By M. Giant
Naturally, the Governor has big plans for Woodbury and the prison, but right now all his energy seems focused on the torture chamber he's got built and equipped for Michonne. Milton finds out about it and shows it to Andrea, but he stops her from killing the Governor. Instead, she takes his advice, going over the wall in a desperate bid to warn her friends at the prison that he has no intention whatsoever of keeping his word.
On her way out, Andrea drew her knife on Tyreese and Sasha, who were on wall duty together. They report her exit to the Governor, and the other members of their group, Alan and his son Ben, don't seem too happy about the possibility that this could screw things up in Woodbury for all of them. Martinez takes the whole group to the walker-traps outside of town for a zombie-harvesting mission, but Tyreese rebels at the idea of using them against other people. Not to mention the fact that some long-buried tension between him and Alan comes to a near-deadly head. That night, someone goes out and torches the whole facility, reducing Woodbury's zombie corps to a pile of crispy -- but still-moving -- critters.
Meanwhile the Governor goes out after Andrea alone. Traveling overland, she manages to elude capture long enough to make it to an abandoned warehouse, where she soon finds herself stalked and cornered by the ultimate crazy ex-boyfriend, without so much as a gun to her name. Lucky for her, she's able to loose a handy herd of walkers on him and make her escape while he's got his hands full presumably getting killed by them.
But, of course, Andrea always finds a way to screw up everything, and no sooner is she in sight of the prison than the Governor, miraculously alive, catches up with her and captures her after all. Back in Woodbury, he lies to everyone that he never found her, and convinces Tyreese and his group that the captive zombies were only to scare off the people at the prison, to avoid a fight. They seem to accept this, and things are smoothed over. The Governor even seems satisfied that Tyreese had nothing to do with the zombie-arson. I'd say he's pretty sure the real culprit was Milton, which is one of the few things he and I agree on.
So where's Andrea? Tied to the chair in the torture chamber the Governor set up for Michonne, of course. I mean, seriously, of course she is.
We must be starting the episode with a flashback. Andrea and Michonne are out in the wilderness together, with Michonne's pet walkers chained to trees just inside the circle of light cast by their campfire. The two refugees eat out of tin cans and comment wryly about "girls' night." Andrea asks Michonne where her pets came from, but all she gets in response is a pained glare. "You want to talk about it?" Andrea says. I would have thought the answer to that would be obvious, but this is Andrea we're talking about. We already know from earlier in the season that Andrea never did learn the full provenance of Michonne's pets, but we all get a clue here. "They deserved what they got," Michonne says. "They weren't human to begin with." Like before they turned? Thanks for making me curious again about an issue I'd forgotten about months ago, Show.
From the chain of one of Michonne's pets, we dissolve to another pair of chains -- this one in some dungeon of the Governor's, as he kneels between two post about six feet apart to test their security in holding what he clearly hopes will be a very special guest. Yep, they look solid. Unlike the Governor's current state of mind.
It looks like fall is coming on in Woodbury, as Martinez and the Governor's men are wearing jackets as they load an Army Humvee up with weapons. Milton wonders what's going on, and seems surprised at all the artillery being sent out, not to mention every swinging dick the Governor's got. Andrea rolls up, saying, "I thought there was a deal on the table?" Yes, Andrea, that's because you're an idiot. Milton assures her that it's probably just a precaution, but he's clearly not convinced himself as he stomps off in search of the Governor.
The man himself is currently in his dungeon, inventorying a tray of nasty-looking torture devices, sweating and breathing through his mouth like he's fighting off a cold or was recently punched in the nose. Either one sounds good to me. He becomes aware of Milton standing in the doorway behind him, and asks what he needs. "How does that help Woodbury?" Milton demands, reminding the Governor of his big dreams for the town. Milton gets how the Governor feels about Michonne, but not the people at the prison. The Governor asks Milton if he still believes there's anything left of humanity in the walkers, and when Milton says he does, the Governor reminds him that in that case, Michonne killed his little girl. Milton tries to claim it doesn't matter any more, but the Governor tells him that it's all that matters. Michonne has clearly become the governor's white whale, if you'll pardon the expression.
Milton privately goes to Andrea and tells her that there's no deal with Rick, and the Governor wants Michonne. And then he's going to kill everyone at the prison whether he gets her or not. Andrea says she needs to stop it, but Milton doesn't think she can. Well, just because Andrea can't do something, that doesn't mean it can't be done. But for now, Milton leads her to a hidden spot overlooking the Governor's "workshop" and shows her what's below -- the Governor's tools, with a dentist's chair in the center of the room. All that's missing is Lawrence Olivier repeatedly asking Dustin Hoffman, "Is it safe?" Milton tells Andrea to go warn the people at the prison, but Andrea's got a better idea: "I have to kill him." Yeah, you tried that before, remember? They're still debating when the Governor walks in below and they fall silent, watching as he sets down a curve needle and thread then stands contemplating the chair, whistling. Andrea quietly draws her sidearm and takes aim through the louvers, totally visible if the Governor were to look up, but Milton takes the gun out of her hands. Damn, even Milton can thwart her? What the hell good is she?
Afterward, in her apartment, Milton argues that there's still a spark of the old Phillip he once knew, much as he believes the walkers are still themselves in some way. Andrea doesn't buy that argument, but she is given pause when Milton points out that after she and the Governor are both dead, Martinez will take over. "Killing the governor doesn't save your friends." Andrea says she's going to warn them then, as though it's entirely her idea, and angrily adds that he's coming with her. But Milton isn't budging, even though I belatedly realize that she meant it as an invitation rather than a threat when she kisses him on the cheek before leaving. Well, that was out of nowhere.
Out on the street, Andrea can't even get past some of the Governor's men without Martinez bracing her and demanding she hand over her weapon for the Governor's collection drive. She reluctantly does so, just before the Governor comes up and apologizes for not telling her earlier; he just wanted to keep her safe. But he wants her along with him when he goes to meet Rick tomorrow, in case he tries anything. Andrea agrees to that, or pretends to.
Tyreese and Sasha are up on the wall at the back of town, and as a walker approaches from outside, it becomes clear that Tyreese owes his continued survival to his size and facility with melee weapons because he is one shit marksman. I guess it's about time this show had one. Even with a scope he can't even wing the ghoul at ten yards, but he finally gets him on the fourth try. Andrea struts up behind them all bossy-like, telling them Martinez has summoned them to the front wall for help with a large pack that's approaching. They're not buying it, so she drops the pretense and climbs on up, trying to go right past them. Tyreese tries to stop her and she pulls her knife on him, which Martinez failed to get from her earlier (not that he didn't ask). That quiets them down, even though they've both got big guns. She says she's sorry, but she has to leave; "The Governor is not what he seems to be." Tyreese tries to talk her down, but they end up letting her hop down off the wall and run down the ruined street. Sasha tells Tyreese that they shouldn't have let her go. "What do you want me to do, shoot her?" Tyreese asks. Well, if we hadn't just established that you can't...
What they do instead is go right to the Governor and Martinez. Both of them, in fact, so I don't know who's at their post now. Martinez is pissy but the Governor is keeping up the benevolent leader act, telling them they did the right thing and expressing gratitude that neither of them was hurt, then going on to claim that his concern is for Andrea, feral after spending the winter in the wild all alone. He asks if Andrea said anything specific (which of course she didn't, because that might have been helpful), but Tyreese has got nothing, and is mainly worried about being in trouble with the Governor. He assures them that they're cool, but asks them to help Martinez with something. Which means they're probably dead.
Outside, Milton advises the Governor not to go after Andrea like he wants to, saying she just wants to be with her people. The Governor realizes Milton knew, and grabs him by the throat, demanding to know if he told her about the deal or Michonne. "She knows, doesn't she?" the Governor growls, and furiously releases Milton before stomping on.
Andrea jogs down the road, slowly accumulating a trail of walkers as she goes. Solid plan, this.
Martinez leads Tyreese and Sasha to the wall, telling them and their friends Alan and his son Ben -- who are also on wall duty -- that they're rolling out in a few minutes. Alan talks to an increasingly concerned Tyreese about how crazy he's heard Andrea is, and tells him to get on board, warning him that he doesn't want Tyreese getting them all booted out of here. "They've been attacked by that crazy-ass cowboy and some chick with a sword. Shit's going down and you're making waves." Tyreese tells Alan to back off, and when it looks like some old shit is about to get dredged up, Sasha leads Ben off to the truck. Apparently Alan is still butt-hurt about Tyreese having saved his late wife Donna's life at some point, leading her to see Tyreese as her savior and leaving Alan feeling useless. Martinez impatiently calls them over to the truck. "We ain't done," Alan says. Oh, I think you probably are.
Andrea, still running down the center of the road, hears an engine roaring up behind her and dodges into the trees, where it's so much safer. She stands with her back against a cluster of tree trunks and is actually stupid enough to be relieved when the truck goes by. Right up until one walker's arm reaches between the trunks and grabs her from behind, pinning her, while two undead women approach from the front. She braces her knee against the lead ghoul, giving her time to get her knife into position so that when she release it, it falls forward with its eye impaled on the blade. The one behind it is pinned beneath when it falls back again, and when Andrea breaks the arm of the one behind her, she's free to stab the other female, and then the original Mr. Grabby when it comes around the tree after her. And then she's back on her way. Okay, obviously I like her better when she's fucking up zombies instead of everything else she touches.
Martinez has brought Tyreese and his group -- as well as the large African-American villager whose name turns out to be "Shump," of all things -- to the zombie-trap introduced in the first half of the season. There are maybe a dozen of them down in the pit, and Tyreese and Sasha are horrified to realize that they're bringing walkers to the meeting with the prison people tomorrow. Alan, of course, thinks it's genius. Tyreese says they're not doing this, and Martinez says if that's the way he wants it, the Governor will boot them all. Alan angrily tells Tyreese to shut up and says it's his job to look out for his kid. "Like you looked out for Donna?" Tyreese digs. Alan jumps him, but he's half Tyreese's size, and even his scrawny teenage son jumping into the mix can't help. Soon Tyreese has Alan half hanging over the edge of the pit, and Alan dares Tyreese to drop him in. Instead, Tyreese pulls him back. Martinez applauds and tells Shump, "Take him back to town. Let him do some knitting."
Andrea pauses in the middle of an open field. Is she now, on top of everything else, lost? That would be the kicker, wouldn't it? Seeing another truck go by on the bordering road, she dives to the ground for cover, but it's too late; it's coming back around after her, blasting its horn. With the Governor at the wheel. Not sure what the purpose of the horn-honking is; he already has her attention. She reaches the tree line and disappears. The Governor's truck can't pursue, but he's clearly going around.
As dusk is coming on, Andrea eventually makes it to the semi-industrial outskirts of an abandoned town, and runs to hide inside one of the buildings, just as the Governor is rolling up in is truck. She finds herself in a small, wrecked cube farm off a warehouse office complex, trying to stay undetected in the gloom and only succeeding in kicking over large buckets of noisy debris. She hears the Governor's truck outside, and soon his footsteps inside, as he stalks the creepy, darkened space. Hearing her make more noise, he starts whistling. Clearly sneaking up on her is not his plan.
She falls silent, but can't manage to quietly kill a walker that comes at her out of the dark. She moves on and he follows, soon finding her fresh leavings on the floor and whispering her name, asking her to come back, saying they all need her. "That's your home now. Your people. Your town. You can't just leave them all behind." This is a line of reasoning that would normally work great on her, appealing as it does to her overinflated sense of her own awesomeness, but even she's not buying anymore, and she stays hidden. After a short pause, the Governor says, "Suit yourself," and starts furiously smashing interior windows with a shovel. Someone is in a mood. He continues to move around and making as much noise as possible, like that's going to flush her out. Of course he knows damn well she's not packing heat, so it's not like he has any reason not to give away his position.
Soon he's within yards of her current totally inadequate hiding place, dragging the shovel blade on the cement floor; then feet away, and then he hears something break in another direction. He goes off that way apparently unaware that Andrea was poised behind a narrow crate with her knife poised. He's a little disappointed when the noise turns out to be another walker, which he quickly dispatches with his own knife. His handgun does for a couple more, not that he minds taking the time to repeatedly split one's skull with the blade of the shovel for maximum gross effect. Andrea thinks she's safe, and then when another walker comes around the corner at her, she pushes it back, leaving it suspended on a hanging meathook. She then tries a door, only to find nothing behind it but a stairwell absolutely packed with walkers. When she closes the door again, the Governor is there behind her, slowly approaching. "Time to go home, Andrea."
When he gets close enough, she opens the door again, then ducks behind it so she's safe while the stairwell full of walkers empties itself out a the Governor. Okay, that was a slick move. He's soon in a fight for his life, which Andrea watches dispassionately through the door's broken window. At least until she gets bored and runs up the now-empty stairwell to the upper level, listening to him empty his gun and continue basing away at the dozen or more revenants that have him cornered. Finally she finds another exit and walks out, satisfied that there's no way the Governor's getting out of this one.
It's full dark now as the zombie-trap's cylinders grind away. In addition to the ones in the pit, there's a livestock trailer full of them. An unseen figure splashes them with gasoline, as well as the ones in the pit. A rag is lit, and soon they're all burning. Pretty neat effect, actually, the way flames are licking at the zombies as they wander around helplessly in the pit.
After what must have been a long night, Andrea finally makes it to the edge of the woods outside the prison fence, battered and exhausted. Presumably the Governor had the keys to the truck in his pocket. It's the first we've seen of the place all night. Rick's up on the guard tower alone, and Andrea happily raises a hand and draws breath to hail him. Which of course is when the Governor jumps up, grabs her from behind, and pulls her to the ground and out of sight. As for Rick up in the guard tower, it's clear that he just caught the quick movement out of the corner of his eye, but we can't tell what he makes of it, if anything; for now, the Governor has Andrea pinned to the ground, his hand over her mouth. Other than that, he actually looks pretty happy to see her. Man, either he's super-tough or zombies are not what they used to be. He's got blood on his face, of course, but it's clearly not his or else the fever would probably have hit him by now. Rick raises his rifle and looks through the scope where Andrea was just standing a moment ago, but a after a few seconds of seeing nothing, he clearly decides it was another phantom and goes back to his watch. One more second would have made the difference. Maybe get the lead out time, Andrea.
Shump's at the zombie trap and finds it burned out, with charred corpses huddled in a grisly pile at the bottom of the pit. Smoking, sizzling, smoldering, collapsed -- but still really wanting to eat him. Damn.
The Governor drives back into town and, without getting out of his truck or even rolling the window all the way down, lies to Martinez that he had no luck finding Andrea. Martinez tells him about the zombie barbecue, and his suspicions that it might have been "Tyreese and his sister." The Governor tells Martinez to send the whole group over to meet him, and to go to Zombies 'N' Thingz at the mall for more walkers while he's at it.
The Governor, still bloody-faced, finds Tyreese and his group waiting for him. Sasha asks whether he found Andrea in an almost accusatory tone of voice, and he tells them the same lie. "Hardly made it back myself. I'll look again tomorrow." He asks them about what happened at the pit yesterday, and Tyreese says he gets it if the Governor has a beef with Rick, "But you can't be feeding his kids to biters." The Governor indulgently says he plans no such thing; it's a bluff. "I'd rather scare his people into leaving us alone than engaging in another fight. Trying to save lives here." He claims that people are more scared of an oncoming zombie than a gun in their face, which I guess is why this whole half-season is about a brewing war between humans. Sasha seems convinced, but Tyreese skeptically asks, "Then why didn't your man just say that?" The Governor falters a bit, saying they don't discuss tactics with strangers. They just ask them to assist with them. Now Sasha, Ben and Alan are all looking at Tyreese, waiting for him to apologize. Which he does, saying it won't happen again. The Governor seems to accept this, but on the way out, he Columbos, "Where did you get the gasoline?" Tyreese: "Come again?" The Governor, convinced that Tyreese's confusion is genuine, says it doesn't matter, and leaves them alone.
The Governor meets the one other suspect, Milton, on the street. Milton just asks the Governor, "Is she dead?" "I hope not," the Governor answers. Milton asks the Governor if he's okay, and the Governor claims to have never been better. Milton says it's a shame about the pits, and hopes the Governor finds out who did it. "Already have," the Governor says. Without asking him who, Milton walks on, which is a dead giveaway. And the Governor watches him go. For now.
Elsewhere, in one of Woodbury's seemingly endless warehouse-slash-dungeons, the camera tracks down a winding hall and through an opening door to the Governor's "workshop." There's the room, and there's the chair, and in it, bound and gagged and motionless but fully conscious, is Andrea. Stupid, stupid Andrea. And if the Governor is keeping this from even Martinez, I hate to think what he plans to do to her. Yes, even her.
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.