The Governor (David Morrissey) stands next to a tank before attacking the prison in the midseason finale of ‘The Walking Dead.’
Credit: Courtesy of Gene Page / AMC
Zombies. Sure, I can believe zombies.
It took me a while, but I’ve really become used to the zombie thing — which is important when it comes to “The Walking Dead.” I mean, who doesn’t love a morbidly disturbing devastation where the undead rule?
But a tank? No. I don’t believe a tank.
In the zombie apocalyptic world, maybe it’s believable that some guy in the army really did drive off with a tank. But it’s not believable that The Governor (David Morrissey), or Brian or Philip or whatever he’s going by these days, would just happen to meet up with the one guy in the world still wandering around with a working knowledge of military equipment and access to a tank.
It’s even less plausible that he could convince a group of strangers he just met to kill a completely different group of strangers.
Even though it seems like the only way to survive is to kill or be killed, there’s usually some sort of reason behind the murders. Whether it’s to protect your group of survivors, gain access to better supplies or because someone else struck first, it’s inevitable but prompted.
As weird as it sounds, I’ve been mostly fine with the protagonists’ kills on the show. Even when Carol (Melissa McBride) killed two of the new members of the group, I was sort of all right with that. Come on guys, she was doing it for the good of the group and she had great intentions. That’s fine.
But there doesn’t seem to be any kind of need that prompted the attempted killings of Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his gang. The Governor’s new little group of survivors seemed content in their RV lifestyle. They don’t need the territory and security the prison provided when they have the protection of the river and the barriers they’re building. His new fling, Lilly (Audrey Marie Anderson), even protested several times and pointed out that they didn’t need to go anywhere better.
It’s just not believable. Suddenly, The Governor stumbles into camp, all the old leaders of the camp start dying, and yet the people still get talked into killing an innocent group of people because he tells them they should.
To survive the near extinction of the human race, it seems like you’d have to be intelligent and definitely not gullible. Yet these people are the definition of gullible.
I’d just like to believe people are better than to stoop to blindly murdering others. There’s a difference between killing to survive or to protect your family and killing because some stranger talked you into it.
It’s even worse when the tank starts plowing down the fences to the prison, destroying the prison’s valuable assets and rendering it useless. It seems like the group would have stopped destroying the prison if their goal was truly to make the space advantageous.
It also seems like the group would have stopped destroying their “enemies” once The Governor unprecedentedly chopped Hershel’s (Scott Wilson) head off. Some of the women in the group seemed visibly shaken, but they continued fighting.
I wasn’t really ever that attached to Hershel, to be honest. Every time he launched into one of his speeches about good and evil, I would stifle an eyeroll. He kind of reminded me of Samwise from “The Lord of the Rings,” and I pictured music from the Shire playing majestically behind his words while he motivated the survivors. I mean, it’s nice and touching and all, but I’d rather just see zombies.
But now that he’s dead, I’m enraged. He had the most precious smile on his old man face while Rick fought to save him. What purpose was there to killing Hershel?
On top of all of this, I’m super confused about what the next part of this season will bring. All the survivors dispersed, and my favorite characters are separated from one another, leaving more questions than answers while the show takes a hiatus for a few months.
The producers did do one thing right: They made me mad, which will inevitably get me to tune back in when the show comes back on sometime in February.
And they also killed The Governor. So I guess that means they did two things right.
