The Walking Dead, Season 3, Epissode 11: I Ain't A Judas
Andrea is a very... interesting character. Her character arc hasn't been very well-written, and unlike Lori in her last few episodes, there really isn't enough content in season three (and boy Andrea does get a lot of scenes in season three) to really make her super likable. Her season one arc was simple and predictable, angsting about killing her sister when she becomes a zombie. Her season two arc was a horrible mess as she gets her weird adoptive-father plotline with Dale (and often comes off as a whiny bitch because of that) and the equally badly-written Shane fangirl thing. Here she's placed in a unique position where she knows the people in the prison are fundamentally good people -- people she lived with -- while at the same time wanting to issue peace for this newfound community and haven she's found in Woodbury.
But really, what should be an emotionally-charged story about a character being torn between two loyalties... Rick's group, inexplicably far colder and far more aggressive than she remembers them to be, who tells her the harsh truth, versus the Governor, who very unsubtly hides a lot of things from Andrea, and is making an army... and Andrea is trying to prevent bloodshed. The deaths of the innocent kids like Asthma Boy that's drafted into the Governor's army if nothing else. The thing is, though, Andrea is such an idiot that her eventual choice to... wiffle-waffle with Carol's advice to slit the Governor post-sex ends up making her look far more stupid than she already is. Previously I could just buy her excuses of not knowing all the sinister things that the Governor is doing, but between seeing the gladiatorial matches, seeing how unstable the Governor has became and the mandatory army drafting of children, she really looks stupid.
Not to mention everyone from Michonne to Carol to Merle telling Andrea of all the evil things that the Governor did to them. Firing first during the assault in the prison, sending Merle to kill Michonne (and likely Andrea too if she had left with them), and all that... but Andrea's just dumb. Even her conversation with Michonne fell flat as she just kind of doesn't come off as sympathetic at all, only dumb and naive. Andrea just repeats the same old lines of how there are good people in Woodbury, but either because she's a fucking coward or out of some weird sense of loyalty, she didn't manage to cut off the head of the person that's responsible for this war in the first place.
What's awesome is the stark contrast that Team Rick shows when dealing with Andrea, though. Everyone from Rick and Daryl (who promises to take the Governor's other eye) to even nominally pacifistic ones like Hershel and Carol are noting how it's a kill-or-be-killed situation with the bastard Governor and they're not compromising on that stance. Everyone there has suffered from the Governor, either from the attack on the prison, or from being abducted and tortured in Michonne, Daryl, Maggie and Glenn's case. I find it hilarious that they describe Axel as 'that prisoner guy we kinda liked', despite Axel having like a grand total of five, six lines in the entire series.
Carol gets the best line in this episode, talking about the very detailed plan of Andrea having sex and giving the Governor the best night of his life before ending his life. You can't help but think of Carol's abusive shitface of a husband from season one, really, and how now that she's grown into a more independent woman she's flirting with the idea of what she could have done. Michonne gets some semblance of characterization (and possibly the most lines she's got throughout the season) as she argues with Andrea, an argument she wins mostly by default because Andrea's kind of an idiot. It's one thing to be confused at her friends being super-scary badasses or wanting to save the civilians of Woodbury (did we know any by name, really, other than the Governor's inner circle?), and there's the super-stupid lines like accusing Michonne of poisoning the group against the Governor.
Also, I do like the show being somewhat self-referential at its portrayal of Carl as this child soldier, by portraying the Governor arming the children in Woodbury and going all 'adolescence is an invention of the 20th century' and forcing poor Asthma Boy to hold a gun. (Of course the kid has asthma, you can't sympathize with children unless they have asthma!) I guess the difference is that Rick and Shane never intended for Carl to go to war with other humans and is teaching him to defend himself out of necessity, while the Governor has a lot of capable adults but wants to bulk up his army with children?
The politics in Woodbury are somewhat interesting, with the Governor taking a dictator-esque stance by arming the children to the teeth, and Milton playing loyal-spy with that aura of nerdy pushability that makes him get 'pushed around' by Andrea so convincingly. Of course, fooling Andrea isn't the hardest thing to do in the world, so. Rather interestingly, Milton runs into Tyreese's group, who are a lot happier to come across a bunch of people that are less crazy than psycho-Rick, and goes in to help out the Governor. I don't really care that much about Tyreese's group, really, considering how undeveloped they are.
We get a very cool scene early on with Rick being a mopey mess and generally being a shit, but at least people call him out on it this time around, with Hershel finally raising his voice "GIT BACK HERE!" and telling Rick to grow some balls and act like the dictator he poses himself to be at the end of season two. Rick doesn't have an answer to that, and it comes to Carl telling him to stop being a leader and let Hershel or Daryl take over. Carl is a bit of a strange character, being a child who's forced to face hardships thanks to the whole zombie apocalypse thing, and seeing him take a different stance of badassery and tell Rick to let someone else lead is a pretty cool scene.
There are brief debates about Merle's presence in the prison, mostly from Glenn (who gives the impressive comparison that they didn't let Shane stay with them despite committing similar sins to Merle -- and Shane is arguably more stable than Merle is), but those are more perfunctory than the Glenn/Rick shouting match we had a couple of episodes ago, and I guess keeping Merle in a prison cell (and him actually behaving this time around, apologizing to Michonne without sarcasm and all) is kind of showing how they 'solved' this particular conundrum.
We did get the well-written scene between Merle and Hershel bonding over a bible verse about severed limbs, which is well-written but has no emotional impact because, well, Hershel and Merle never met each other before, and are only bonding over their shared connection of being amputees. It's a bit weird to see Hershel speak up in favour of keeping Merle around, too -- that's a bit of an oddity, really, considering how Glenn, Hershel's purported 'like a son', is the one brutalized by Merle and very visibly distressed at the thought of Merle being around them.
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