Tag Archives: chess

One-Eyed Bri: The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 7 (Dead Weight)

Posted on by
Jose Pablo Cantillo and David Morrissey in The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 7

Jose Pablo Cantillo and David Morrissey in The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 7

Just in case you didn’t get enough of him in the previous episode, The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 7 (Dead Weight) delivers another healthy dose of The Governor. Rescued from the walker pit by Martinez, The Governor aka Brian, has settled into playing house with Lilly and her daughter Meghan. He’s gotten frighteningly comfortable with Meghan, calling her “Pumpkin” and teaching her how to play chess.

Not-so-shockingly, The Governor’s methods of parental supervision match his zombie apocalypse leadership style. He shows Meghan no mercy even though she’s just learning the game, and he doesn’t let her take too long to decide on her maneuvers, “You can’t wait forever. You’ve got to make a move.”

With the rest of his new group, The Governor seems like he has turned over a new leaf. He allows Martinez to lead and acts like a team player during the supply run he makes with his new pals. I love that his crew includes Charlie Francis from Fringe (aka Kirk Acevedo) and Victor from Dollhouse (aka Enver Gjokaj). These guys are great. How can we get them more work? I got the sinking feeling as I was watching them however, that their characters wouldn’t last very long hanging out with The Governor. He earns himself a terrible new nickname during this scene: One-Eyed Bri. Yuck.

Sure enough, my intuition was right, because The Governor kills Martinez shortly after by feeding him to walkers in the pit. All the while he bizarrely repeats “I don’t want to…” over and over. What a nut. Then he takes out Pete (Enver Gjokaj) and intimidates Mitch (Kirk Acevedo) into falling in line. I mean Mitch has to be left alive since he’s the only one who can drive the tank they’ve got.  Poor zombie Pete is chained to the bottom of a pond, unable to escape his watery tomb.

The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 7 heads to the next logical spot near its close, as The Governor assumes leadership of his new camp and plots to attack Rick’s group at the prison. I was pretty disappointed in the show’s writers for pushing the mid-season finale toward the spot they should have ended with in Season 3. I don’t understand why they decided to drag everything out just to have The Governor attack the prison again, especially since he’ll probably meet the same fate he does in the Walking Dead comics.

Based on that, I offer up this week’s poll: Do you think the show’s writers should have done the epic showdown at the prison last year? Or do you feel that the additional time they gave was necessary for character development?

Uh-Oh SpaghettiOs: Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 6 (Live Bait)

Posted on by
David Morrissey as The Governor in The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 6

David Morrissey as The Governor in The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 6

Been wondering what The Governor has been up to since he left Woodbury at the end of The Walking Dead Season 3? Good news everyone! The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 6 (Live Bait) starts catching you up on exactly where he’s been. First, it flashes back to the moment when The Governor gunned his own troops down for their failure (as if you somehow forgot). Then it shows him camping with his cronies while a dumb freakin’ zombie trips over his campfire. Although Martinez helps out in the moment by shooting the walker, he takes off the next morning, leaving Philip to fend for himself.

It’s entertaining to watch The Governor’s decay over an indeterminate amount of time, as he grows an epic beard and wanders around torching everything in his path. The conflagrations and emo music playing during this sequence are pretty darn funny because they border on melodrama. Thankfully this part of the episode only lasts for a few minutes, since The Governor soon meets Lilly (Audrey Marie Anderson) and Tara (Alanna Masterson), who are holed up an apartment building with their father (Danny Vinson) and Lilly’s daughter Meghan (Meyrick Murphy).

Lilly and Tara are wisely reluctant to trust this haggard guy, who’s going by the alias Brian. They’re not total jerks, so they try to feed him some SpaghettiOs, which he strangely dumps in favor of cat food. What’s the deal with this new self-loathing Governor? Has he truly changed? Does he feel some remorse? It seems like maybe, after he does a number of charitable things for this family. He retrieves oxygen for Lilly and Tara’s ailing father and treats Meghan with soft, gentle kindness. “Brian” cleans himself up, teaches Meghan to play chess, and even deals with killing her zombie grandfather.

The Governor’s acts earn Lilly and Tara’s trust, so he convinces them to hit the road with their supplies. As they travel together, Lilly decides (unwisely) to sleep with him. Gross lady! You’re hooking up next to your own daughter and sister. Anyway, they find themselves in trouble near a heard of walkers and go running into the woods, where he and Meghan fall into a familiar pit filled with zombies. To protect the girl, Brian/Philip/The Governor goes ape shit and destroys those walkers with his bare hands. He scares the living heck out of Meghan in the process, but whatever. And then, to end The Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 6 with a major surprise, Martinez finds them! Bet you weren’t expecting that.

Did you like finding out what happened to The Governor after Woodbury? And do you think he’s changed? Finally, this week’s poll: Even during the zombie apocalypse, would you be desperate enough for sex that you’d risk doing it in front of your sleeping daughter and sister?