Back at the prison we hear a baby crying, and Daryl asking Rick if he is okay. With Rick being non-responsive Daryl goes into leadership mode. First he starts pimping Beth, by telling her she needs to look out for Carl since he just lost his mom. Daryl makes one hell of a wingman.
After Hershel makes it clear the baby needs formula to eat, Daryl declares he is going to go on a run to get baby supplies. While this is happening, Rick picks up and axe and storms off back into the prison. Maggie hops on Daryl's bike after saying goodbye and giving Glenn a kiss. Glenn, Axel and Oscar start cleaning up bodies after closing the gate. Rick begins his rage killed filled spree taking out 4 walkers with an axe, it was like he was trying out for the lead in Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.
In Woodbury we see the Governor giving a speech at the get together. It's all positive stuff about the growth of their community and how they started off as nine people in a apartment sharing SPAM. Meanwhile Michonne is breaking into his house to get her sword back. We also get a quick glimpse of a bag of weapons that say "Sheriff" on the side, possibly a call back to the bag lost in season 1 that was never recovered. Michonne also notices a pic of the Governor's family, and she starts snooping through his desk. She finds a notebook with random notes including a list of people that we can presume are part of the town. At the bottom of it is the name Penny which is underlined and bolded, followed by pages of weird scribbling.
Michonne hears a bump and begins to pick the lock on the door behind the desk, but has to hide when she hears people coming into the room.
The Governor, Merle and Milton all walk in. Milton is complaining about the power being used for the party because it's interrupting his experiments. They grab some supplies for the party and leave. Michonne meanwhile and climbed out a window in the back, leading to a part of Woodbury that is outside the gates it seems. She hears walkers, and walks around to find a bunch of them caged up. She breaks them out of their cell, so that she can ruthlessly slaughter 7 walkers in no time. Right when she gets done with her Mortal Kombat antics someone walks through the gate with what appears to be a bucket of red meat. It gets dropped and the scene cuts away
When we come back, Michonne is sitting in a room with Merle guarding the door. The Governor comes in to talk to her. It's a tense conversation, where in the end he tries recruiting her to stay in Woodbury and join his "Research Team". He ends up standing behind her with her sword in hand, as the tension builds she springs out of the chair, snathes her sword and holds him off with the blade tip in his neck. Merle comes in after Michonne walks out the door asking if everything is okay. Governor comments on how Michonne is all personality. He then asks Merle to send Andrea in, and get the research team to run an errand.
At the prison Glenn is digging graves when Axel and Oscar approach him. They have a brief conversation where Oscar drops his best impersonation of Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption when discussing the value of friends. Glenn asks them to dig two more graves, which kind of makes no sense. They know T-Dog and Lori died, but they have little proof of Carol being dead and they only have T-Dogs body at this point. Glenn goes up to the cage and talks to Hershel about how he now thinks they should have killed all the inmates immediately. They have a bromance moment where they hold hands and look at each other with sad eyes.
Back in Woodbury, the Governor talks to Andrea about trying to keep Michonne under control, and asks her to talk to her. Andrea runs off and gets in a heated conversation about staying or going with Michonne that sounds dangerously close to a lovers quarrel.
Glenn decides he needs to go find Rick, alone... which doesn't seem like the best idea but if they all acted smart the show wouldn't be as interesting. Glenn comes across the corpses of the walkers that Rick has taken an axe too earlier, and finds him around a corner. Glenn approaches him, and tries to talk to him. Rick snaps, pinning Glenn to a wall and then throwing him back down the way he came from. Crazy eyed rick continues his rampage deeper into the prison.
Next we see a open field with what appears to be a solar powered contraption that is built to make noise and grab the attention of walkers. Around it are pits that have been dug, lined with netting so catch walkers. They pull a tow truck up, and use it to drag out the bundled walkers. They drop them down to let them out and after killing a few of the more vicious ones they use restraints to hold them down and start pulling teeth out with pliers.
We catch up with Daryl and Maggie on bike, pulling into the back of what appears to be a residential area. They break into a daycare, finding some baby supplies in the first room before doing a sweep of the building. In the kitchen they hear noises. Daryl takes up position while Maggie opens the door where the noises are coming from to expose a possum on a shelf. Daryl shoots it, and gets excited about having it for dinner. Possum, the other other white meat. Maggie searches the kitchen and finds a couple containers of baby formula. Score!
Next we see Andrea and Michonne walking to the gate in Woodbury, with their bags in hand. Merle stops them saying it's too late in the day because he would have to escort them, and goes to talk to the guard. Michonne points out how everytime they try to leave there is an excuse why they can't and they are prisoners. Andrea goes back to Merle while he is talking to the guard at the gate, and he tells her to back up. A few moments later he opens the gate, telling them to find shelter for the night fast. Michonne tells Andrea that it's for show, they knew they were going to be coming. Michonne gives Andrea a with me or against me ultimatum Andrea says she shouldn't do that. Michonne says she was just slowing her down anyway and walks out.
Andrea sits on a bench alone, gets approached by the Governor who apologises that Michonne didn't work out. He invites her for a drink to take her mind off things.
We then see zombies beating on the outside of the prison, Axel and Oscar try to make noise leading them away from the entrance as Glenn fires off a few headshots from the guard tower clearing the way for Daryl and Maggie coming back in. What follows is a really touching scene of Daryl feeding the baby for the first time while everyone watches. He asks Carl if she has a name yet. Carl responds by naming every girl thats been in the group that has died. Daryl jokes her name should be Lil Kick Ass, and rocks her while feeding her. The result...
Rick is still wandering around the prison, comes into the boiler room where Lori gave birth. He sees a huge puddle of blood and Carl's knife, and then picks up a shell casing but there is no body, just streaks of blood going down the hall and grunting noises. He walks down the hall finding a slumped over walker with a huge distended belly that can barely move. A close up shot reveals what looks like Lori's hair in the zombies mouth... Rick pulls his gun, puts it in the mouth and pulls the trigger. He then takes his knife and rage stabs the belly about 5 times.
Next we see Woodbury at night, everyone is walking toward something that sounds like a concert. The Governor takes Andrea to the top of some bleachers saying he has the best seats. Night lights come on to reveal a makeshift stadium where they have 6 walkers chained up in a circle formation. Merle and another guy face off in the middle where a ref steps in and starts a fight. Merle does his best flying spinning heel kick and sends the guy stumbling back toward the walker behind him. Who knew they did karate in his trailer park... Andrea is in shock as the fight continues. The ref pulls a lever giving the chained walkers more slack in their lines so they can close the circle in around the fighters. The fight continues, with Merle eventually winning and acting like Russell Crowe's character from Gladiator.
Andrea tries leaving and is stopped. She gets in an argument about how barbaric it is. The Governor tells her it's all staged, because they remove the teeth, and they are using it to teach people not to be so scared of the biters. Andrea thinks it's stupid and suddenly realizes that Michonne's concerns about the town were justified.
Daybreak at the prison, we see Daryl walking up to a grave with a flower, leaving it on the grave they dug for Carol which has now been filled in. This wins the award for dumbest writing mistake of the week. They dig 3 graves for 3 presumably dead people, but have no proof Carol is dead and fill the grave back in after digging it without a body. Maybe Glenn was just trolling Axel and Oscar, or it was just a bad fuckup.
Next we see Rick sitting in the boiler room a few feet from the zombie he had just shot and stabbed, clearly in a delirious state. A phone rings. Rick walks up to it... picks it up slowly "Hello..." and the episode ends.
"Say the Word" was a pretty good episode. Considering what happened in the last episode it would be hard to follow up on the action and intensity, but they handled it pretty well. There was a nice balance between the two groups we are following. There was also plenty of plot movement between Rick losing his mind, Daryl stepping up and winning over the hearts of mom's everywhere, and Michonne and Andrea learning more about Woodbury. There are some unanswered questions like why hasn't anyone looked for Carol, and what experiments is Milton running. However we should be excited to see what happens when the two groups meet finally.
This weeks corpse count!
Michonne - 7 Walkers
Rick - 5 Walkers
Glenn - 2 WalkersMerle - 1 Walker and a lot of teeth
Daryl - 1 Possum
Comic book spoilers/discussion - you have been warned!!!
A few exciting things from the comic made it into this weeks episode. First up was Penny the zombie child of the Governor was revealed. This was done really well, though the image of putting a bag and straight jacket on a kid was a bit unusual for television. It's a small change from just keeping her locked up in a separate room that happened in the comics. Next we got to see the gladiator ring in Woodbury. Again this is handled slightly different, but it's effectively the same thing. I wasn't sure if this was going to make the show at all, but I'm glad it did. It will be interesting to see if it gets used the same way it does in the comic later on when Rick's group meets up with the town of Woodbury.
Lastly was the phone call. In the comic this didn't take place till much later than the prison storyline. Just to cover the background, the comic has Lori and the baby die in a gunfight with the Governor's people at the prison. Rick and Carl then end up on their own and find a housing development to stay in when the phone call happens. On the other end is Lori, which is actually all just in Rick's head as he is going through a psychotic episode. They clearly moved this up in the storyline to fit in with Lori's death. I think it works better in the show as this whole episode was Rick basically losing his mind.
Another change from the comic was Michonne leaving Woodbury unscathed. In the comic the Governor puts her in what can only be described as a rape dungeon, where they abuse her constantly. I imagine that was a bit too graphic for the show, so they are doing to leave it out or transfer parts of it somehow to Andrea.
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