The Walking Dead - S3E3 - "Walk With Me" Recap

This episode started out with a military helicopter crew experiencing an issue during flight (from what sounded like a gunshot hitting them, but that wasn't very clear), and eventually crashing. Andrea, Michonne and her pets witness it and creep up on scene of the crash. This sets the stage for the first episode of TWD where we don't follow Rick and the usual group of survivors. You know what the best part of that is... NO LORI!!!

Anyway, Andrea and Michonne sneak up on the crash site, and while Andrea is trying not to die from bronchitis, super aids, or whatever else she caught over the freezing Georgia winter, Michonne ties up her pets and goes to check out the site. She finds one of the crew split in half from what appears to be getting hit by the copters blade. As she goes to check the pilot she sees a couple vehicles rolling up, and runs back to hide with Andrea.

Here we are finally introduced the Governor and his band of merry men...

I'd like to point out that the show's version of the Governor is way more clean cut than the comics, and I'm not sure just how well that works yet.  He looks less menacing, which I guess makes sense. They spread out looking around the crash site, where he gives logical instructions as zombies start to show up... like "Conserve ammo" which will be the first of many things you will see that makes him a huge hypocrite.  The scout the crash site, kill a few walkers with bows and bats... by this time the one that was chopped in half has turned into a zombie so he knifes him in the skull while the girls debate showing themselves.  

The grunts from Michonne's walkers are about to give them away, so she decides it's a good time to decapitate them.  In the process someone gets the drop on them...

Oh hey Merle, nice stub...

Andrea seeing him, passes out and then we get to see a the ride back from Andrea's semi conscious point of view. She sees the Governor talking on the radio and hears him discussing the survivors they found at the crash. Through the window she sees a zombie lynched in a tree, and armed guards on a wall. She calls for Michonne, but turns to see Merle again who gives her the "Shhhhhh" and she blacks out again.

When Andrea comes to they appears to be in a medical facility being cared for by a nurse with Michonne in the room as well as two guards. They start asking questions of the nurse/doctor and Merle is brought in, he asks about his brother and there is a little catching up before the Gov comes in to take over. Michonne wants her weapons, Andrea wants answers... he has them walk with him as he gives them a brief tour of Woodbury, which mostly consists of showing them the wall that protects it. Fortunately three zombies show up just in time to eat headshots and get the kill count up for the episode.  Andrea discovers that their big secret to having a community is walls... walls EVERYWHERE!

He takes them to a house which seems to have been converted to a makeshift hotel.  Tells them to stay the night, and if they want to leave in the morning they can.  However he isn't giving them weapons before that, because he has to protect his people.  He lets them know they have running water to shower, but to be careful not to use too much.  He needs it to make sure his lawn stays nice.  Andrea asks about the pilot, to which she finds out he is still alive right now.

The Governor goes back to the hospital and pays the pilot a visit.  He asks him about how many people were in his unit and where they were stationed.  He tells them he will try and find them and bring them back to Woodbury before taking off to his next destination.

Next we get to meet Milton, who appears to be the Woodbury's own mad scientist. The Gov walks in on him and Merle having an argument which he ends by threatening them both. After sending Merle to talk to Andrea more, we find out that they also brought back Michonne's now decapitated pets. Milton has been running experiments on them, and has discovered that by cutting off the mouth and arms, they are much more docile creatures. This seems to interest the Governor greatly. 

The next morning The Gov is hosting a little breakfast party for Milton, Michonne, and Andrea. Milton attempts to pry info from Michonne about her pets, which she just complains that she wants her weapons, which are conviently in site. The Gov keeps trying to sell them on how great Woodbury is. A knock at the door and the only other black guy who has survived the zompocolypse whispers something to the Gov and they have to take off. Andrea and Michonne have a little spat while walking down the street about staying or leaving the town. Michonne doesn't trust it, and the other black guy is on the street giving her rapey eyes.  Andrea is all smiles and flowers about the Woodbury cause she's a ditzy blonde.

Cut to a small national guard outfit who is fully geared with weapons and supplies sitting out in an open field. I won't go into detail about how dumb these guys appear to be, but it seems like the least defensible position ever. The Gov comes flying up to them in his little hybrid car waving a white flag. As he gets out he tells them he has their pilot and he is here to bring them to him. When the first guardsman turns around to relay the message, the Governor pulls a pistol and busts a cap in his ass. Then Merle and a few other guys pop out of tall weeds and shoot down all the others. This may have been the cheesiest ambush ever for a million reasons, but at least the Gov gets to keep being a hypocrite...

Also you notice his little Glenn ripoff guy in the background of that pic. Well as one of the guardsmen is running away the Governor shoots him and tells him to go stab him in the head. I'm hoping at some point we are going to get a fight between that guy and Glenn, it has to happen. I can't wait for the epic showdown between asian errand boys. Actually now that I think about it, the groups seems to match up pretty well. They steal all the supplies and vehicles and drive them back to town. When they arrive the Gov gives a speech that reminded me of Bill Pullman's in Independence Day. The only difference is instead of it being inspirational, it's full of lies about what they found and is meant to keep the townspeople bending to his clearly twisted whims.  

Andrea approaches asking what she can do to help. They have a little chat where she asks his name, and he says he says he never tells anyone. She says "Never say never" in a flirty way, and he gets all stone faced and says "Never..."  Andrea suddenly looks less happy about being in Woodbury.

At the end we see the Governor walking around his apartment.  There is a girl laying naked face down in the bed.  He walks around his apartment, stopping to look at a family photo of him, his wife and daughter.  He enters what appears to be a secret room in his home, which leads to one of the iconic panels from the comic where he has a room filled with severed heads floating in aquariums.  

Scanning the heads, the last one that is zoomed into up at the top is the pilot from the crashed helicopter.  This shocking revelation begins to show us the true nature of the Governor and /episode! 

Note: Comic Spoilers Ahead!

At this point I expected us to get to see Penny, his daughter, in zombie form.  In the comic he feeds her the bodies of people they capture to keep her in "good shape" while he tries to find a cure to bring her back. I'm not sure if they are saving that for a later episode, but there were several clues pointing toward it being put in the show.  Hopefully they will not decide it's too graphic for the show.

The Walking Dead - S3E2 - "Sick" The MMORPG Recap

We start off with the group Tank (Rick) trying to bandage up the Cleric (Herschel) who got hit with a DoT at the end of last week and had to get his leg amputated below the knee in the middle of the dungeon (Prison cafeteria).  The ranger (Daryl) noticed they had stumbled into another group’s camp, and they argued over whose camp it was.  They decided to run back to town (cell block they already cleared last week) to heal the Cleric, and were followed by the other group.

Daryl (the groups ranger) wisely camped the pathway to prevent the other group from ninjaing into their camp. Sure enough they show up and Tomas (the leader of the other group) confronted Daryl, T-Dog (off-tank) popped up and held aggro from the rest of the group until Rick was able to rejoin them.  The other group appeared to be mostly undergeared rogues and tanks since they had no melee weapons and only one ranged weapon, a pistol Tomas was packing in the front of his prison blues.  After a little sizing each other up, a tentative agreement was reached that for half the food in the cafeteria they would help raid another part of the dungeon and clear the mobs to allow the groups to exist separately.

After going back and seeing how much food was in the storage area, they loaned the other group some common melee weapons, and formed a raid.  In the meantime the rogue (Glenn) was left to guard Hershel to make sure he didn't die and come back.  The low level cleric (Carol) was trying her best to bandage his wounds but was out of supplies.  Fortunately the n00b rogue/ranger hybrid (Carl) was able to sneak off to find a medical bag from an unexplored part of the zone.  His mom yelled at him for leaving the group, but he was like “look mom, I can solo with my 1337 skillz, so chill”.

The other group did not mix well tactically with Rick's group.  Rick gave simple grouping basic's before the first pull, such as "Stay in formation", "Don't pull too many", "Go for head crits", it was a basic lesson in grouping tactics 101.  But did they listen?  No, they had to go all "Leeeeeerrrrrrooooyyyy JENKINS!" at the first pull, as you can see.... Rick and the other were left there to laugh at the n00bs.  

After a few pulls, they started to learn how to crawl this dungeon, but during the second pull the new groups Tauren warrior (Big Tiny) tries to go afk and pulls aggro from a PAT.  He takes some damage before the Rick and the other group’s leader (Crazy Mexican guy, only one with a ranged weapon) come to his rescue.  After they realize he is DoT’d, they start discussing what to do and while Rick, Daryl and Tdog are giving each other the “oh man, we better off him now looks” Tomas decides to do it himself and PK’s Big Tiny.

They continue the dungeon crawl down one man, which causes a problem when against Rick’s instruction Tomas pulls too many mobs, and uses his class aggro reduction talent to dump a walker onto Rick.  Daryl being an alert ranger backstabs in walker in the head, saving Rick who confronts Tomas who says “shit happens bro” so Rick decided he was right, and then this shit happened...

As you can see, Rick also got the drop on the other guy from the group who decided to run down an unexplored part of the dungeon.  Rick gave chase while T-Dog and Daryl camped the other two remaining members.   Rick follows him, stopping in a doorway where he sees the other guy run into an open area with a bunch of walkers.  He tries to run back to Rick but Rick shuts the gate on him and then goes to a dark place we have started seeing more of recently, leaving him out to be zombie food.

After rejoining the rest of the group, the other two inmates get questioned by Rick, and he lets them live.  They drop the two remaining inmates from the group off in the zone they just cleared.  Rick advised them to stay clear of his group before heading back to see if the cleric had healed up yet.  T-Dog actaully had a second line of dialogue at this part, but it wasn't memorable.

Carol decided to with Hershel down, she needed to up her skill in giving C-sections to prepare for Lori’s baby that’s about to pop out of her.  So she gets Glenn to go to the yard with her so she can find a zombie to practice cutting.  She picks this one and while practicing we are shown someone from outside the prison looking in on her from behind a tree. 

Meanwhile, Hershel stops breathing and Lori tries casting revive (CPR) and gets a scare when Hershel’s arm that isn't handcuffed to a bed reaches around to grab her.  A short time later he comes too and it appears that Hershel will not become a walker (pun intended) soon.
  
Rick goes to thank Lori for saving Hershel, and they have a touching moment where she admits to being the worst person in the word, and Rick basically agrees through silence and by patting her on the head like a lost puppy...

No Michonne or Andrea this week :(

The Walking Dead - S3E1 - "Seed" Recap

The timeline has moved forward 6 months, winter has been survived by everyone.  Hershel has a crazy old guy beard and Lori has a huge baby belly and the same dumb looks on her face as always, Carl is now a little gun toting badass.

The group raids a home, taking out zombies very surgically.  They don't find much in the way of food, they also look pretty famished and tired.  Using a map they are tracking the various herds of roamers they have come across and have traveled in what appears to be a large circle over the course of the winter.  While the group takes a break for water, Daryl and Rick go hunting and run across a prison that we caught a glimpse of at the end of last season.  

The group raids the prison, systematically clearing the yard by excellent head shooting and using the fences to attract the zombies and give them facial stabbings.  They run into zombies with riot gear on which provides some fun fighting.  They manage to clear a small cell block and some fenced in areas leading to it.  They spend the night in their new cell block homes.

Meanwhile in another area, Michonne goes into a drug store and breaks out her elite katana ninja skills on a few walkers.  She finds some aspirin and takes it back to Andrea who has some kind of sickness.  They are holed up in a logging facility with Michonne's two pet zombies.  They debate what to do next, Andrea convinces her they need to leave, and off they go into the woods (end of that subplot for this week).

Back at the prison, a group of them push forward to try and get into the medical or other essential facilities of the prison to look for food and supplies.  It's dark, they are using flashlights and using spray paint to mark the path they are going.  Of course, zombies appear, group gets split up.  While trying to go back and find Maggie and Glenn, Hershel steps over what appeared to be a dead zombie that wakes up in time to bite his ankle off.  The group reunites and busts into a locked door they barricade behind them.  Rick pulls a hand axe out of Hershels bag, and hacks his leg off below the knee. 

As they try and stop the bleeding, Daryl sees 5 guys jumping up and draws a crossbow on them.  They are not alone... /episode

Sidenote: Lori is still a bitch, Rick is mad cause she probably got knocked up by Shane and then was a twat about putting him up to killing Shane and then throwing a fit about it when he did it.  Lori is also worried she has a zombie baby in her that is going to eat her inside out (would be the best thing ever but it won't happen sadly).

Oh Hi There!

Sometime in the middle of the last season of The Walking Dead, I've been giving a certain co worker a recap of each episode because they haven't been able to watch.  Then his schedule got changed to where he didn't work on Monday, so I started writing them up on G+ and sharing them with him.  As I wanted to start adding things to make the recaps more interesting it became clear that G+ wasn't the ideal location and a blog was suggested.  So here we are...

Hope you enjoy this Mr. Anderson!