The Walking Dead, Season 3, Episode 9: The Suicide King
Well, that's a very quick conclusion to the long-awaited Cain-and-Abel fight between Merle and Daryl. There's a brief moment of rough-housing, but as vile a human being as Merle is, he still picks his brother. Granted, the Governor accusing him of treachery and trying to get him killed in gladiatorial combat probably pissed him off. As the toothless walkers are brought in, Rick and Maggie come to the rescue, shooting some of the Governor's people dead and giving Daryl and Merle time to bugger off.
The assault was chaotic, and in the wake a fair amount of members of the Woodbury community lay dead. Even worse, in addition to losing his 'daughter', the Governor lost his right-hand man Merle, the trust of his people, and to add to the whole crisis, apparently in Rick and Maggie's infiltration of Woodbury, they forgot to replace the part of the wall they went through, allowing zombies to wander into the formerly safe haven that is Woodbury. We've got several scenes showing how panic has settled in to the citizens of Woodbury, causing the remaining guards to butt heads and bodily pull people out of cars. Things get worse when the zombies attack one of the citizens, and the Governor? Previously charismatic, having all the answers? He's mute, refusing to talk to anyone, and just cold-bloodedly executes the dying civilian that was bitten by the zombies right in front of the rest of the community.
It's still a bit irritating that our POV character for a good chunk of the Woodbury scene is the lackluster Andrea. Last episode had her question the Governor's trustworthiness when she realizes that the Governor not only lied to her about the identity of their enemies as being her former comrades, had gladiatorial combat and now is shown to starting to get even more and more unhinged... still chooses to help out the Governor instead. She delivers this very sappy and weakly-written speech about helping each other and all that. Meanwhile, the Governor lashes out at her, noting that they have been too weak, growing complacent with complaints and barbeques and playing happy-times, when they should be an army preparing for war. The Governor is your textbook case of a personable control freak (albeit with additional layers of creepiness like the refusal to accept that his daughter's gone), and when said control is taken away from him, when he's very visibly defeated by Rick and Maggie's rescue of the Dixon brothers, he snaps and lashes out, wanting to establish control and exact vengeance however he could.
Of course, the Governor's vengeance will have to wait, because Rick and Maggie's assault leaves several of his fighters dead, and Merle himself has gone off with Team Rick. Of course, whether Merle will be allowed to rejoin the group is a whole other can of worms, with all the various people involved having very strong opinions about him. Daryl, of course, being Merle's brother, wants him to stick around. Rick is more pragmatic and understands the value that Merle could bring as a fighter (and the danger of letting Merle return and join forces with the Governor) but also isn't stupid enough to actually trust the fucker. Glenn and Michonne, the former being tortured half to death by Merle and the latter nearly being killed by Merle, are vehemently against it. Merle isn't making his case really well by making sexist comments and allusions to sex all the time, though. What a jackass. No wonder Rick whacks him in the head.
We get a pretty cool argument between Rick, Maggie, a cool-headed Daryl, and a not-so-cool-headed Glenn about it all. The discussion is pretty emotionally charged, as Daryl is torn between his blood brother and the little community he's grown to care about. Eventually, despite Rick's pleadings, Daryl still sticks with his brother, and leaves with Merle. We get a very great scene with Glenn unleashing an emotional outburst at Rick, and it's easy to point the torture at the hands of Merle as being the catalyst for Glenn starting to lose his patience. Maggie is also somewhat broken, as his conversations with both Glenn and Hershel show, but she's doing a far better job at keeping it together.
They also basically decide on cutting Michonne loose, but honestly, who can blame them? I really want to like this badass dreadlocked samurai lady, I really do, but she's just so fucking unhelpful with everything that's going on, just glowering and not wanting to answer questions and honestly I do agree with Daryl in that taking Michonne into their base is no better than taking Merle, considering how absolutely unhelpful Michonne is in practically every other aspect other than killing zombies.
The scenes in the prison are some nice little focus moments to characters like Carl, Carol and Hershel, who have been shafted in screentime with all the focus on the Woodbury plotline. Carl and Carol bonding over their losses, Carol talking with Beth (who I forgot existed) about the baby, Carol breaking down when Rick told her that Daryl has gone away, Hershel's interactions with Tyreese's (spelled with two e's apparently) group, wanting his best to be helpful but not having the authority to actually make the decisions. There's really not much considering the relative shortness of their scenes, but it's still nice to see peripheral characters like Hershel and Carol aren't just treated as window dressing like poor T-Dog.
Tyreese didn't really have much chances to shine last episode during his debut because of all the far more interesting things going down in Woodbury, and it's still kind of hard to get a feel of him. Tyreese is the cool-headed and very calm leader of the group, far more interested in cooperating with Rick's team, while the father-and-son team of Ben and Allen are jackasses who at one point actually plan to attack the relatively weaker group guarding the prison before being told to back off by Tyreese and Sasha.
Rick returns back, tired -- he just fought an entire settlement, he had a shouting match with Glenn, he lost Daryl in the wake of an upcoming crisis, and he had well and truly gone and stirred up the hornet's nest when he attacked Woodbury. He has a brief moment of happiness as he embraced Carl and Judith, and the smiles when he sees Beth, Hershel, Carol and the rest of his people... but he just doesn't really trust Tyreese's people. Tyreese really tries to make a good impression, and despite Hershel pleading that Rick give these people a chance, Rick... isn't all that right in his mind.
It seems like Rick hallucinating some weird nonsense every episode is the theme now, as we go from phone calls to random Shane appearances to now this very creepy spectral image of Lori that causes Rick to absolutely snap into thin air and wave his gun around and shooing Tyreese's people from the prison. Yeah, Rick's crazy, and, yeah, treachery from outsiders was what caused this bout of crisis -- Andrew was the one who caused Lori and T-Dog's death indirectly; Michonne was a loose cannon; Merle took Daryl away from them, and their last attempt at letting outsiders come into their midst ended with three of the four prisoners dead -- two of them dying as antagonists to Team Rick. Of course, if Rick made a proper argument instead of shouting into thin air...
In a way, we see four people break down this episode. Rick going full-on bonkers and shouting at apparitions, Glenn breaking down and descending from being the nice everyman into someone who's absolutely furious at the world, happy-go-lucky Maggie being withdrawn and distant, while former charismatic leader Governor is hardened into a cold-hearted monster ready for war. And with the Governor ready to exact vengeance, with Rick refusing help from people and going all crazy, it's not a pretty picture for our heroes.
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