably worried that he'd shoot his eye out. "Well, you're going to learn from the best," the Governor says bracingly. It's probably just as well that Noah didn't mention anything to the Governor about eyes getting shot out.

Carol goes and finds Daryl in his cell to say she's glad he's back home. He isn't, so much, saying it's a tomb. Carol remembers T-Dog calling it that, and she thought he was right until Daryl found her. "He's your brother, but he's not good for you. Don't let him bring you down. After all, look how far you've come." Awkward laugh, which I guess is Daryl's way of showing his appreciation for her pointing what a dick he used to be.

Milton finds Andrea inspecting the wall and assures her that nobody is getting in or out. She confirms that he didn't know anything about the attack on the prison before it happened, and tells him to cover for her while she goes there. He's not about to let her put him in the position of having to lie to the Governor. She pleads her case, saying she's trying to stop more people getting killed. Because she's always been so great at that, when she wasn't shooting them in the head or leaving them alone to commit suicide.

At home alone in front of a mirror, The Governor rips the bandage off his eye and holds a match up to the ruined, pus-filled socket for closer inspection. Yeah, I don't think there's enough Visine in the world, Phil. Hearing a knock at the door, he quickly pops on a jaunty eye patch he had handy in time to receive Milton. "You asked me to keep tabs on her," Milton reminds him, and says that Andrea has asked for his help in secretly escaping to the prison. The Governor says to give it. "Okay, do you really want me to do that or is this some sort of test?" Milton asks. The Governor chuckles darkly and repeats the instructions. "Good work," he adds.

A bald walker with most of its chin-flesh gone stumbles through the woods, oblivious to Andrea and Milton stalking it from behind the trees. Wearing his duct-tape-sleeved jacket that's saved him before, Milton tries to nab the walker with the snare in his hands, but loses his nerve so that Andrea has to jump out and tackle it. Milton holds it down while Andrea uses a hatchet to relieve it of its hands below the elbow. That accomplished, she forces head chin-down on a rock so she can smash its jaw by curbstomping it. She pauses to dispatch another approaching zombie, then snares her new pet just as a matronly revenant comes out of the woods while she's got her hands full and Milton is busy being... Milton.

But before this new walker can become a threat, Tyreese steps into view and quickly kills it. He's quickly joined by Sasha, Alan and Ben, who all freeze in their tracks to look at a nerd in a jacket made of duct tape and a woman with a maimed walker in a snare. Alas, neither Milton nor Andrea says, "This isn't what it looks like."

Michonne is busy doing one-legged pushups when Merle comes up and remarks that it's smart to stay in shape, reminding her, "Don't leave out the cardio." He says he wants to clear the air between them. Does he have a 1980s music video wind machine handy? Because I think that's what it's going to take. Still, he makes an effort, saying he was just carrying out orders when he was trying to hunt her down and kill her. "Like the Gestapo," Michonne says. Merle's basically, yup, and says he hopes they can get past it. "Let bygones be bygones." Michonne doesn't seem so sure, but she lets him turn his back on her and leave the room without doing anything. Godwin's law strikes again.

Milton explains to Tyreese and his group about how it's supposed to keep the walkers away. Ben asks if they have a camp, and Andrea says, "It's just us." Off a look from Milton, like anyone would believe that the cleanest people they've seen in a year have been roughing it, she adds, "We have a town. It's walled." Milton adds that there are seventy of them (which seems a little high, given that they were at 67 at the start of the season before all the deaths), and offers to take them back. Andrea leads her new pet off on her own errand, politely declining Tyreese's offer of help. "Nope, I'm good."

Andrea forces her walker ahead of her on foot all the way to the prison. While on lookout, Carl spots her through the binoculars and alerts Maggie, who readies her sniper rifle. Watching the approach of Andrea and her pet through the scope, Maggie recognizes Andrea. "Get your dad and the others," she hisses, and goes back to watching Andrea through the rifle scope. Without taking her finger off the trigger, I notice. Andrea comes right in through the blown-open front gates, axing down the odd walker that gets too close, while the group comes out, guns leveled, like she's an invading force. You might think this seems like rather an overreaction to just one visitor, and if it were anybody besides Andrea, I would agree. Rick demands to know if she's alone, but he lets Daryl open the gate for her.

No sooner is she in -- leaving her pet outside with the pole still hanging from its neck, so now Woodbury's going to be short a snare on top of everything else -- than she's up against the closed fence while Rick roughly frisks her, pausing to pull her away from the chain link fence only when a walker gets right up in her face from the other side. He bitches, "I asked if you were alone," and rips the bag off her shoulder. Michonne is watching all this with an inscrutable look on her face as Rick says, "Welcome back. Get up." I think he only means one of those things.

By M. Giant

Andrea is led back into the prison's guest room, where Carol at least is glad to see her. They share a long hug as Carol says they though she was dead. Good times. Andrea notices Hershel's missing leg, and asks where Shane is. Sure, he was already dead -- twice -- when the shit went down at the farm, but I guess Andrea never got word before she was separated from the others. Rick just shakes his head. "And Lori?" she asks, poking away. Hershel answers, "She had a girl. Lori didn't survive." "Neither did T-Dog," Maggie adds. Andrea says she's sorry (I assume about Shane and T-Dog; not liking Lori was one of the few things she ever did right), and speaks to Carl, but he's looking pretty dangerous. Andrea takes another gander at Rick, who's been looking rough all season but especially so through Andrea's eyes for the first time in a long while. She asks if she can visit the cell block where they live, but Rick refuses. "We had that field, courtyard, until your boyfriend tore down the fence with a truck and shot us up." "He said you fired first," Andrea says, though I can't imagine that even she is stupid enough to have believed that latest lie. What am I saying? Of course I can. Rick says the Governor was lying, and Hershel tells her about Axel. "We liked him," Daryl says. "He was one of us."

In the outer courtyard, stupid Andrea has the nerve to blame Michonne for turning everyone against the Governor, and claims that she didn't choose the Governor over her partner. "I just wanted a life." Sorry, fresh out. Michonne says that unlike herself, Andrea was under the Governor's spell from the first moment she saw him and still is. Andrea claims Woodbury needs her. "And what about these people?" Michonne asks. Andrea says she's trying to save them too. Michonne actually gives a rare smile and remarks, "I did not realize that messiah complex was contagious." Yes, Andrea must have gotten it from Rick. Andrea is about to walk away, and Michonne quietly adds that the Governor sent Merle to kill her-- and Andrea too, had she left town with her. "But you didn't, did you? You chose a warm bed over a friend. That's why I went back to Woodbury. Exposed him for what he is. I knew that it would hurt you." Andrea turns back, but Michonne has had her say, and she leaves Andrea fighting tears in the paved courtyard. It's about time someone made her cry.

The Governor visits Tyreese and his group in the room inside the clinic where they've been waiting with Milton, welcoming them to town. Looking out the window, Alan notices the prepping going on and asks if they were attacked. The Governor claims that some dangerous people came after them a few days ago. "There were several fatalities," Milton says. They express their sympathies, and the Governor advises them not to go north when they decide to move on. Sasha volunteers that's where they came from. "Ran into some whack-job at a prison," Alan adds. They have the Governor's full attention now. "He's a little unhinged but the others seem decent," Tyreese adds. "Everything seemed cool till their leader came back and practically shoved a gun in my face." Ben unilaterally offers the services of Tyreese's group's against them, and Tyreese agrees, "Whatever we gotta do to earn our keep." They're like floaters on Big Brother, sucking up to whoever is Head of Household that week. Milton asks them if they can describe the interior, and the Governor gets all friendly as he says they can talk about it tomorrow. So he's not only lost Andrea, he's also gained Tyreese, Sasha, Ben and Alan? He's having the best day ever.

Andrea strolls inside the nearly empty cell block anyway, when there's nobody else in there but Carol and the baby. She asks Carol if she can hold Lil Asskicker, and Carol hands her right over, which I'm sure Rick would love, given that he didn't even want Andrea in here. But then I guess that if Carol were overly concerned about little Judith's safety, she wouldn't have her changing table set up on the mezzanine level, right at the perfect height so she can roll right through the bars of the open railing and plummet ten feet to the hard floor below.

Carol catches Andrea up about what happened to Lori and T-Dog. And to Shane, after he tried to kill Rick. "He loved Rick," Andrea protests. "Shane loved Lori," Carol shrugs. Still don't know why anyone would. "Rick's become cold, unsteady," Andrea diagnoses while holding his child, and Carol defends him, saying he has his reasons. Carol asks Andrea to do something, and Andrea protests that she's trying. She's sucking, and it's a shitty idea in the first place, but she's trying. But Carol meant something specific: "You need to sleep with [the Governor]. Give him the greatest night of his life. Get him to drop his guard. Then, while he's sleeping, you can end this." Whoa, check out Carol, being of tactical use!

Out in the yard, the group gives Andrea her bag back and a dusty Department of Corrections vehicle from the motor pool. She looks around at everyone, says, "Take care," and gets in. Before she drives off, Rick returns her knife and her gun and tells her to be careful. She drives to the gate, which Merle hurries to open for her and close behind her [Note: I still don't understand why they let the guy with one hand do this. -- Rachel.], and threads through the zombies milling in the outer yard. And without bothering to flatten any of them like a guest with any manners at all would do.

It's full dark by the time Andrea drives her new car right up to the main gate at Woodbury. The guards on the wall all level their weapons as she pulls up, and shine a spotlight through the windshield. She gets out, her hands up, and they recognize her.

And let her in, apparently, because she presents herself at the Governor's apartment, finding him in his cups and listening to a music on an old reel-to-reel recorder because he presumably can't be bothered to loot a Best Buy. She tells him about her little visit. "They're broken. Living in horrible conditions." The Governor asks about Michonne, Merle and Rick, all of whom she confirms were there, and he asks if they sent her back here. She says it was her decision to come back. He asks why, and when she doesn't answer, he gets up to caress her and answers for her, "Because you belong here." They embrace, and it looks like Andrea is going to put at least the first step of Carol's plan into action.

It's night at the prison, not that anybody's sleeping. They're all hanging out in the hallway of the dark cell block like they're already surrounded and under siege. Rick comes out of one of the cells holding Lil Asskicker, and Beth decides to sing everyone a song. Which I later find out is "Hold On," making Beth the youngest, blondest Tom Waits fan ever.

By M. Giant

"Some reunion, huh?" Daryl quietly remarks to Hershel and Rick. "She's in a jam," Rick says, suddenly all understanding. "We all are," Hershel says. "Andrea's persuasive. This fella's armed to the teeth, bent on destruction." Daryl asks what Rick wants to do, and Rick says, "We match it." he says he's going on a run tomorrow, but when Daryl volunteers to come along, Rick tells him to stay and watch Merle. "I'm glad you're back, really, but if he causes a problem it's on you." Daryl says he's got it, and Rick decides to take Michonne, although Daryl wonders if that's a good idea. "I'll find out," Rick says, rather recklessly. Even more recklessly, he's bringing Carl as well. "He's ready." Let's hope the ghost of Lori doesn't show up at an inopportune moment to register her disapproval.

Beth's singing voice goes on and up, but there's nobody here to tell her she's going to Hollywood. And the one absent member of the group, out on watch at the lookout post, peers through the stood-up pallets at the zombies drifting past just outside. It's Carl.

Tom Waits's original recording takes over for Beth's voice on the soundtrack as the scene shifts to Woodbury. The town is quiet, but bunkered down. Andrea lies awake in bed to the sleeping Governor, until she gets up and walks naked in dark to her pile of clothes on the floor. She takes her sweet time walking back to him, standing over him, with the shadow of her knifepoint over his throat. One expects the Governor to jump up and grab her at any moment, but she's thwarted by no such development. In fact, the only thing that stops Andrea is stupid Andrea herself, as she chickens out and goes to stare soulfully out the window instead. One job, they gave her. time, Dale, please just leave her at the CDC.

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.