The Walking Dead: ‘Prey’

This week The Walking Dead posed a myriad of questions that could leave us pondering their answers for quite some time: Did The Governor install a tracking device into Andrea? Why can The Governor’s truck only go 10 mph? Are black people the only characters on this show that are a bad shot with a rifle? Will Andrea realize she couldn’t have been vaguer in explaining to Tyreese why The Governor is a “bad man”? Of the previews for shows during commercial breaks are we more excited for Mad Men or Urban Tarzan? Hopefully someday we may know the answers to some of these but for now I’m chalking this up as one of the all-time stall episodes a series has ever attempted.

We start the episode off with a flashback of Andrea and Michonne having a “girls night” around a camp fire, presumably not long after Michonne first saves her after the incident at the farm. This was clearly an attempt to show us why we should care about this relationship that was developed over several months off camera but all it did was indicate that would we need a flashback during the flashback in order for Michonne to tell us anything relevant of her past. I would have had no issue with an entire flashback episode if it had come much earlier in the season, but this late in the game a two minute segment is all anyone would have put up with.

Speaking of people who could do with a flashback episode(*), Tyreese attempts to explain a year and a half worth of events into a minute of dialogue, and while I appreciate the effort of Chad Coleman acting it out this was beyond forced. With Andrea and Milton having second thoughts on The Governor the show needed to keep some people around in Woodbury who we actually care about and have a moral conscience but we simply haven’t spent enough time with this group to feel invested in them in that way. I so want to care about Tyreese and his sister too but it’s not fair for the show to rely on the comic book mythology of the characters as justification to why we find them fascinating. They have to earn that by showing us.

(*)Well I’d almost say every character in this show could. Mostly I would be curious to watch The Governor build up a town in an apocalyptic world and watch his transgression from regular Joe to maniacal lunatic. Plus Milton would be along for the ride!

But the majority of ‘Prey’ focused on our cliché demented villain chasing down our not so cliché damsel in distress. And by “not so cliché” I mean that I wasn’t necessarily rooting for her to get away. Although Andrea has been salvaged much more than Lori had been able to, she still constitutes a major problem because you can bring back a worthless character only so far. The Governor’s pursuit of Andrea had a couple of good moments like when she unleashed a staircase full of zombies (my new indie band name) and I was legitimately caught off guard when The Governor pounced her mere inches away from the freedom of the prison.

However, two semi good moments do not a quality episode make and it has become abundantly clear that this season needed to be 13 episodes as opposed to the 16 order it got. This was stall tactics done horribly wrong. We’ve all know since episode two of this season that we were headed to a major showdown between Woodbury and our loveable(?) group of survivors holed up in the prison. There’s an old saying in storytelling: “it’s about the journey, not the destination,” and The Walking Dead is managing to stay steadfast on doing the exact opposite. This is a show that writes finales first and moves just enough pieces around in-between the beginning and the end to set it up. I have fairly little doubt that the finale will be an excellent hour of television but I will continue to wonder if there is much point in watching every episode of this show when we get essentially throw-away segments like this.

Other moments of note:

• The Governor has his very own torture chamber filled with shiny new tools. I don’t believe Andrea has any useful information for him so should he torture her it would be purely for sport.
• Milton is slowly, very slowly, turning out to be a good introduced character. I hope he somehow makes it out in the finale and teams up Rick and the others next season as it would be fun to watch him adjust to their ways. Also, the results of him lighting the zombies on fire makes it into the top 5 grossest Walking Dead moments to date.
• The scene where Andrea is attacked by walkers in the forest was a stretch even by this shows standards. I didn’t realize zombies were both quiet enough to sneak up on someone without them hearing and also strong enough to pin a living person with one arm that no longer has muscle mass.
• I’m thinking The Governor was a fan of The Wire as he was “pulling an Omar” by whistling as he stalks his prey.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.