The Walking Dead, Season 3, Episode 14: Prey
As the plot escalates, I find some of it falling apart in different places. The big problem is Andrea, and to a lesser degree, the Governor. The Governor has finally stopped being wishy-washy about the inconsistency regarding how he's written, and has embraced his inner psychopath. After writing last episode's review I keep trying to think as to why the Governor just doesn't actually kill Rick, Daryl and Hershel right then and there and deal with the weakened prison group later, but now he's embraced his role as card-carrying villain and he's a lot more consistent and impressive in this manner.
This is another episode with great focus, because it's another episode that takes place almost entirely in Woodbury, focusing on Andrea, the Governor and Milton, with a B-plot starring Tyreese's poorly-defined group. We did get a brief cameo of Rick at the end, but it's basically from Andrea's POV.
It's actually a pretty good episode... if Andrea was an actual character that I cared about. In a superior show, Andrea would've had a long, well-written crisis of conscience as she experiences the nice, happy life of Woodbury, seeing maybe one or two of the harsher things that Rick's team did, seen the peaceful society of Woodbury fall apart (which we saw, just not quite enough as other than a couple of scenes Woodbury seemed to have like three or four people and a whole bunch of faceless nobodies I don't care about)... but she's just so inconsistently written and adding this to her last appearance where she had the perfect chance to end the Governor but pussies out, it's a bit hard to really root for her, and it's a problem worse than Michonne or Rick in this season -- Michonne was just undeveloped and unhelpful, and Rick at least has the dead wife thing going on for him. Andrea? She's just a wishy-washy idiot, it seems.
And her holier-than-thou nonsense is a bit jarring, really, and honestly the better 'betray the Governor because he's crazy' story here goes to Milton. Milton has been shown to respect the Governor greatly, and he disagrees with some of the things the Governor is doing -- like the last straw from the previous episode, which is killing Team Rick regardless of whether they give up Michonne or not. It's a far more logical change in loyalties, and unlike Andrea hesitating last episode, Milton not wanting Andrea to shoot the Governor on the spot is a lot more sensible. He can articulate the unwanted fallout that would destroy Woodbury, he still has a friendship with the Governor... it's just that he can't in good conscience allow the Governor to go murder-kill everyone.
Compare this to Andrea, who just acts like an idiot in episodes prior to this. Andrea's decision is basically to run off and try to warn the prison people, and I guess it's better late than not at all? And for all the talk about the good people of Woodbury, no effort is made to even warn them. You damn hypocrite, Andrea. It's a rocky road to get to this point when Andrea finally realizes the Governor is crazy, and I'd argue that the payoff isn't all that well. Honestly, again, I'm more invested in Miton's story running in the background, where in the midst of the Governor going hunting to murder Andrea (for no reason than he's a psychopath, it seems) he manages to sneak out and implied to have been the one to burn the zombies in the pit they're getting ready to use against the Prison people.
Mind you, we don't get confirmation that it's Milton, but the Governor seems to think so. It could've been Tyreese and maybe he's that good at calling the Governor's bluff, but Tyreese is confused about the 'gasoline' when questioned by the Governor and seems to be far more regretful and apologetic over the fight in the pit and nothing else. Whereas Milton does the classic mistake of 'tell the big bad guy something he hasn't told anyone yet'.
Andrea's heel-face-turn takes place pretty quickly, with the rest of the episode showing Andrea's one-woman run towards the prison, and I guess it's told as well as it's could. It's tense, with the Governor chasing her, and several encounters with zombies -- that confrontation in the building with Andrea unleashing a corridor full of zombies (and apparently the Governor single-handedly defeated like more than a dozen walkers all on his own! Good shit, man), and the Governor just embracing his inner serial killer and doing all kinds of creepy whistling and glass-smashing is nice.
In a way it's a bit of a shame that some of the complexity of the Governor as a likable, personable leadership figure hiding a mean streak is kind of lost, but on the other hand it's still a lot more consistent and entertaining for the Governor to act like an utter psychopath due to how... bad the show has been at showing the 'villain with good publicity' portion of Governor's character.
Tyreese's group gets a lot more focus, and honestly it would probably have more impact if I actually know who any of these people are. Case in point is how I didn't even realize that Allen was supposed to be part of Tyreese's group. The conflict is honestly a bit bland, with Allen being angry that Tyreese apparently is more heroic than he was in front of his now-deceased wife, and Allen's way too happy about being a part of the community but doesn't want Tyreese to fuck it up for him. This comes to blows near the zombie pits where apparently the Governor is planning to feed Rick and company to, but an argument between Allen and Tyreese ended with Tyreese winning. Tyreese isn't happy with a lot of what's going on but he does want a place to stay despite Andrea's unhelpfully cryptic warnings, and the Governor brushes it off as 'oh, it's scare tactics' and how they don't share all their plans with people they barely know. Of course Tyreese will eventually have a crisis of conscience of his own, so he's at least being developed as compared to Nice-Girl, Allen and Allen's son. If we were shown Woodbury through Tyreese's eyes as opposed to Andrea's idiocy I think this season would've been so much better.
There's a of a very weird flashback at the beginning with Michonne and Andrea talking about Michonne's pet zombies and that she knew about them before (is the zombie the 'I talk to my dead boyfriend' thing?) but it adds nothing really significant that we don't already know.
So yeah, the story about Andrea is somewhat well-told and well-focused, and it's a cool bit of a futile endeavour thing as the Governor catches up with Andrea literal seconds before Rick saw her, but overall Tyreese and Milton, despite appearing in far less scenes than Andrea, show far more interesting moral dilemmas than Andrea is.
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