Brian, we hardly knew ye. “Dead Weight” continued to follow the once and current Governor’s storyline after having been found by Martinez, one of his former lackeys, in a zombie pit outside his camp. It is now clear that aside from the Governor’s STILL mysterious motivations his recent two episode arc has suffered from a distinct lack of time. While the Governor’s path to and from redemption could have been an interesting one both “Live Bait” and “Dead Weight” condensed his journey so much that his journey both makes no sense and is almost completely laughable.
Where “Live Bait” hopped from major plot point to major plot point in a Cliff Notes type fashion, “Dead Weight” suffers from even more ludicrous jumps. Not only was the audience supposed to believe that the Governor loved his newly adopted family (Lilly, Megan, and Tara as a refresher) by the beginning of “Dead Weight” but by the end that he loved them so much that he would fall right back into the Governor’s random violence to protect them. The audience only just met these people a week ago and now the Governor was somehow forced into becoming his old, maniacal self again to protect this family.
“Dead Weight” felt like a poorly put together episode mainly through showing the passage of time. In the Governor’s first real scene with the main leaders of the camp in Martinez, Pete, and Mitch they come across a cabin where they all share their personal histories. The Governor quickly breezes over his seemingly because he is a changed man. Two scenes later when Martinez asks if he would like to share the leadership of the camp the Governor hits Martinez over the head with a golf club and drags him to a zombie pit repeating what sounded like “I don’t wanna.” This particular incident would be evidence to support that the Governor is crazy. But he’s actually not crazy, he only loses his temper apparently?
Next the Governor, Pete, and Mitch go out on another supplies run and find a camp settlement of ten or so people. Pete refuses to rob the camp and the Governor lingers before joining them to hunt squirrels. After seeing the paltry spoils the Governor leads Pete and Mitch back to the camp where all of a sudden everyone is dead and the camp has been ransacked. Not only does it seem like the Governor did it, although he didn’t since he didn’t take any of the supplies, but it also seems like the camp was so close to where they were hunting that they should have been able to hear what was happening. In actuality the camp probably wasn’t that close but the way the scene was cut – the Governor disappearing in the brush with a quick cut to him being right at the camp’s fence – made it seem like the camp was right next to them.
Pete’s refusal to take the camp also stirred the Governor’s need to rule because very soon after he decides to kill Pete – after his escape failed because he came across a mud pit filled with zombies (?!) – and install Mitch as a puppet leader. Remember, it was only an episode ago that the Governor was “redeemed” by helping Lilly, Tara, and Megan survive. Now he’s killing people just because they don’t have the killer instinct to survive. By the end of “Dead Weight” the camp has proven to be unsafe because of one stray zombie entering it and attacking Megan, which causes the Governor to go to the prison and covet their perceived happiness from afar.
The leap of faith required to believe that the Governor actually cared so much about this family that he lost his marbles again is too great in such a limited time. They are meant to be the impetus for why he takes over leadership for this camp to begin with but because the audience has not been allotted anytime to grow with his relationship to the family, or even fond of the family, it is cheapened to the point that it doesn’t feel like it matters. And if the main purpose of this two episode arc was to show that the Governor was inherently evil or somewhat crazy there are many better ways to do it than the redeemed character who falls back into his old ways. But that has never been what The Walking Dead has done or wanted to do with the Governor’s character. Instead he still exists in this nebulous space where he has either always been evil or was pushed there because of Rick and the times he lives in. The audience still has no clue whether or not he is inherently a good person or inherently an evil person, or if he’s just crazy. And the rapidly unfolding redemption and falling story of the past two episodes certainly did not shine any light on that.
The Walking Dead has also overcorrected for some of its past failures. Where much of the previous two seasons dragged, these past two Governor focused episodes have been far too quick. If the show was hell bent on giving the Governor’s journey after his failed attack on the prison then the show should have either revealed this through flashbacks without breaking up the prison storyline or actually devoted enough time to the Governor’s journey so that the audience could connect to him. As it stands these two Governor episodes feel like filler episodes, especially in light of the teaser for next week’s episode.
This season of The Walking Dead had started out so promising as it seemed like the show had found the perfect balance of action and character building. Each episode moved at a good pace even if there weren’t immediate zombie threats every two minutes. It was building to something that felt like it could have been meaningful and interesting. But since “Live Bait” the season has gone completely off the rails, losing all the momentum and good will it had built up simply to show the audience the Governor’s “this is what I did during my summer vacation” video essay.
There has been a critical error on your website.<\/p>
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.<\/a><\/p>","data":{"status":500},"additional_errors":[]}