Tonight was a battle royale between not just The Governor and Rick, but between two ultra-nerd heavyweight shows: The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones (both of which have a rabid fan base that will tear the head off a man that says they’re not just as good as Mad Men or Breaking Bad). Game of Thrones premiered its third season at exactly the same time The Walking Dead ended theirs, leaving many to choose, although I easily picked The Walking Dead since GoT doesn’t really get going until halfway through the season anyway.
But, onto the main event, which saw only one major death (no, I don’t count Dallas Robert’s Milton, a once-promising character that wound up being underdeveloped), and that’s Andrea, who I always thought of as more of a striving-to-be-important character than an actually important one. Unlike a lot of fans, I don’t hate Andrea, and think she serves a lot more purpose than most of Rick’s crew at this point (would we really miss Herschel? Glenn? Glenn’s girlfriend’s sister? Fucking Carol?), so I wasn’t entirely salivating at seeing her go.
Other than that, there weren’t many surprises for the finale: Carl continues to be a budding psychopath. The Governor struck out at the prison first but came up empty handed (it’s time for some of these characters to go…past time). He slaughtered most of his own people so Rick’s hands can stay unrealistically clean, then The Governor escaped clean with his best two soldiers, striking out for parts unknown…why? Who knows? Then Rick went back by the prison and picked up a bus full of senior citizens just to remind us all what a nice guy he really is. The ending scene was so forced-sentimental I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a twist after it.
A disappointing ender that reminds us (yet again) that TWD is a better show when the creator of the comic book stays the hell away from it (word is that the show keeps burning through show-runners because he insists on creative control and few deviations from the overrated source comic), and doesn’t stray from the down-and-dirty mean streak that’s why most people watch it to begin with.
Last week’s episode was a lot better, seeing the devastating death of Meryl Dixon, one of the few interesting characters the show has ever had. And last season’s ender———that saw that damn barn burned to the ground, the prison revealed, and the memorable introduction of Michonne———-was also much stronger. Episode Grade: C