Martinez invites the Governor and his party to join his camp. Which is a rinky-dink little operation, but it's enough for Lily. And for Tara, who finds a new girlfriend. But the Governor remains ill at ease, even though Martinez doesn't blow his cover. In fact, after a successful supply run, Martinez offers to let the Governor join him in running the camp. The Governor responds by braining Martinez and throwing him in a zombie pit, so I think we can take that as a no.
In the resulting power vacuum, a guy named Pete takes command, backed up by his brother Mitch. The Governor joins the two brothers on a hunt, during which they come across a camp low on people but high in supplies. Mitch, a Shane-type survivor, advocates robbing the camp. But Pete, a good guy in the Rick mold, refuses. After the hunt yields unimpressive results, the Governor leads them back to the camp, only to find that someone else got there first and cut everyone's throats. And took the supplies.
The Governor sees where this is going, and tries to bug out in the dead of night with Lily, Megan, Tara, and Tara's girlfriend Alicia. But when that's a bust, he returns to the camp with a new plan, which he puts into motion at the crack of dawn: kill Pete, then announce to Mitch that he's taking charge, and that together they'll do whatever it takes. Now we see where this is going.
Soon the Governor has the camp humming like a well-oiled machine, with Mitch, Tara, Lily, and Alicia as his senior staff. But he still wants something better, and obviously he's got the prison in mind as a target. If last week's Governor had been the one to show up outside the fence, it would have been one thing. But this week's Governor is starting to look a lot like the old one. Just with a bigger fish tank.
We're in for another unnecessarily fancy cold open, so get ready. First of all, you can stop worrying about whether the Governor and Megan were pulled out of the zombie pit after Martinez discovered them down there. The two of them are outside on a lovely day, Megan contemplating the chessboard in front of her while the Governor does laundry by hand (which also tells us they went back for their luggage afterward). But then we loop back to the end of last week's episode, with the past-Governor standing at the bottom of the pit of zombies he just killed, holding Megan, while Martinez points a gun down into the hole at him. Given most of a week to cool down, Martinez hands off the gun to one of his men while Lily and Tara watch, both seemingly apparently unharmed other than Tara's jacked ankle. The past-Governor hoists Megan up to Martinez, who sets her on her feet so she can go to her mom and then lowers a knotted rope down to past-Governor.
"You can't think forever," now-Governor tells Megan. "Sooner or later you gotta make a move." Sure, but good luck finding a chess clock at the end of the world. Also, the Governor is the kind of teacher who never lets the kid win. "That wouldn't be winning," like his daddy used to say. "He used to beat me at chess, too. In fact, he used to beat me at everything." And with everything, I'd wager. The humanizing continues!
Past-Governor lets Martinez haul him out of the pit and one of the other armed men asks Martinez, "You know this guy?" Megan asks now-Governor if his dad was mean and if the Governor was bad. "Sometimes" is the answer to both questions. At the edge of the pit, Martinez and then-Governor don't have much to say to each other. Fortunately for the latter, Lily calls out, "You okay, Brian?" and Martinez catches the snap, though he looks pretty surprised. Back at the laundry line, Megan seriously asks, "Am I bad? My dad was always mean to me." Now-Governor assures her that she's good. Back at the pit, Martinez tells past-Governor about his camp half a mile away, though one of his guys (the one played by Charlie from Fringe) protests that they have enough mouths to feed already. Martinez lists the rules for the Governor: "One, I'm in charge. Two, no dead weight. That goes for everyone. Contribute or be cast out. Can you live with that… Brian?"
And now-Governor assures Megan that all four of them -- Megan, Lily, Tara and himself -- will be okay. "Because we're good?" Megan asks. "All of us?" The Governor gets quiet in a hurry after that one. Megan makes a move, so now it's his turn. "I'm thinkin'," the Governor says. About his move or the answer to her question? If it's the former, may I suggest anvil to queen's anvil three? Before we go to credits, we see that this homey little scene has played out between two parked vehicles: an RV and an army tank. Then credits, although there's no guarantee that any of the people whose names are listed in them will appear in this episode any more than they did in last week's.
Inside the RV -- which is apparently theirs -- the Governor contemplates the water dripping in from the ceiling as he tells Lilly he's joining a supply run with Martinez and a pair of brothers. We'll find out later that one of the brothers is Mitch, the cadaverous one who was on Fringe; and the other is Pete, a younger, baby-faced guy. [Note: Played by Enver Gjokaj of "Dollhouse" semi-fame -- Ed.] So they look as much like brothers as the Dixons did. Lily says she's going to set up a nurse's station for the camp, and the Governor's feeling guilty because he was hoping to find something better than a leaky trailer and also he murdered almost three dozen people in a fit of pique. But, never having seen Woodbury, she's cool with this place. And with him, apparently.
Walking past a pond with the brothers, the Governor asks about the fishing, of which there isn't any; the pond is dead, according to Pete. Mitch warns, "You better watch your ass, One-Eye Bri." Good one. Maybe the Governor will pick his pseudonym more carefully.
Further along the trail, Martinez has completed the foursome, which is on its way to where an old man back at the camp claims a survivalist type once homesteaded. If he did survive, I'm sure he'll be thrilled to see armed visitors. Bringing up the rear, the Governor draws his gun and leads them off to the left, where they find a headless body in camouflage tied to a tree with a hand-lettered sign pinned to its chest: "LIAR." The Governor seems to be the only one bothered by it. I wonder why?
Back at the camp, Lily is tending to a cut on the hand of one of the women who was in the armed party at the edge of the pit. Her name is Alicia and Tara tries to bond with her a little over their shared history with (and current choices of) weapons. Tara starts to trash-talk Alicia's gun, until Alicia asks, "You always this full of shit?" "Yes I am," Tara answers cheerfully. Looks like we got us a new couple here.
Martinez leads his away team clear up to the house, and they find another headless, camouflage-clad body in a chair in the yard, this one labeled "RAPIST." The Governor thinks, well, at least I haven't raped anyone today. Finally they reach the porch, inside which the third body is labeled "MURDERER." It's not labeled "SUICIDE," but it doesn't have to be, because he clearly blew off the top of his own head whether or not he killed the others first (he almost certainly didn't kill them afterwards). The Governor picks up the family photo at the body's side before they open the front door. They can hear at least one walker rattling around stuck in there somewhere, so they send in the new guy in on point to check it out. Despite having plenty of rooms, it's a cramped, dingy shack and looks like it always has been. In fact, the relentless drear-scape of the zombie apocalypse almost makes the place seem relatively cheery.
Once most of them are in a back living room, they hear a closet door bursting open somewhere, and no sooner has Pete whispered "It's out" than a zombie comes up behind him. While he freaks and falls to the floor, the Governor pulls it off him and hacks the hell out of its head. And while on the floor, Pete discovers that he's sharing space with the two heads that once belonged to the guys outside, which are on the floor helplessly snapping their teeth. Still creepy as shit, though. While they're kicking those around, Martinez is attacked from behind by another intact zombie, which he throws off and which the Governor also ends up killing. This supply run's going great so far.
The team has apparently decided to hang around, and as the Governor contemplates the family photo -- which shows the dead survivalist with the wife and daughter that the Governor very recently re-killed -- Martinez tells the Governor that he wouldn't have invited him to camp had the Governor been alone. Ho observes that the Governor seems to have changed, which the Governor confirms. The brothers return with a box of goodies scavenged from the house, including a six-pack that Mitch shares around. The others start speculating on what happened, until the Governor suggests they don't think about it too much. Sure, the last thing he needs is to be hanging around a bunch of amateur detectives.
He seems to have won some respect from Mitch who says he knows how to regulate. When Mitch starts getting curious, the Governor quickly changes the subject to the brothers. Mitch was an ice cream truck driver-cum-tank driver, and deserted with the tank when shit started going down. "End of the world don't mean shit when you got a tank," he says. Little brother Pete was also in the Army, at Fort Benning, where he stayed as long as he could. Which I'm sure Rick would be interested to hear, after all the time he spent wanting to go there. When it's the Governor's turn, all he'll tell of his story is, "I survived." And as long as he knows how to love, he knows he'll be alive.
Later -- or perhaps on another day entirely -- Martinez has joined "Brian" and his new family (including Alicia) for a little beer-picnic in what passes for their yard. Talk turns to where Martinez and the Governor were before, which is the Governor's cue to leave the table and pace nervously around. Martinez takes the cue, and Tara and Alicia take off while Megan heads into the trailer. Martinez leaves as well, on beer-unsteady feet, but not before hearing Megan tell the Governor that the roof is leaking again. Martinez suggests the Governor fix it. "I'll do that," the Governor says mildly. There was a time when he would have shot Martinez in the face for such insolence. Or just to work off some frustration from something unrelated.
Inside, the Governor's about to make with the duct tape -- for all the good that's going to do on the wet ceiling -- until there's a knock on the door. Martinez is back with a surprise. Cut to the two of them on the roof of a different camper with a bottle, a back of golf clubs, and a bucket of balls that Martinez -- now drunker -- is hooking and slicing into the woods. He tells the Governor that Shumpert's dead. "He got reckless. Biter took a piece of him right over there. I swear, he didn't try to get out of the way. Put him down myself." He probably just despaired of ever getting a line. Apropos of nothing, Martinez says there are things you can't come back from. "Either you live with them or you don't." However, they agree that they both seem to be doing fine. Martinez credits the Governor's family, and says he couldn't sleep at night knowing he would lose them.
The Governor quickly says he won't, but Martinez has his doubts. "You don't think you can keep this place safe?" The Governor asks. Martinez plans to try, and to be prepared for what comes, which is an interesting thing to say given how he keeps turning his back on the Governor to swing the club. Martinez even offers to "share the crown" a little. He slices another one out of sight, and is in the middle of regretting never having taken golf lessons when the Governor abruptly brains him from behind with one of the golf clubs. Martinez collapses on the roof of the RV, half conscious and groaning wordlessly. With a pained look of his own, the Governor kicks him off onto the ground. The Governor watches him roll on the ground for a bit before grabbing him and dragging him the dismayingly short distance to the nearest zombie trap. "I don't wanna do it!" he screams while the Walkers grab at Martinez from the pit. "I don't want it, dammit!" The walkers drag Martinez down with them, while the Governor keeps repeating, "I don't want it. I don't want it." Well, a simple "No" would have sufficed.
That night in the trailer, Lilly and Megan come up to find the Governor distraught in their trailer. He claims to have just had a bad dream, which he can't remember. Convenient, that. Is Lily ever going to wonder why he's always acting so sketchy? If there were still cell phones and laptops, he'd be keeping the former locked and slamming the lid on the latter every time she enters the room.
morning, Mitch has assembled the whole camp -- maybe thirty or forty people -- and announces that Martinez appears to have gotten drunk and fallen into one of the pits. Pete announces that he's taking charge, though most people protest, including one old guy who says they should vote. Tara agrees that he can't just take over. "Shut your mouth, you little bitch!" Mitch snaps at her. So things are getting pretty tense pretty fast, not that the Governor seems inclined to weigh in. Pete calms everyone down and says they need each other and that his little coup is temporary until they can set up a vote in the couple of days. Mitch and Tara are still squaring off, until Mitch tells everyone to move. And then Pete invites the Governor on a hunt with him and Mitch… because why not? You know, Governor, if you don't want to be in charge, maybe creating a power vacuum wasn't your best move.
Out in the woods, Pete complains to the Governor about all the problems he's being looked to solve. The Governor says it's hard to lead. Yes -- uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. As do the heads that no longer wear bodies, as we saw earlier. Pete asks for some help, but before the Governor can kill him for suggesting it, Mitch signals to alert them to something he's found: another, smaller camp. As they observe it unseen at a distance though the trees, Mitch says that it's ten people or less, but they have a lot of supplies. Pete suggests bringing them in, which Mitch thinks is crazy with their current lack of supplies. So being their supplies in too, maybe? Mitch says they can just go in and take what they need. "Why not? We need their stuff." Well, because so do they, probably. Pete vetoes the idea, though, and the brothers take off while the Governor hangs back a bit, troubled. Which is always troubling.
Later, at the conclusion of their hunt, Mitch bitches at Pete about their piss-poor take, which is considerably less than the supplies they left at the other camp. The Governor watches them bicker for a bit, then wanders off. The brothers follow him, to the other camp -- where everyone has had their throats cut. Plus the supplies are gone. Mitch is more pissed about the supplies than he is about the deaths, unlike Pete. "That was gonna happen either way! Now some other group's got our stuff!" One of the bodies starts moving -- not like a zombie, but like a wounded human -- and ignoring Pete's protest, Mitch stabs that one in the head. "He might have lived," Pete says lamely. Well, we'll never know now. Better do the rest of them or get out of here. They opt for the latter, with the Governor bringing up the rear as usual.
Back at the camp, the Governor rushes in to the RV and tells Lilly and Megan to pack up and get Tara, because it's time to bug out. When Lilly protests, he says, "Things are about to go very wrong here. It's happened to me before and I can't put you and Megan through that." Lily still has doubts and the Governor asks, "Do you trust me? Do you trust me, Lily?" She does, so he insists she needs to pack so they can leave tonight. Dude's got some balls, playing the trust card.
That night, the Governor is driving Lily, Megan, Tara and Alicia away from the camp, ignoring Alicia's protests. Don't ask me where he got the vehicle or how he got it away from the camp without anyone noticing. Before long, he has to stop, because the road ahead is completely blocked by a herd of walkers -- all of whom, fortunately, are stuck waist-deep in a mud bog and helpless to attack. That's the good news. The bad news is that the bog completely blocks the road. The Governor stands in the headlights looking back at them for a moment. So, turning around then? I'm not sure even the old Governor would have been able to surmount such an effective obstacle in both the literal and allegorical sense.
Indeed, they're all back in their leaky RV the morning, and the Governor gets dressed for the day -- which includes strapping on his gunbelt. Lily sits up in bead, without waking Tara or Alicia to her (people can be deep sleepers in the zombie apocalypse, it seems) and asks what he's doing. "Surviving," he says. Did you think he'd crumble? Did you think he'd break down and cry? Oh no, not Bri.
The Governor makes his way through the camp, which seems to consist of a maze of parked campers. Martinez must have raided an abandoned KOA at some point. Then the Governor reaches Pete's RV, he says they need to talk. "About Mitch," Pete figures, and invites the Governor in. He says he saw this coming, but what he doesn't see is the attack from the Governor, who literally stabs him in the back and then strangles him with his bare hands. I have to confess, I didn't see that coming either.
The Governor's stop is Mitch's camper, but there's no subterfuge this time; he's now wearing Pete's leather jacket and pointing a gun at Mitch, which communicates a great deal of information without his having to say a word. The Governor backs Mitch into his trailer and forces him to sit down. Upon learning that Pete is dead, Mitch wonders if the Governor is going to kill him too. "For the old guy at the camp?" The Governor tosses him a pack of smokes, which Mitch lets fall to the floor and starts right in playing Good Cop. "Men like your brother, always doing the right thing, even at the cost of their own people." Then, while we're on the subject of cigarettes (which we're kind of not), he starts talking about his first smoke, stealing one of his dad's Lucky Strikes in the garage with his brother. And then his brother took the heat for it. "That was my brother. Hero. He got two black eyes and a broken rib for that. And I got beat anyway." Okay, we get the parallel. Let's move on. He really wants Mitch to have a cigarette already, but Mitch isn't in any hurry. Until the Governor stands up and makes it clear that it's not a request. "I'm running things now," he says, "And I will do everything it takes to protect this camp. Now, if you join me, I promise you you'll never have to worry about whether you were doing the right thing or the wrong thing. Because we will do… the only thing." He holds out the lighter for Mitch, who accepts the light and puffs on the heater like he never quit at all.
As we watch the Governor drag Pete's body out to the dock on the dead pond, Mitch ask in VOs what they'll tell everyone about Pete. The Governor says they'll say he died on a supply run, "Saving our asses." Mitch doesn't think they'll believe it, but the Governor says people believe what they want to believe. He kicks Pete into the pond and says, "Everybody loves a hero." Notice how the Governor doesn't appear to have taken any skull-related precautions with Pete's dead body? I noticed that, too.Finally, however many days after this, the Governor has assembled his senior staff in the middle of the camp. It looks like people are building sections of proper zombie-resistance fences. Alicia says the perimeter's coming along, with cars almost all the way around. Mitch says the pits are still operative. "They keep coming, we keep burning them." He remarks that there seem to be more lately, whether because of the heat or some other reason. As for the armory, Tara says she rounded up all the ammo in the camp, so the Governor reminds everyone that supply runs are now "arrow only." Mitch says they'll need the bullets eventually. "And not just for the biters," the Governor agrees. He tells everyone that he and Mitch and Pete have seen what people can do, so they should just avoid any strangers they see on their runs and come back to report. The last thing the Governor needs is his people out roaming the countryside spreading word that the area still hasn't seen the last of Brian Heriot.
That night, in the RV, the Governor pores over a map and says to a concerned Lily, "Maybe we can find a better place. You know, if… we're willing to fight for it." Lily says they don't need to and this is home. The Governor smiles at her, rather indulgently, because he knows better. There's a lot he knows that she doesn't, because that's how he likes it.
During the day, Megan runs up to where Tara and Alicia chat while on guard duty at the perimeter and tags her, saying she's it. Tara lectures that she has to be a responsible adult and stay on guard duty, then drops her gun in the grass and tags her back before darting out of sight into the camp. Looks like her ankle's all better.
Inside their trailer, Lily finds the Governor cleaning his empty eye socket. He hurries to replace the patch, but she stops him and looks at him uncovered, as he truly is. Or so she thinks. Megan continues to run through the maze of trailers as Lily tells him, "You don't have to do this alone." He's not; he's got his trusted handpicked amoral thug like always! Megan runs up to a sheet hung on the line with feet sticking out underneath it and says, "Caught you!" But of course when she whips the sheet aside it's a zombie behind it. Never mind how it got into the camp right now… or indeed ever. Megan screams and runs away, which is fine. Except like all idiot-children on the idiot-child-rich environment that is this show, she crawls under a camper to try to hide. Which is like being in a boat and trying to escape a shark attack by jumping into the ocean, because crawling is where zombies are Vikings. The Governor and Lily hear Megan's screams, but Tara's the first to reach her, trying to drag the zombie off Megan by its leg. Alas, all she pulls away is leg-flesh, while the walker keeps grabbing and snapping at Megan's leg. This grisly tug-of-war goes on for way too long, until finally a bullet puts an end to it. It was the Governor who fired the shot, and he stands motionless while Lily runs to Megan and more campers come running. Alicia comforts Tara, and as campers gather around the Governor just walks away. Shouldn't he take a moment to instruct Megan that the way to escape walkers is not by slowing down?
Back to the pond, where he stands on the end of the dock looking into the still, dead water. Well, it's not exactly still and it's more undead. That's because Pete -- now a walker because of how the Governor left his brain intact -- is trapped under the water. Its ankle is chained to a weight while it tries to reach up to the surface to grab at the Governor, who just stares down impassively. This could end up being on a much bigger scale than his old wall of fish tanks, but it's a hell of a lot less secure. Anyone could happen upon this and what if that happens while the Governor's not in the mood for more selfish, senseless killing?
The Governor drives into the woods, parks, walks a short distance and looks around a tree toward… what else? The prison, of course! Where Carl and Rick are at work in their garden, just like we saw at the end of Episode 6. So at least two members of the regular cast turned up after all, even if they don't speak and are too far away to recognize without HD. The Governor draws his gun, weighs it a moment as if he's considering storming the place solo and then heads back to his truck. And on the way, he sees where Hershel is unloading the night's haul of dead walkers off the trailer -- with Michonne. Whoa, nobody gave the Governor a trigger warning! Both are smiling and as yet oblivious to the Governor's presence, as he raises his gun and cocks it. So that's the mid-season finale all set up for you. After all that prep, it had better be good.
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.
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