The Walking Dead Episode 406
“Live Bait”
Written By: Nichole Beattie
Directed By: Michael Uppendahl
Original Airdate: 17 November 2013
In This Episode...
We go back to see what the Governor has been up to since last season’s massacre. He and Morales and that one other guy stuck together for a day or two, but the Governor seems to have lost the will to live - or at least care about it. When a walker lurches towards him, it is a gunshot from Morales that keeps it at bay. In the morning, the Governor is alone - Morales and the other guy left.
So the Governor is on his own. He finds a truck, crashes the front gates of Woodbury, and burns the place down. He survives on the road by himself for a couple months, but he is in bad shape. his hair is long and unkept; his clothes are torn; and he has a thick, scraggly beard. He finds an apartment building that appears safe and goes looking for a room. He is stopped by two sisters with a gun - he disarms without being asked.
The sisters are Tara and Lily. They live in a unit with their dad and Lily’s daughter, Megan. The Governor only plans on staying a day and tells them his name is Brian - a name he saw scrawled over a barn, warning a guy named Brian to stay away. There is general uneasiness on the part of the sisters, and the Governor just wants to be left alone. Lily brings him some Spaghetti-Os; he thanks her for them but dumps them out the window and returns to the can of food he brought. Megan reminds him of his daughter, so when her grandpa asks him to go get a backgammon set from a neighbor upstairs, he does. (In the process, he finds the owner of the backgammon set, a double-amputee, who tried to kill himself - and failed.) The Governor stares sadly at his one remaining picture of his family as he tries to fall asleep. In the morning, Lily sees the photo as she brings the Governor some supplies to take with him. He politely declines the food, along with his gun - he has the suicide zombie’s gun.
Before the Governor goes, Lily has one more favor to ask: if he can bring some oxygen from the retirement home down the street. Her dad has stage four lung cancer and only has two days worth of oxygen left. The Governor agrees. At the home, it seems like many of the living maladies that faced the patients followed them into undeath: the bedridden are still bedridden; the wheelchair bound are still wheelchair bound. The Governor finds a cart filled with oxygen cans, but it seems that not all the residents were invalids, and a dozen or so descend on him. He uses the oxygen cart to bully his way past them, but he is fighting a losing battle. Tucking a tank under each arm, the Governor makes a run for it.
Lily is extremely grateful and insists on cleaning up the Governor’s cuts before he leaves. While she goes to get supplies, Megan sits with him and asks about his eye, if something happened to him or if he was born like that. “I’ll tell you what happened if you promise to keep it a secret.” She pinky-swears (something the Governor had never heard before) and he tries telling her he is a pirate. She doesn’t buy it, so he gives the sanitized version: “I was trying to help someone I loved and protect them from getting hurt.”
Apparently this interaction with the little girl made the Governor decide to stay on with the family. He cleans up and shaves, and teaches Megan how to play chess. In the other room, Lily and Tara are saying goodbye to their father. Lily brings Megan in to say goodbye, but grandpa is already dead. The Governor tries to coax the women out; they want a few minutes. A few minutes they do not have, as grandpa comes back from the dead. The quiet becomes chaos and the Governor reacts quickly, bashing his skull in with an oxygen tank while Tara hides and Lily screams that he’s not dead. Of course she knows this is not true, and after she helps bury the body, she and Tara thank him for saving them.
That night, the Governor burns his one remaining family photo, then says goodbye to the ladies. Lily insists that they come with him, that there is something better out there and he will help them find it. The four of them pile into a delivery truck stuffed with food and they set out. There is no use making a plan, he explains. They will go where the road and the biters will let them. At night, they sleep in the truck. Lily wiggles up against the Governor, subtly at first, but when he doesn’t rebuff her, she becomes more aggressive. The Governor hesitates at first (probably because Tara and Megan are inches away from them) but gives in.
Morning comes and the truck won’t start, so the foursome heads out on foot. A crow caw startles Tara, causing her to trip and hurt her ankle. While Lily helps her, the Governor spots a pack of zombies. They spot the living and start coming after them. Megan is too scared to move - until the Governor calls her to him. She runs into his arms and the new family runs into the woods. The two couples get separated and the Governor (and Megan) fall into one of those big zombie pits he and his “inner circle” used to dig. There are four zombies in the hole he falls into, and he kills them before they can chomp on Megan. When they are safe, he clutches Megan, promising he will never let anything happen to her. “Holy shit,” comes a voice from above. Morales is peering down at them, gun drawn. The Governor just hugs the little girl.
Dig It or Bury It?
That was a good episode. The Governor can really carry a show. This was the most depressing “What I did on my summer vacation” project ever. It really makes me wonder where the Governor’s character will go. (Yes, he’s not even close to a governor now, but the name has stuck.) He is a broken man - even more broken from where he was last season. He has a new family now, but he is far from being whole. I can totally see him just kidnapping Megan. I don’t think we are done with “crazy Governor.” I also like that it was one of his own zombie catchers that nearly did him in.
Kill o’ the Week
The Governor had some nice kills. I am especially partial to the kills he made in the pit, including ripping out the throat of one walker, and snapping in two the head of another walker - using a discarded bone for leverage.
Zombie o’ the Week
Suicide zombie. How horrifyingly tragic is it that someone saw no way out, tried to kill himself - and missed, forcing him to live as the thing he hated and feared the most?
Wisdom of the Walking Dead
Lily: “No one mentioned how boring the end of the world would be.”
Prophecies?
The Governor is back with Morales and his group. Morales seems to have taken a lot of pointers from the Governor - and none of the good ones.