By Pat French
“In this world you kill or you die. Or you die and you kill.” –The Governor
Whew, what a ride. And how appropriate is it that on Easter Sunday a TV show makes me take the lord’s name in vain seven times. Seriously, I kept a tally: Five times for the Governor and twice for Carl. Oh Carl, all traces of your innocence have been obliterated.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, Let’s start from the beginning. Slight spoilers lie ahead so be warned. This season finale’s theme was all about transformation. We see the Governor complete his journey to psychopathic murderer. We witness Carl come full circle to hardened badass. Milton, the wormy science guy, finally grows a pair and refuses to assist in any further atrocities for his leader. Andrea’s arc reaches its bitter conclusion and even Rick lifts his “no new members policy” by the end (much to young Carl’s disapproval).
While not quite as bombastic as last season’s finale (or even Season 3’s midway finale for that matter) I found this to be an excellent episode. Plenty of blood, plenty of zombies, Couple expensive looking explosions, Michonne decapitates 2 zombies with one katana-swing. This was certainly a fitting conclusion to what has easily been the best season of this show. It kept us on our toes and defied expectations (I really expected Andrea to make it out of that room, or at least for Tyrese to save her at the last minute).
If I’m being fair (and don’t be fooled, I’m rarely fair) there were certainly a few criticisms I had. For one, as I mentioned above this was not nearly as action-packed as I was expecting. The battle at the prison was decent, but I was expecting it to be longer and more layered. Also, Andrea’s attempted escape from the Governor’s dungeon seemed very long and drawn out. It took her an exceptionally long time to pick up those damn pliers off the floor and almost no time at all to cut through the handcuffs. Now I’m no expert on this sort of thing, but I would think the picking up part would take much longer than the cutting through metal part. Additionally, the scene where the Governor mows down his followers and not a single one shoots back seemed a little far fetched. His army was HUGE and it’s not like they were all lined up. You’d think at least one or two would start shooting at him as he casually blows them away. Maybe that’s nitpicky of me but it took me out of the moment in what were pretty major moments.
Lastly, WTF mate? Why was there not more Daryl and Michonne kicking ass and taking names? They both just lost important members of their lives to the governor and we barely saw them do anything this episode.
Nonetheless, this was a great finale overall. Chad Coleman’s Tyrese is finally in the group. Fans of either The Wire or the Walking Dead comics will know why that’s awesome. Season 4 can’t come fast enough.
B T Dubs, what a freaking weekend for television, eh? This, Dr. Who started back up AND Game of Thrones???
