This show clearly does better when the episodes are more focused, like the very good "Clear" and this fairly decent episode. This time it's the Woodbury folks we get to spend our hour with, Andrea in particular, and although the cat-and-mouse with her and the Governor ran a little long for me, it wasn't half bad.
Flashback. Andrea, Michonne and Michonne's armless, jawless walkers hunker down around a campfire out in the woods. Andrea tries to get her friend to talk, and does manage to elicit from her that she knew her pet walkers before they got zombified. Michonne isn't really feeling chatty, though, and mutters, "They deserved what they got. They weren't human to begin with." Then she walks off into the night. I'm not sure what the point of all that was.
Now. In some hidden chamber, the Governor rigs up manacles on chains between two posts. [If this follows the comic at all, Michonne is going to be strung up there at some point.] He lays out some horrible instruments, including a speculum (WTF is he planning to do with that?!?), a scalpel and a bone saw. Eeeuw. Milton watches him from the doorway and finally asks, what is this? The Governor smiles: "My workshop." A disturbed Milton asks how this could possibly help the town, how it helps them rebuild. He tells the Governor that he understands the business with Michonne, and how sad it was about his daughter, but he thinks they should just leave the folks at the prison alone: "It's done. It doesn't matter." The Governor: "It's all that matters."
While Caesar Martinez and his thugs get ready for tomorrow's "meeting" with Rick, Milton finds Andrea and tells her that there's no deal - that the Governor is planning on killing Rick's people and unless he hands over Michonne. She's all, I have to stop this. He shows her the Governor's workshop and she stares into the room in horror. Milton tells her to get out of town and warn Rick's people. Andrea: "No. I have to kill him. This is sick and I can't just stand back ..." They hush up and lean back into the shadows when the Governor comes into the room, fussing with his equipment, sitting in the old dentist's chair he's set up, whistling a creepy little tune. Andrea pulls out her pistol and almost shoots him but Milton grabs her hand, stopping her. He still remembers when the Governor was a sane, nice man. Later, Andrea tells Milton that if he's going to stay in town, he can't keep looking the other way.
She stalks towards the wall but is accosted by Martinez, who says that the Governor is collecting all the guns so the folks going out to the "meeting" will be best supplied. "I think I'm more effective armed," she snaps but he insists and she ends up handing over her gun and spare clip. The Governor catches up with her then and apologizes for not telling her this was happening, saying he wants her with him for the "meeting" tomorrow. She's pretty smooth when she promises to be there at his side.
Tyrese and Sasha are on guard duty at the main gate, taking pot shots at walkers (Tyrese is a terrible shot) when Andrea finally shows up. She tries to shoo them off their post but they won't budge, so she bites the bullet, so to speak, and tells them that she's leaving town. "I can't stay here. The Governor, he's not who he seems to be ... he's done terrible things and he's planning worse. I gotta get out of here." They try to talk her out of it but she jumps over the wall and runs off. Tyrese and Sasha then go report the encounter to the Governor. He thanks them, saying that Andrea is a little damaged from her winter out in the world. They say they hope this hasn't hurt their chance for a life in Woodbury and he says no, not at all, just help out where you're needed. The Governor heads out to hunt Andrea down and Milton catches him, asking him to let her go - she just wants to be with her people. The Governor snarls at him, shoving him up against a wall, "You talked to her? What else did you tell her? About the deal? About Michonne?" He gives Milton another shove and takes off.
Andrea runs down the road until she hears a truck coming. She ducks into the woods as the vehicle passes and is immediately besieged by walkers. One grabs her from behind around a tree trunk, pinning her but not readily able to bite her; more stack up in front of her. In an impressive display of bad-assery, she keeps calm and starts stabbing with her little knife, then taking off running again. I still don't like her much but that was nicely done.
Martinez brings Tyrese, Sasha, Allen and his son, as well as some other townfolk, out to the pits where they keep their captive walkers. The plan is to load some of them into horse trailers to use against Rick's people. Tyrese and Sasha are appalled at the thought of intentionally using zombies against other humans while Allen is all, whatever, don't fuck this up for me and my son. (I totally didn't recognize Allen as the guy who came to the prison with Tyrese and really don't care about him at all.) He and Tyrese start shouting at each other, then shoving, then Tyrese kicks Allen's ass until Martinez breaks it up: "You guys are very helpful. [So-and-so], take them back to town so they can do some knitting."
Andrea runs through a field, hearing that truck again. It's the Governor, hunting her. He sees her and comes barreling across the field towards her, nearly running her down, blaring the truck's horn like a crazy person (which, of course, he totally is). She makes it into the safety of the woods just in time. As the sun sets, she finds an old factory, ducking into it as the Governor drives up. It gets dark very quickly and then there's a whole TEN MINUTE scene where she hides from him, and he tries to find her, and they each kill some random zombies, and he does that creepy whistling and then goes extra crazy and smashes a bunch of windows with the shovel he's currently using as a weapon. Andrea finds a door that she thinks will get her out but when she opens it, it opens to a stairwell crowded with milling walkers. She closes the door quickly and when she turns around, the Governor is there. As he advances on her, she goes back into that stairwell, hiding behind the opened door as all those walkers lurch towards the Governor. He shouts and screams and fights them off with his shovel and his gun but they swarm him. Andrea watches for a while from the door then gets the fuck out of there, assuming she's left him to his death. She calmly dispatches another couple of walkers on her way out, no big deal. I sort of hope she's going to steal his truck but she doesn't.
Also that night, out at the Woodbury pits, someone drives up, pours gasoline all over the walkers in the trailer and the pit, and torches them. We never see who does it but we're meant to think it's either Tyrese or Milton. My money's on Milton.
In the morning, Andrea reaches the prison. With a big grin on her face, she steps to the edge of the woods, arms raised to wave to Rick whom she can see patrolling on one of the guard towers. But before he can see her, the Governor springs out of the bushes, clamping his hand over her mouth and dragging her down to the ground. Rick sees some movement out of the corner of his eye but when he checks through his binoculars, all he sees are milling walkers. Poor Andrea - so close.
The Governor drives back into town, pausing to tell Martinez that he didn't find Andrea. Martinez updates him on the torched pit walkers, saying he thinks it could have been Tyrese. The Governor says he'll want to talk with them, plus Martinez needs to go out and get more biters. When he meets with Tyrese et als., Tyrese says that he doesn't like the idea of feeding humans to the zombies. The Governor chuckles, saying that the zombies are only for intimidation - he would never feed people to them. Tyrese apologizes for losing it out at the pit, saying that his mouth sometimes gets away from him and he won't let it happen again. No worries, says the Governor. As he leaves, he turns back and asks, "Where'd you get the gasoline?" Tyrese: ????? The Governor nods.
Out on the street, he runs into Milton, who asks about Andrea. Didn't find her, going to keep looking. Milton says it's a shame about the pits and he hopes the Governor will find out who did it. The Governor: "Already did." The two men glare at each other for a bit and then move on.
The camera pans slowly through the Governor's awful workshop. And there's poor Andrea, cuffed to that dentist's chair, gag in her mouth, eyes wide and trying not to panic. It really doesn't look good for her, that's for sure.
Previously on The Walking Dead / next time on The Walking Dead
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