The Walking Dead S03E08 Review: Terrorists

The Walking Dead, Season 3, Episode 8: Made to Suffer

We reach the midway point in Walking Dead's third season, and... I don't think it's quite as shocking as episode four simply by virtue of the fact that the only casualty we had this time around is Oscar... and, shit, he's got, what, ten lines over the course of the series? It sucks for Oscar, but at the same time it's not the biggest loss we have had. Oh, and the Governor's zombie daughter gets put down for good. Really, the biggest event is Team Rick's raid on Woodbury, with a very randomly-shoved-at-us B-plot about yet another group of survivors running into the prison which I admit to find that I honestly don't care that much at all.

Let's talk about the raid first, which brings us a different breed of action scenes than what we're used to in Walking Dead. No gory, visceral battle against zombies this time around (though we did get Maggie using a fragment of a bone he recovers from Merle's walker pet to shishkebab a guard) as Strike Force Rick infiltrates Woodbury, while at the same time Glenn and Maggie make their escape. Rick's more colder approach is displayed on full force in the earlier scenes, namely the rough interrogation of the random Woodbury civilian. Maggie and Glenn has their share of awesome moments too, and while Maggie reveals that nothing actually happened by the Governor, it's still a humiliating moment for the pair and they exact some sweet vengeance on the Governor's people.

So of course the show felt the need to randomly have this absolutely bizarre moment where Rick hallucinates one of the Governor's thugs as Shane. That came totally out of nowhere -- it's one thing if he's hallucinating Lori since her death was still fresh, but I guess all this scene ends up showing us is... Rick needs some antipsychotics? Also I think it's Rick's lapse in judgment at not-Shane that causes Oscar to actually get shot. Whoops. 

We get the revelation from Glenn to Daryl that Merle is part of the Governor's crew, and pretty predictably Daryl wants to go and get Merle... before Rick shuts him down. I'm not sure we actually get to see the moment that Daryl got left behind in Woodbury, because the action jerked around so fast (which is one of my complaints with this particular episode) that I have a hard time keeping track of all the characters involved. At the end of the episode, we finally get the reunion between Daryl and Merle, just not how either of them expected.

The Governor needs to show his community that he's done something in the face of this huge attack on Woodbury, while at the same time playing the humble, charismatic leader card and being all sad and remorseful and shit... and they do have one of the attackers captured. Namely, Daryl. The same Daryl who his right-hand man Merle has been begging to look for ever since Andrea showed up. Yes, the Governor did try and gauge Daryl's loyalty at one point in the episode, but he ultimately takes the option of choosing away from Merle's hands, preemptively painting a very confused Merle as being the inside man that revealed their secrets to Daryl and the other invaders. It's cold-hearted, but I can see where the Governor is coming from -- Merle will try his utmost to stop the Governor from executing Daryl, so why not take him out of the equation in the first place? And Merle himself has proven untrustworthy based on his claim that Michonne is dead, so that might have played as a factor in the happenings here.

We did have to suffer through Michonne pulling an idiotic, stupid horror movie character move in the midst of this – unchaining The Governor’s zombie daughter before checking to make sure the girl was, you know, alive. The fact that Michonne already had seen The Governor keep locked up zombies before this and was in the middle of his horrific room fill with decapitated heads only made that moment even stupider. And ultimately unnecessary, since it actually didn’t even come into play in the scene that followed, as the daughter, Penny, never really had the chance to attack anybody.

Fortunately, what followed was one hell of a memorable confrontation between Michonne and The Governor. From her mercilessly stabbing Penny through the back of the head, to him sending her smashing into the tanks o’ heads (all I could think was how disgusting it was that she just got splashed in the face with zombie head water), to those heads then opening and closing their mouths still trying to bite anyone around, this was all very over the top and very fun. I do wish Michonne had been a better developed character these past eight episodes to really add more emotion to what was going on, but look, what fan of the comic book wouldn’t be amped up when she reached for that shard of glass – and we all realized what was about to happen to The Governor?

As always, Michonne's lack of personality beyond a glowering, badass warrior, cuts a bit from actually making sense of her scenes. Why did she break off from the group on a solo mission to uncover the Governor's secrets? Why does it even matter to her, who's previously been only preoccupied with Andrea or survival? I find it absolutely confusing why she would snoop around the Governor's room, basically abandoning Strike Team Rick... to see the Governor's weird head collection and his zombie daughter?

And the Governor was very much prepared to sacrifice himself for the walking corpse that once was his daughter, but Michonne is heartless and she goes all stabby-town with the little zombie girl. The resulting melee between Michonne and the Governor is ugly as the Governor unleashes all the rage and vengeance of a parent who saw his beloved child murdered in front of his eyes, and he gets an eye put out by Michonne, having to spend the rest of the episode with an eyepatch. The confrontation is stopped by Andrea. She has spent the entire episode just being, well, floating around from scene to scene, never really understanding what's happening and just yammering on about how she wants to help. Andrea has a gun on Michonne, who, after a brief staredown, walks away with full knowledge that Andrea won't shoot her.

The Governor's daughter's death has absolutely broken him, and while it's obviously the 'wrong' thing for us show-viewers, the absolute sorrow and horror and anguish that the Governor displays so masterfully at his quote-unquote daughter's death is very effective, making you feel sorry for the jackass even though, y'know, the Governor is a jackass.

As far as things go in the prison, it's very quiet and uninteresting, with the big moment being the introduction of this group of newcomers. They're a lot less savvy about the 'anyone who's bitten is doomed' thing and one of them dies -- but not after slowing the group down significantly when they actually end up at the prison. They seem a lot less of a threat than the Governor or even the group of prisoners (of whom only Axel -- flirting with Beth here -- left) and feel more like how Team Rick were at the start of season one. Naive and still holding out hope. The end up in a portion of the prison, get bailed out by badass little Carl calmly shooting down walkers, before finding themselves locked in a portion of the prison until Carl and the rest of the home team can decide what to do with them, whether they're trustworthy or not. Paranoia and assuming the worst is the name of the game here, though hammer-dude seems to accept it enough, respecting Carl's house rules enough and noting that it's better than being stuck in the wild where safety isn't guaranteed.