Episode Title: “Dead Weight”
Writer: Curtis Gwinn
Director: Jeremy Podeswa
Previously on “The Walking Dead”:
Did anyone really want the Governor (David Morrissey) to complete his journey to redemption? Be honest. “The Walking Dead” needed its main villain back and that’s what it got.
In terms of its final destination, “Dead Weight” didn’t offer any surprises. The Governor is once again in a position to threaten the prison survivors, even if his motivation has slightly changed. Before, the Governor wanted the prison group to be destroyed because he saw them as a threat to his power. And of course he had a personal grudge against Michonne (Danai Gurira) that is far from over.
So we’ve come full circle. And revenge is definitely on the Governor’s mind when we reach the end of the episode.
There are full spoilers ahead for “Dead Weight,” so if you missed this week’s episode of “The Walking Dead’ then you should skip this review or else Brian will make an early morning visit.
The only truly intriguing thing about the Governor’s second rise to power is that he didn’t want it and he tried to run from it. The Governor killed Martinez (Jose Pablo Cantillo) for even suggesting that he take on a leadership position. Martinez was foolish to let the Governor get that close to him, especially when he had a firsthand look at how crazy “Brian” could be.
The writer of this episode didn’t seem to trust the audience to understand why Martinez allowed the Governor within his new camp, so Martinez actually spelled it out twice. He thought that the Governor had changed thanks to his new surrogate family; Lily (Audrey Marie Anderson), Megan (Meyrick Murphy) and Tara (Alanna Masterson).
To a certain extent, the Governor had changed. If he only had his new family to worry about then the Governor wouldn’t even be thinking about Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne. There’s a good moment late in the episode in which the Governor actually seems jealous of the sanctuary that Rick and his son have behind the prison gates. From the outside, it must look like a huge improvement on the Governor’s makeshift camp. And now he wants the prison for the survival of his people.
I did have trouble buying the idea that Pete (Enver Gjokaj) and Mitch (Kirk Acevedo) were the only two men in camp who really tried to fill the void left by Martinez’s demise. Given the initial dissatisfaction the group showed when Pete declared himself the temporary leader, I thought there would be more contenders to be the new leader. It was also fairly unbelievable how quickly Mitch accepted the murder of Pete (his own brother!) at the Governor’s hands.
Pete was the type of man who refused to attack another camp of survivors for their supplies because it wasn’t the moral thing to do. It’s an admirable stance, but the Governor’s argument is that Pete’s weak style of leadership would have gotten them all killed. By the time, Pete, Mitch and the Governor returned, someone had already massacred the other camp and taken their supplies. That means there’s at least one more well armed and ruthless group of survivors out there who have no qualms about doing anything to get by.
But it’s not the new faction that scares the Governor, it’s his own inner darkness. The Governor convinces his makeshift family to leave the camp — including Tara’s new girlfriend Alisha (Juliana Harkavy) — only to find their escape path blocked by a horde of walkers buried in the road. I was half convinced that the zombie road block was the work of the same group that attacked the other human camp,
With no other option in his mind, the Governor murdered Pete and he forced Mitch to go along with a cover story before assuming total control over the camp. It basically gets the Governor back to where he was before he murdered his own people, only without the illusion of safety within his new home. The walker attack on Meghan was pretty harrowing and I thought that either she or Tara were going to be finished there just to drive the Governor further into darkness,
David Morrissey’s performance is the glue that holds this episode together even during some of its more ludicrous moments. Although I liked the floating undead corpse of Pete futilely trying to reach the Governor from beneath the surface of the water. That reminded me of Jason’s fate in one of the Friday the 13th films.
The actresses playing the Governor’s new family aren’t bad, but their characters are underwritten and they only exist for him to have someone to care about. Lily and Tara showed more personality in the previous episode than in this one. Meghan doesn’t have a lot of personality either, but she might be the Governor’s only weakness. The Governor’s new family completely overlooks it when he tells them “I can’t lose you again.” Intellectually, the Governor may know that they aren’t his first family, but that’s a very telling line.
“Dead Weight” and “Live Bait” tried to cram in a season’s worth of the Governor’s character development into only two episodes and they weren’t entirely successful. The way that “Dead Weight” played out made it seem as if the Governor’s second rise to power happened in just a few days. That’s far too quickly, but it is what it is.
The point of this exercise was to build the Governor back up into a credible threat for the prison survivors. On that level, it was a success. And I think that we might be near a major milestone from the original “Walking Dead’ comic book storyline. Let’s just say that the tank was not a random element of the episode. We may see it in action very soon.
