The Governor is back. Does the show regress back to the Governor-centric crapshoot of Season Three, or do things continue on off the strong start of Season Four? Find out below as I share six thoughts on this week’s episode, titled “Live Bait”.
Note: Spoilers for this episode and next week’s preview will be discussed, and these are handled chronologically as the episode went along. So if you’re wondering why I always lead with the cold opens, it’s because this show (typically) does cold opens well AND because it is the first thing we see.
1. The Governor is back to ruin everything
Oh my lord, the cold open to this episode was so astonishingly terrible, it created a halo of terribleness around my feelings for the show from the very start. Forrest Gump Governor walking the Earth after burning Woodbury to the ground set to yet another tremendously bad song was enough to bring back the shakes of the show gone wrong. The only thing that was good about the open was the fact that The Governor’s partners-in-crime were smart enough to leave him while he was sleeping.
To be honest, they could have done us all a favor by putting a bullet in his head before they left.
2. Brian is not here to eat Spaghetti-O’s, however
It’s really excellent that the show did us a favor by pairing The Governor – aka Brian – with a bevy of other uninteresting characters in a dreary setting. Not only that, but meager Governor is basically being positioned as a pretty good but quiet guy, and he pours out the damn Spaghetti-O’s these folks give him! Like we didn’t think he was a villain to begin with, all of a sudden they have him waste food in the zombie apocalypse? This guy must be stopped! But hey, I suppose he did complete Operation Backgammon, so that’s spectacular, right?
I am extremely unexcited about the return of The Governor. If only there were other interesting things happening in the show back at the prison. Oh wait, there are?! Then why aren’t we watching those!
3. If someone told me this episode would be The Governor going on missions for this damn family I wouldn’t have tuned in
The Governor goes on another mission for the father in the family, once again because he’s the only one “who can put a smile on Meagan’s (Megan?) face.” It worked on the backgammon quest and it worked again when it came to the dad’s oxygen tank, and presumably, the show is trying to say it’s because The Governor misses his daughter and Meagan (Megan?) reminds him of her. Or something.
I want to point out that this is a guy whom, when we last saw him, literally mowed down 20 or 30 people who lived in his town only because they turned and ran and tried to save his life, like he was a Russian commander during one of the World Wars and they were his infantry men. These meager (meger?) attempts to humanize The Governor or so utterly wasted at this point that it is comical. But not in an awesome way.
A really, really horrible way. This episode is about as well handled as the Chiefs offense in the two-minute drill.
4. The Walking Dead: Finding New Levels of Bad Parenting Since 2010
So let me get this straight…you’ve known this guy with an eyepatch, a near mute like existence and war wounds up the ying yang for like 24 hours, and you leave your daughter with him, the guy you already admit your daughter has been mistaking as her dad?
The only way this episode’s examples of bad parenting could get worse is if the title of the episode comes from them using Meagan as live bait so they can go score a Monopoly board.
Note: I wrote that previous line before her mom decided to get frisky with The Governor in their U-Haul next to her daughter and sister.
5. CHESS AS A METAPHOR?! I’VE NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
6. Live Bait
The episode ends with the rebooted Governor, now a guy who is caring for a child and maybe one who has a ladyfriend, in the very pit that he created to gather zombies when he ran Woodbury, with one of the two guys who left his side at the beginning of the episode above him shocked to find him. In fact, next week looks like it’s all about how they’ve rebuilt a little society and how The Governor and his new family are going to fit in. It all looks pretty terrible, and near as I can tell, we’re going to get nothing with the prison at all next week either.
I honestly have to ask everyone who manages to make it through my review of this putrid episode: am I off base? If next week is more of this weirdo Governor crap, are you going to be happy with the show? Because I can tell you what, I will not be.
