Walking Dead Mid-Season 4 Kerfuffle

So as you all know based on several posts, I love me some Walking Dead. The best version is the TellTale game because it knows how to make good characters (as in characters that feel real, not just characters of good people).

But I also enjoy the AMC show, Walking Dead, despite the fact it has so many characters I can’t stand. The kids are generally all annoying shits that constantly need rescue from the bullshit they get themselves into. The adults have tendencies to act like children, lashing out at people who are trying to help or be a voice of reason. And then you have power struggles between certain characters that amount to nothing more than a dick measuring contest in the post-apocalypse. It’s all very frustrating when I’m sitting through that to merely get to the good bits.

 

This past week we just endured the Mid-Season Finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead just before Telltale announced their release of The Walking Dead Season Two: Episode One here in just a matter of days. It’s good because it’ll help me forget all the stupid bullshit that’s been happening recently in the show that has been beginning to irk me. What’s worse is that it isn’t to the same level as the bullshit I called Once Upon a Time out for only a few weeks ago. It’s not that characters are acting out of the ordinary or anything that cries out inconsistency. Instead I’m just upset at the actions of a character despite all the signs telling him he was in the wrong.

The Governor… AKA Brian… Spoilers from here on out, so go away or shut up. 

Simply put, I never liked the Governor as a person. He’s a good villain, no question, but he always came off a bit touched in the head. And not in the fun Joker way where you can be colorful and have some fun visual gags like those toy teeth biting everyone’s tits off. Instead we have a guy who is incredibly unbalanced trying to run a society of people but clearly shouldn’t. Yet no one can see him for the monster he really is, which, in turn, causes the suffering of WAY too many people. But, let me back up and give us a synopsis.

The past three episodes have been showing us the rise/return of The Governor (aka Brian). Brian was taken in by a very nice family where he learned to care for people and himself once again after having everything ripped away from him by his own selfish actions… and, yes, a few poor decisions by Merle. Regardless, he’s still alive and becomes a part of this new family, though not without some resistance from him. Eventually they decide to move because the infected will not stop coming. We see a scene with Brian and the mother of the children he just saved having sex and we realize that it’s too late for her to see anything wrong with him when the signs readily become apparent.

They eventually have to abandon their method of travel, which gets them chased by more infected. This then has them cross paths with one of Brian’s former subordinates, Martinez. He’s started a new group and invites the four of them (Brian, the woman, and her two daughters) to join his small but growing group. Things seem really good with this group as they have people, food, and weapons to help them survive for quite some time. And during a lax moment, Martinez is just talking to Brian, saying how he wants to try to make a new Woodbury, but better. And he’d love to have Brian’s help. …

Brian kills him. Just, out of nowhere. Throws him into a nearby pit of infected and just leaves, letting the evidence make it look like Martinez fell in while drunk. The reason was believed (based on the dialogue at the time) that Brian didn’t want to be in charge, so he killed Martinez for suggesting that. But perhaps it was something else because with Martinez gone, no one was around to lead this group of people. Another person from the group (we’ll call him Chet because I forgot his name) steps up to lead. No one likes it, but he says it’s temporary until they get a moment to vote and decide fairly on the matter.

During an outing, Chet, Brian, and a third guy (we’ll call him Steve) go out to find more food and supplies. They sneak past another survivor camp and Steve insists they kill and take what they have. But Chet wants none of that. They move on, find some scraps of food, and on their way back they see that the camp was raided and everyone there had died anyway. So regardless of Chet sparing them, that random group of strangers died and they gained none of the food. So that night Brian kills Chet in his trailer. (What?) Yeah.

Then he goes to Steve’s trailer. He says he agreed with Steve they should have just taken from those people. So he says he wants to run things now and he wants Steve to be his right-hand on the matter. Now with control over this new group (which he didn’t seem to want in the first place but now has just taken because reasons) he wants to find the group a new home because it isn’t safe out and about. Remembering a prison owned by a group of people who fucked him over before, he decided to declare war on Rick and the rest at the prison. Starting off by kidnapping Hershel and Mishon for leverage and then telling his group is diabolical plan. His goal was to avoid any bloodshed… which I’ll get to why that’s hilarious in a few moments. 

So they go to the prison. They call out Rick and say he and his people need to leave and they will all be spared. Rick tries to talk with Brian and explain that he’s not in charge anymore but they’d be willing to live together. But nothing Rick says clicks with Brian and he kills Hershel. This is what triggers the war as everyone begins firing at each other. Rick and Brian get into fisticuffs. The group gets split up when trying to escape. And now the prison is unusable as a result of Brian’s actions. Also a baby might be dead, several families are in grieving. And by taking all the resources and manpower of HIS people into this personal war with Rick, Lilly (the little girl he was a surrogate father to) was killed by an infected and that whole family he was with is now ruined because of his selfish actions. The mother even killed him after Mishon stabbed him and left him to rot. Good on her for finally seeing the man behind the curtain.

So let’s break some of this nonsense down.

First, why does he go around killing all the people in charge when it seems like he doesn’t want to be in charge at all? It seems like he just wants to be responsible for the family he’s adopted into and nothing more. Yet he goes from that to killing people in his rise to power. And I don’t see why he even needed to kill people. Both people he murdered OFFERED the role of co-commander with him. Sure, he wouldn’t be the only one in charge, but that is a system that works better than a single dictator running the whole show. So it’s not that he needed to kill those people, but that he wanted to. He wanted that power and he didn’t want to share it. 

But the problem in doing so is that not only did he then take power and leave control of this group in his clearly unstable hands. But now they were down TWO people who were capable fighters/soldiers. That’s two less guns on the battlefield for fighting infected, other humans, and Rick’s group. His strategy was very short term for his long term plan and it further shows just how mentally unstable he is when he couldn’t even see the fault in his convoluted plan. But, then again, neither can big companies like EA or Microsoft when it comes to market their products. So let’s assume this is a normal issue with humanity and move on because there’s plenty more to go with here.

In kidnapping Hershel and Mishon, we can already see he learned NOTHING from his previous experience with Rick and friends. Back then, they had kidnapped Glen and Maggie (though that wasn’t necessarily planned, the results were the same). First off, when you want to start a dialogue with someone (peaceful or not) it generally helps to not have a reason for them to want to shoot you. If the Governor and his posse had just rolled up and asked to talk, Rick and company would have obliged. Hell, Hershel would have gone down to talk to them if he had to because he seemed like a fair and reasonable man.

Second, he talks to Hershel while waiting to go to the prison. Hershel offers him a chance to avoid bloodshed and everyone wins. And Hershel was right. It was possible. But the Governor couldn’t take second in command. He couldn’t be content with just living peacefully. Things had to, once again, be his way or bust. But we have an old man pleading for the lives of his daughters, and the Governor, who lost a daughter before and will lose his surrogate daughter later, refuses to give in to sympathy. He refuses to look at this from the other side and his leads to his untimely end.

Also, killing Hershel was a terrible idea for a lot of reasons. For him, it forces the opposition to lose morale, but that’s it. Other than that, it causes them to retaliate since he drew first blood, thus the battle was inevitable from that point on. But, and most importantly, HE’S A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL! That’s is VERY VALUABLE especially in the situation they’re all in. Sure, he already has one medical professional on his team. But we’ve seen that more is always better and if one gets sick, you have a backup. It’s not rocket science, it’s a Geneva Convention rule. Don’t shoot medics. Idiot. And what’s worse is he loses track of Mishon, which allows her to get away and then kill him later. You had a gun. Why didn’t you just kill them both when you had the chance? If you’re going to make a statement or a point, make it without any half-assedness. But this was just a dumb lack of follow-through on his part. And what sucks the most is Hershel was a very peaceful guy who was willing to talk to Governor, probably more than anyone else. If there was anyone who deserved to die the least, it would probably be a tossup between him and maybe Glen.

So when the war does break out, he uses the tank (btw, he has a tank) to tear down the fences and blow away the opposition. This alone is dumb for a whole host of reasons. First, the fences are the only real defense this place has to begin with. Tearing them down means either needing to rebuild them later or that this place will become worthless without any real defensive line. By tearing them down, you then prove Rick’s point about how a war makes this place useless to both parties. Either he planned to lose from the very get-go or this is another short-sighted attempt to take victory without thinking about the long term goal/big picture. 

Second, the tank makes a lot more noise than any of the guns. The guns are firing too, but regardless, that thing is really fucking loud. This means that infected from ALL OVER will be on that place like fat kids on chocolate cake. This inevitably makes this a war on two-fronts for both parties, and the Governor’s the invading force. Meaning they’ll have to deal with the infected before those defending in the prison… No really a smart decision there. Oh, and the former statement about the fences means that with them down and the infected invading as well, it’ll be that much harder, if not impossible, to clean and fix the place once the war is over. Again, he either didn’t intend to win at all or didn’t really think ahead on this at all.

Also, wouldn’t rolling up in a tank make it difficult to do any kind of negotiation? Yes, you have intimidation on your side. But should that fail, you’re only result is fighting. You can’t just walk away and then attack when they don’t expect it. If you fail to negotiate, you’re obligated to use the damn thing. You could have at least hidden it in the woods until it was actually needed. Again, this is just the Governor trying to show how big and tough his dick is by bringing the biggest and toughest symbol he has available for his shriveled willy. Kind of pathetic when you look at it like that, honestly.

Furthermore, if you had the tank and planned to use it anyway, why did you need to bring everyone for the mission? You clearly had enough people to take them out without the tank. And with the tank, you probably could have relieved two or three people to stick behind and watch the camp. Sure, guard duty seems negligible, but when your surrogate daughter gets eaten by an infected because no one was there in time to save her, that still falls on your head. You took everyone out to start this war. You left her and her mother behind, a woman who doesn’t want to have to fight or kill anyone if she can. Clearly you needed to leave SOMEONE behind to defend the place other than her. And with the tank, you had MORE than enough people to do what you needed to do to spare some for simple guard duty.

To sum things up, the Governor is an idiot. He’s short-sighted (ironically) and is obsessed with control and power to an unhealthy degree. Those who would have allied with him were likely to live a short and difficult life. His word would have been law and none would have been allowed to break away from that. People say Rick is a bad guy, and while I don’t much like him, he’s not nearly as bad as the Governor. Rick doesn’t just take hostages. Rick wouldn’t just invade an enemy camp for his people, he’d offer a peaceful solution to the problem. And Rick wouldn’t dictate how things will work, not anymore. He would leave it up to the people to work together and figure it out.

The Governor’s death finally brings an end to the longest and most annoying part of Walking Dead (second to the farm). And by that, I mean we can finally get a new villain and new plot idea for the series to expand into something different. With any luck, we’ll never see that one-eyed idiot ever again and we can move on with this series.

And for those who keep saying that Rick is a terrible guy to a point where they consider him more of a villain than the Governor (whatever kind of fucking logic that makes). Let me just point out one thing. Walking Dead takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting. The world has gone to shit and people have to do a mixture of fighting and working together in order to survive the best and worst of it. It’s easy NOW to say whether or not someone in a fictional situation like this is right or wrong. You’re not in the scenario when you and your loved ones are dying or turning and need to find even scraps of food to prolong whatever little bit of life you have left. To me, in this setting, EVERYONE is a terrible human being on some level. Everyone has to do terrible things to get by, whether they believe that to be the case or not. Therefore, I conclude that neither Rick nor the Governor are worse than the other in terms of the actions the characters take because they’re both equally guilty of doing terrible things. The only difference is that one has a terrible actor and the other one is based on a serial rapist from the comics/books. Have fun. :D