The Walking Dead S03E03 Review: The Governor and his City

The Walking Dead, Season 3, Episode 3: Walk With Me

We cut away from Team Rick for the entirety of this episode to focus on the two-woman team of Andrea and Michonne. We have only seen glimpses of them in the season premiere, and while they clearly have a trust for each other after surviving for seven months, we know absolutely jack shit about Michonne, a fact that's lampshaded by Andrea. Right now, after spending an entire episode with them... I still don't know jack shit about Michonne beyond the fact that she's paranoid and she's a scary badass. Meanwhile, Andrea continues her streak of being a horrible judge of character...

Although to be fair, if I was presented with the Governor's side of the argument without seeing all the villainy he does, I'd trust the bastard as well. Really, the only overtly evil thing that the Governor did until the final stretch of scenes is being slightly brutal in mercy-killing the wounded soldiers from the helicopter before they actually die and become zombies, and in this crapsack world it's not the worst thing you could do. I mean, last episode our titular hero Rick just killed two men for what amounts to a disagreement that got out of control.

And honestly, as Rick himself has shown, keeping a group of people working together as a singular unit to survive in this post-apocalyptic world is not easy, and it's understandable for the Governor to be a little harsh, enforcing curfews and keeping things under control. To be fair, though, in-between the Governor keeping our resident jackass Merle under control, and the civilians in Woodsbury being pretty happy -- the Governor takes care of getting rid of smelly bodies, gives them jobs and education, has an army that keeps them secure... yeah, if not for the sudden revelation in the final set of things that the Governor is our human-element villain to all this, Woodsbury would be the safe haven for all our heroes. 

Honestly, Michonne actually could be accused as being unjustifiably paranoid and jerkass-y to, well, a bunch of people that rescued them. Sure, they put on burlap masks on Andrea and Michonne and all, but honestly the two of them were paranoid of the Governor's people, and with the three factions in play (Governor's people, the military people, and Andrea/Michonne), it's very fair for all parties involved to be paranoid to some degree... and the Governor's people did help give medication to the sick Andrea, which is something they didn't necessarily have to do.

But, of course, the Governor turns out to be evil, with the absolute damning moment being when they show up at the military group's little bastion, pretending to be friends... before gunning them all down in cold blood to get resources. Plus military people are more liable to not take orders from the Governor anyway, so it's two birds with one stone? And he even gets to deliver a touching speech to the Wodosbury people about how their settlement is absolutely the right way because they have walls and guns and everything, portraying the people they just killed as a tragedy. The Governor is also later seen in a creepy private room with lots of decapitated heads, including the two jawless heads of Michonne's zombies as well as the one helicopter pilot that they rescued. 

What a glorious son of a bitch. He just has the right amount of charisma and the chilling aura of cold-bloodedness to make us really buy his portrayal here. 

The jawless zombie pets of Michonne are a bit questionable since they show up. They're cool for that one scene at the end of season two, but throughout season three and especially in the opening scene of this episode where they make so much noise that Michonne is forced to decapitate them... it begs the question as to why keep these domesticated zombies around? The Governor and his scientist-dude find out that they serve as camouflage. Robbed of the ability to bite and eat, the zombies basically become docile, and Michonne and Andrea disguise themselves by hanging around these neutered zombies, who shield them from wild ones. 

Oh, and I guess Merle (played by the same dude that plays Yondu in the Marvel movies) returns. What a glorious asshat. Merle's a bit less cartoonishly racist/sexist this time around, and has a very cool arm-blade attachment to replace his amputated arm. He's still an absolute jackass, but he's a lot more... human, I guess? He still shows some sympathy about Amy's death, is visibly holding out hope that Daryl's alive... and, well, he's still likely to be a huge douchebag, I'm sure, but he's reduced to the role of the recognizable thug leader for the Governor's army of enforcers. And as the scene with Merle and the other members of the Governor's little, well, government, proves, he's a dog on a leash, and he's scared quite shitless of the Governor.