WOW, you guys. I think I'm high on The Walking Dead right now. If TV shows were drugs, then Family Guy would be pot, 30 Rock would be cocaine, and The Walking Dead would be heroin. This is what I imagine heroin feels like. I mean, probably. I don't know a whole lot about hard drugs, for that you have to check out DrugGrades.com.
Let's get straight to the grades. Tonight was pretty cut and dry. Everybody either got an A+ or an F and there's nothing in between. Remember to follow me on twitter at @jackoapostrophe. and special thanks to Steven Manuel for creating these gifs.
Rick
"Everyone's made it this far. We've all done the worst kinds of things just to stay alive. But we can still come back. We're not too far gone. We get to come back. I know. We all can change."
Rick stands up to The Governor. He gets shot. He gets punched. He gets strangled. I can't remember the last time I rooted for him this hard.
But then he finds Judith's empty car seat. Can Rick really stand to go through all this heartbreak again? Carl was always his favorite, but Judith was a little piece of Lori he was still hanging on to. Of course, we don't know if Judith is dead. I have a feeling that Rick is going to hit a low point next season and just before he throws in the towel, Beth will come wandering by holding baby Judith and singing some country ballad for AMC to sell on iTunes.
The Governor
I don't know what about the Governor was different this episode. Maybe this was the moment they'd been waiting for all along. But it finally seemed like a pitch perfect balance of humanity and evil. I loved his goodbye to Megan and getting the mud on his coat. But watching The Governor stand on that tank and try and negotiate the prison - hearing him say "Kill Them All!" - that's what The Governor was fucking MADE FOR, you guys. It was his beautiful batshit insane swan song.
While I enjoyed seeing the Governor's chess piece get stomped, I wouldn't have minded seeing a less metaphorical and more graphically violent death. But the real amazing moment is when Rick is shouting all that wisdom, about how we can come back from the horrible things we've done and people can change, The Governor has a nice long moment where he tries to compute this. In this moment, The Walking Dead justifies the weird storytelling decisions The Governor made in the last two episodes. He doesn't believe he can change. He doesn't believe anybody can change.
And he dies. Because he's wrong.
Daryl
Lizzie
Carl
Tyreese
Beth
Judith
Then whose blood is on the carseat? And where's the little bits of Judith? I guess a bleeding Bob could have grabbed her and bled all over the carseat, right? The equally likely explanation is that she is for real dead and showing a chewed up infant carcass is just too much, even for this show. If that's the case, then Rest In Peace Baby Judith. If that's not the case, see you in February, Li'l Asskicker. Cliffhangers don't get much grimmer than this.
Michonne
I'm not sure if the Governor's death was long and painful enough. I feel like I can say (now that its no longer a TV spoiler) that in the comic books Michonne tortures the hell out The Governor. It's so darkly satisfying on the page but on the other hand might not work well on the screen. It would have been too easy to cast her as a crazed psychopath after watching her cut The Governor's arm off and then cauterize the wound with a blowtorch. On TV, that kind of thing just automatically makes you a villain.
TV Michonne is a little more humble than that. She walks away from The Governor, leaving him writhing in pain, knowing that she delivered on her promise to kill him. I wonder - keeping Michonne's earlier baby craziness in mind - if SHE is the one who rescued Judith. An infant and a zombie-killing lady ninja? Now there's a buddy cop movie I'd like to see.
Glenn
Herschel
What can you say about a man like Herschel? He was a bit of an obstinate old prick when we first met him way back in Season 2. Back then he was just a slightly racist veterinarian with a penchant for drinking and telling Shane to get off his land. He even wore overalls. However, by the time Rick burnt down his barn and chopped off his leg, he grew a great big bushy beard and turned into the badass old soul of the group Dale only wished he could be.
Herschel was a focal point of this last half-season, acting as Rick's father figure and assuring him that he could come back from all the horrible things he had done in Season 3. His speech about going into the contaminated ward of the prison was some of the finest acting this show has had to offer, ever.
And it all came to a head in his last few moments in life. The Walking Dead only rarely grants its characters poignant dying moments. The look on Herschel's face as he heard Rick shout out loud everything Herschel had been trying to teach him. He knew. He knew he was going to die and he knew that he had gotten through to Rick. And that makes it all worth it. Rest In Peace, Herschel. He's going to the big peaceful farm up in the sky.
"Too Far Gone"
Extra Credit
- Jesus Christ, where do I start? First let me say that as a comic book fan, this sequence of driving the tank through the prison fence has been something we've been waiting for for years. After last year's colossal fuck up of a season finale, I thought they botched it. I thought AMC crossed the tank out of the budget with a big fat red pen.
- With the incredible action explosion at the prison, it's easy to forget the way scarier, surprisingly intense horror scene of the Mud Zombie waking up and killing Megan. We were perfectly distracted by the zombie crossing the river to realize that Megan was digging up a hungry dead body. And by the time we realized it, it was too late. That was creepy as shit watching that body come up out of the mud.
- Did you notice a zombie cameo? The crazypants Irish girl that Rick nearly got killed by in the season premiere was one of the zombies that wandered into the prison at the end of the episode.
- Special thanks to Steven Manuel for creating tonight's gifs.
Demerits
- The only scene that rang untrue to me was the quick scene between our two lesbian friends, who have learned to late that they're on the wrong side of the war. I think that scene was necessary, but it was unfortunately played as a "I'll find you." At this point, too many characters we care about are in jeopardy for us to be asked to give a shit about two characters we don't really give a fuck about.
Non-Zombie Kill of the Week
There were a ton of zombie kills this episode, but they weren't the ones that mattered. The ones that mattered were the human-on-human killings. So for the first time, we here at Character Grades offer you the Non-Zombie Kill of the Week poll.
AddThis: