[TV] The Walking Dead - Page 346

Wow, that was bad both as a finale and as an episode.

Here's how I think things should have gone, under the premises that we don't change who dies in Rick's group (I expected more people to die, but w/e):

1. The Governor/Milton/Andrea first scene stays mostly same, except the Governor doesn't ask Milton to get the tools from the table for no good reason. He simply gives him a gun and tell hims to shoot Andrea. Milton turns, points the gun towards the Governor, shoots, and it turns out the gun is empty - the Governor expected him not to kill Andrea. We see the Governor is smiling; he takes his knife, kills Milton and leaves him to turn and eat Andrea, like in the episode [I changed the initial knife to an empty gun because frankly if Milton had not telegraphed his blow from a mile away he could have had a shot at actually getting the knife to the governor's throat as soon as he received it - with my scenario, there would have been no chance of him killing the governor].

2. We see Rick's group preparing to leave. As the group is about to leave, they figure they might as well block some of the doors and open up others to walkers so that the Governor & his men lose more time making their assault and the group has more time to put some distance between their enemies and themselves. The first half of the group takes off (Herschel, Carol, Carl, Judith, Daryl, Beth & Michonne), while Rick, Glenn & Maggie stay behind to do this before joining up with the others. They park their car outside of the prison (or inside), ready to go.

3. The Governor and his men (except Tyreese and Sasha) arrive at the prison, blowing up the first towers. Rick, Glenn & Maggie realize that they're trapped. Fire is exchanged during the assault (the Governor & his men started using their weapons first). Rick kills Shumpert (Bowman) from a distance. Glenn, Maggie and him retreat through the prison - Glenn tells them that he knows a way, since he's had time to look at some of the plans (or he has wandered around or something). He returns to being his "I'm good at doing runs" self, and guides them towards the escape at the back of the prison. At one point, Maggie saves him from a walker. At the same time, we see the Governor tell a few of his henchmen to try and go around the prison to block a possible escape.

4. Meanwhile, the rest of the group, parked some distance away, hears the assault happening. Daryl decides to go see what is going on. Michonne wants to go with him, but he tells her to wait with the others to help protect them.

5. Back at Woodbury, Andrea figured out for herself that she could use the tools on the table to free herself. She starts trying to get one with her feet, except this time she doesn't constantly stop to chat with Milton and reflect on her actions like an idiot.

6. Daryl reaches the prison gates, and sees the henchmen coming out of the main gates to try to go around the prison. He kills two like the badass that he is, and the remaining ones (three or four) are pinned down. The situation still gets a little hairy, and he backs into the forest without being seen.

7. In the forest, he crosses paths with Rick, Glenn & Maggie who have just escaped. They join up with the rest of the group. Since the car that they couldn't take was the one with most of the important supplies, they decide to make a run at Woodbury while the Governor is still busy attacking the prison and worrying they might be in the woods nearby.

8. Milton has turned, and the last thing we see from inside the room is Andrea freeing her right hand (not getting up and trying to free her second hand like they showed). The camera then films the door and we hear unclear shouts like in the episode.

9. The Governor and some his men are now going through some of the deeper parts of the prison, while others are still inspecting some of the cells. Some of the used baby supplies were left behind - one of the women and her husband see them and wonder aloud "they had a baby?". They are joined by a couple of women and another one or two guys (regular folks, not actual henchmen).

10. Rick's group reaches the outskirts of Woodbury. They split up, Michonne, Rick, Glenn, Maggie and Daryl going in while Carol, Herschel, Carl, Beth and Judith wait hidden some distance away (Carl is pissed at having to wait with the others). They use a backdoor entrance Sasha and Tyreese were not aware of/watching. They however get spotted by the kid with asthma (who appeared in one of the episodes a few weeks ago) who had also been left behind at woodbury as guard. He gets really scared and leaves the inside perimeter to avoid facing Rick & friends, and decides to hide temporarily in the forest.

11. Back at the prison, the Governor is back out on the front field, very angrily marching back towards the trucks in order to set up his troops to find if there's anyone in the nearby woods - as he is walking, the first woman who saw the baby supplies comes up to him and tells him about her discovery. The Governor answers that he doesn't care. She insists, and her and another woman tell him that perhaps there has been a misunderstanding and the group was just trying to defend itself and the baby. The Governor turns around and shoots them both in the head with his pistol, almost at point black. As her husband sees this from a few dozens meters back, he is in shock, shouts and starts shooting at the governor. Since Martinez is right next to the gov, although he is also in shock, he has to shoot back in order to not die, and the Governor ends up killing the rest of the civilians with his steyr aug. Martinez, another henchman (who reacted like Martinez) and him end up being the only survivors. Martinez and the other guy, although in shock, shot at the civilians themselves because they were at risk of getting killed with the Governor. They all start walking back towards a truck.

12. Rick, Daryl, Maggie, Glenn & Michonne start picking up the supplies they need when Rick & Glenn, scouting around, stumble across the room where the old & young are waiting with Sasha. They manage to make their peaceful intentions known and everyone starts settling down when suddenly Tyreese walks in and Sasha has to make him put down his weapon. They talk, Tyreese and Sasha realize that the Governor is the aggressor, and when Rick & Glenn ask where Andrea is, Tyreese and Sasha tell them she had left for the prison. Rick & Glenn answer that she has maybe been taken prisoner by the Governor, like Glenn and Maggie before her (Tyreese and Sasha are, again, shocked to learn this). They meet up with Daryl, Michonne and Maggie, and Michonne, Rick, Daryl and Tyreese go look for her.

13. Carol, Judith, Beth, Carl and Herschel find themselves surrounded by quite a few walkers and start killing them off to hold the position. Carl ends up a bit further away, and the kid with asthma who was hiding temporarily from woodbury stumbles upon him. Carl asks him to put down his weapon, but the kid is very confused/shocked, and answers "don't shoot, don't shoot, please" etc., while keeping his weapon in his hand BUT without aiming it at Carl in any way. He basically has his hands up somewhat but isn't dropping his weapon because he's completely lost/scared. Like in the episode, since he isn't laying down his weapon, Carl shoots him. Herschel sees the whole scene.

14. Michonne, Rick, Daryl and Tyreese find Andrea. The scene goes as it went in the episode, and Andrea commits suicide.

15. As they go back and join Maggie, Glenn and Sasha, they all hear the truck of the Governor coming back. As the truck stops a few dozen meters near the gates and as the Governor, Martinez and the henchman get out, the group shouts at them to put down their weapons. They refuse to comply and start shooting at Rick & co while moving behind the truck. The henchman gets killed in the process, but the other two are still alive. Daryl starts doing a flanking maneuverer, but Martinez realizes him and the Governor have no chance of getting out of there alive, since they're pinned behind the truck, so he hits the Governor, thinks he's out, turns and shouts "I give up! I just knocked out the Governor" (or something less cheesy but along those lines). As he starts walking towards the gate with his hands in the air, he gets taken out by the Governor who has already woken up, badly bruised, and shot him in the back. At this point, Daryl completes his flanking maneuverer, and just as the Governor turns towards him he shoots an arrow (or a bullet) which ends up going through the Governor's brain. While the rest of the group makes it to the truck we see Daryl looking at the dead Governor with a look that says "this is for my brother".

16. Unfortunately, the firefight has attracted a lot of walkers, so at this point the writers can end the episode different ways:

1) The group takes the Woodbury old & young to the prison like in the original episode
2) The group settles in Woodbury and defends it against the walkers.
3) There are too many walkers (let's say a herd has been attracted to woodbury like the one in the season 2 finale) and the group has to move, with the Woodbury population going their own way or following the group. If we want to force them to be on the move instead of going back to the prison, we can say that the Governor blew up key portions of the prison which allowed walkers to completely re-take control of it.

17. The episode possibly ends with Herschel looking at Carl in a concerned way, to highlight that he knows the kid is changing in a bad way. Words really aren't necessary, but if the writers want Rick to know, Herschel talks to Rick. We end with a typical Rick line like "We have been through hell, but there's still hope for him and for us in this world"... or possibly with a line going in the opposite direction, like "this world is changing him and us... the fight is far from over". Something a bit less cheesy, you get the idea.


Ok, I went through this rather quickly so there are obviously some things that could very much be improved, but it really would not have been hard to make this a way better episode, even with conditions like the one that no-one in the group should die (except Andrea). With my scenario, we still get some good fire exchanges, Daryl gets to shine twice (and gets a sort of closure by shooting the governor), and the characters actually make some "normal" decisions (for example, instead of deciding to go after and attack the entire Woodbury population all alone (Rick, Daryl and Michonne), before finding out pretty much everyone is dead, or instead of following the governor blindly for no reason at all after he was the only one to shoot everyone). What do you guys think? I don't think the Governor should have lived either - not only does him surviving leave a bad taste in our moves because we've all been anticipating a confrontation and his death has been a long time coming, it's also not necessary to still have the group under pressure: we've seen other groups pose a threat to Rick & friends in the past, the Governor doesn't have to be the only bad guy out there.

the battle in the comic book was huge but the outcome was really disappointing since most of them died including lori and the baby. and that was such a downer when they built up the comic book on the lori's pregnancy with shane's child. and in the end, you will only see carl and rick escaping from the battle and the walkers and no one knows if the others were able to escape. that's why i'm happy how s3 ended because it was the other way around. it was the governor who ended up wandering around.
the hunters would be an interesting plot, i hope they bring them in s4.