The Walking Dead - S04-E06 - "Live Bait"

The Walking Dead

Season Four, Episode Six.

"Live Bait"

The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire.

Twitters;

@the_lazy_gamer

@BlairMFink
Shameless Movember Plug

LIFE OF BRIAN

‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

­-Ozymandias by Percy Shelley

I guess my first question is “Why?” Why is The Governor (now going by Brian Heriot, a name he sees painted on a barn/message board) being built back up again as a sympathetic figure? Is it just so he can be broken again and become even more unhinged than before? It’s puzzling. Why couldn’t he just go full psycho, going from his shooting spree at the end of last season to using all the time that has passed to come up with ways to destroy the prison, fuelled by his bottomless thirst for bloody vengeance? Surely that would lend itself to a lot of scenery for David Morrissey to chew. But no, we get to see his two remaining buddies abandon him and then watch him wander around as a silent, greasy drifter until he finds a family and, sigh, become the father figure he so desperately wants to be. In Lily and Megan, he even gets a stand-in for his lost wife and (more importantly) daughter. I’m still hoping we get point-of-no-return psycho Governor at some point before he meets his end in a bloodbath at the end of the season.

The suspicion that this is all going to end badly for The Governor makes me reluctant to care for his newfound companions, something that hurts the effectiveness of this episode. Surely his new pseudo-family is going to end up being a story device, with their untimely deaths serving to send him over the edge once more, right? I feel like Tara might survive because of The Eyepatch’s lack of emotional attachment to her and because she’s now the show’s only current openly gay character.

While I applaud the decision to shift the prison to the backburner to give The Governor an episode all his own, I wish it would have been a little more interesting. Although, it seems like this is part one of two as the episode did not end with him outside the prison walls like I thought it would, but with The Governor running into Martinez, who will surely have some things to say to ruin Brian’s fresh start. This still leaves the door open for the What Has The Governor Been Up To storyline to be a success if the second part comes through. With only two episodes left until the midseason hiatus, I’m assuming we’ll get another Governor episode next week and then we’ll get a fall finale where he arrives at the prison.

What did you think of The Governor’s return, Steve? 


Here we go, flashback time, it's the rebuilding of Philip The Governor Brian Heriot. This guy has gone through more names than Sean Combs! I found the episode a little hard to follow at first, between the hard cuts, voice over, flash backs/forwards, it was all a bit discombobulating. Which could have been how he felt. Spiralling into crazy town after the genocide of his people would have been an emotional ride for ol Phil. Things started to make sense around the same time he realized he had been left alone. By make sense I mean I still have lots of questions.

So how does a man, who has been beaten down and broken, survive that long on his own? And where is he? He has been wandering around, based on the beard, for close to a year. I can't imagine he is all that close to the prison anymore, yet somehow managed to stay with-in proximity of Martinez. So when he made his cameo last episode how did he get there? Was he alone? Did Martinez' group come with him? Are we going to have a Walking Dead mid break finale fire fight that we all love?

The meat of the episode was the (re)birth of Brian, not the Governor, and not Philip. Although Brian seems to be more on the family friendly side of Phil on the Morrissey Crazy Meter, for now. We see him go from an emotionaless, pity party of a man, who thinks he doesn't even deserve the gift of Alphagetties, to the death of Philip with the burning of the family photo, to have Brian rise from the ashes like a mystical phoenix. All in a matter of days? Does he have that much of an emotional need for a family that it can pull him out of his depths of depression that easily? Will that be his downfall....AGAIN.

BURNING QUESTIONS/RANDOM OBSERVATIONS
-Nothing like a good chess metaphor.
-Long live the king!
-Don’t go making promises to little girls you can’t keep, Brian.
-David Morrissey is back in the opening credits.
-Now we have to wait even longer for that heart-to-heart between Rick and Daryl.
-Curious to see how Brian and Martinez interact.
-If he is a new man, why still the hatred for Rick? Or maybe he was there to make peace? Exchange supplies, re-establish trade routes, start to rebuild the world.


Blair’s Episode MVP: The Governor’s Beard
Steve’s Episode MVP: Lily's Vajayjay
Blair’s Episode Grade: B-
Steve’s Episode Grade: 93
Blair’s Deadpool Pick: Lily and Megan
Steve’s Deadpool Pick: Fine, Tara