Nothing satisfies a Thanksgiving-filled belly like the mindless walker horde. Or in the case of “When the Dead Come Knocking”, Merle’s awesome sword arm. Seriously, when was the last time a villain had something that cool? It is so simple, so purely brute force. Just like its owner. Tonight’s episode opens with Merle torturing Glenn with said sword arm, and honestly, things aren’t looking so good for our favorite ex-pizza delivery guy.
If I could find a picture of Glenn’s face in this episode I would. Because when I said things weren’t looking good, that was an understatement. It was honestly tough to look at his face, it was so messed up. But, Glenn stays strong under the pressure, and tries to bluff Merle by over-stating the Gang’s strength. Merle catches him in the lie however, when Glenn mentions Andrea.
Merle gets pissed and releases a walker into the room where he’s holding Glenn. Glenn won’t go down easy though, and does some Black Widow-style fighting to survive. But I question his ability to flip a table over with his legs only. He finally breaks the chair legs, and stabs the walker, letting out a very un-Glenn like primal yell.
The Governor decides to interrogate Maggie himself, which given his past history with the women on this show, could turn out to be weird. In a classic “I’m not really a bad guy” move, he takes out a knife scarily, then cuts the duct tape keeping her to the chair. He offers to take her back to her people, or to bring the Gang to Woodbury, just as long as she tells him where they are. Maggie isn’t going to play ball though, so the Governor gets creepy. He orders her to take off her shirt, and she continues to strip down. He forces her onto the table, and for a good couple seconds there, I thought The Walking Dead was going to have its first rape scene. Luckily, the Governor backs off after Maggie shows no signs of weakness, and tells him, “You do what you need to do. But you can go to hell”. She has now become my favorite Walking Dead Girl. Sorry Michonne, but anybody can kill walkers. Not just anybody can do what Maggie did.
The Governor and Merle bring naked Maggie into Glenn’s room, and threaten that one of them will give up the Gang. He almost shoots Glenn, but Maggie breaks, and gives up the group. The Governor is not happy that a group that size has moved so close to Woodbury, and he begins questioning Merle’s loyalties. The relationship there is being strained.
In the other parts of Woodbury, Andrea’s naked again. What a surprise. After she gets some freakin clothes on, she and the Governor go to some weird laboratory/hospital area, where some old time, '50s style music is playing, which made me think of Fallout 3 more than anything. The Scientist guy makes a strange ringing sound on a bowl, and then proceeds to ask a very old and possibly dying man some memory based questions. It is all a bit weird, and confusing as hell.
So the guy’s name is Mr. Coleman, and he’s part of an experiment to see if memories are retained after re-animation as a walker. The Scientist set up the '50s style setting and the memories in order to get Mr. Coleman into that frame of mind. Andrea, probably remembering her sister Amy’s re-animation, questions all of this, but helps the Scientist to restrain the now dead Mr. Coleman.
Mr. Coleman comes back as a walker, and the Scientist tries to jump his memory. He rubs the bowl, asks his questions and the walker naturally doesn’t do anything. So the Scientist releases his straps, because he’s following the scientific process, and the walker tries to get him, but Andrea puts him down. She’s useful for something.
Things aren’t looking so great at the prison. Michonne was shot in the leg by Merle last episode, and isn’t functioning on full capacity, though she’s still able to decapitate walkers with her katana of death. Rick decides to take her in, and Hershel and Carl attend to her wounds. An interesting note: Rick helps her, but makes it clear that she cannot leave, and she locked in a separate cell area. You can practically see the gears turning in Michonne’s brain as she remembers a similar Woodbury. There is a positive note though: Carol is back! There’s a nice reunion, and she gets to meet Baby/Little Ass Kicker, while Michonne looks on in interest.
Rick doesn’t let happy feelings get in the way of business though, and immediately interrogates Michonne. Her strong personality doesn’t exactly mesh well with Rick and Daryl’s equally strong and distrustful personalities, but she eventually tells them about Woodbury, as that’s where she believes Glenn and Maggie were taken.
The Gang (including the newly added Oscar) decide to go after Glenn and Maggie, despite the lack of information. As they pack up, Carl and Rick have a nice heart-to-heart. Rick apologizes for not being there to put down Lori himself, and the recognition of just how grown up Carl is becomes evident. They also name Baby/Little Ass Kicker. Her name is Judith...eh. I mean, who am I to judge, but I think they should have gone the Nick Cage route and named her after a comic book character. I’m thinking Storm or Diana.
Rick, Michonne, Daryl and Oscar park near Woodbury, and begin the trek towards the town. They are instead caught by a pretty sizeable horde of walkers, and though they take out a few, they have no chance of making it. They flee to a cabin, followed by the walkers, and accidentally wake up the guy with a shotgun that lives there. He causes some issues though, so Michonne stabs him, and Rick throws his body out the front door as bait.
They sneak up on Woodbury commando style, and wait for their moment, which won’t come till next episode. Which, as the mid-season finale, means there won’t be a recap for awhile after that. I truly hope that Maggie kills the Governor. That is all I want for Christmas.
“When the Dead Come Knocking” Walker/Death Ratio Rating: 4 stars. Michonne had a decapitation, which never gets old, and Glenn killed a walker with a table leg, which was awesome.