The Governor returns

This weeks "The Walking Dead" went in a different direction, giving viewers a glimpse into what The Governor has been up to since his defeat last season.

In the cold opening, we see The Governor watch his town of Woodbury burn and then embarks on a journey on his own. Now dirty, unshaven and much thinner than before, The Governor finds a small town with a family living in an apartment building.

No longer cool, calm and collected; The Governor is a shell of what he use to be. Clearly he has not recovered from his defeat and seems to have lost all energy. He looks like a lost old man who talks in short sentences and phrases. Indeed, the old Governor is gone.

As the family he meets explain what happened to them, The Governor looks disinterested. He even dumps a plate of food given to him and instead eats food from can he has with him.

In a way, and fans of Rick and his group would probably agree, The Governor deserved this path. Killing many people and survivors for supplies for his town was not the most noble thing to do. He also incited much of the violence between Woodbury and the prison survivors, lying to his residents to get them to wage war on Rick and his group.

While The Governor was a more ruthless character in the comics, the TV series portrayed him as more of a manipulative figure. Using lies and cohersion to get his way, The Governor was very good at making sure he got what he wanted.

Using his words was The Governor's strength. He almost seemed like he could talk his way out of any situation. Now, he barely talks and lets his actions do his talking from him.

We see this as the episode continues, The Governor traverses to the the floor above the family to retrieve a game board. He even ventures out to a hospital to get oxygen tanks for one of the family members. Risking his life as he gets overwhelmed by walkers, The Governor is able to escape with a couple of tanks of oxygen.  

Another interesting note to The Governor's new attitude is his fear of walkers. As he searched through the hospital, a look of panic crossed his face when a horde of walkers descended on him. The old Governor had no fear and took walkers on head first, even using walkers for protection and research.

As time passes, The Governor begins to get more acquainted with his new "family." Cleaning himself up and regaining some of his old attitude, it almost seems as if finding this family in need is part of a redemption tour for him.

Unfortunately, the family finds out the hard way of how the world works now when people pass away, and as expected, they freak out. After the shock moment, The Governor burns away the last remnant of his old self and decides to set back out, but with new company this time.

The last few moments of the episode are hard to watch, not because it's bad, but because it gets your heart pounding and makes you actually root for The Governor to finally get a win and survive. It's also nice to see The Governor hasn't lost his step in fighting off walkers, as he rips the throat out of one of them. Just as The Governor relaxes, we get to see an old friend come back into his life.

Another satisfying episode in, it was great to see how much The Governor had changed. That new change will be put to the test quickly however, as the next episode will see how much The Governor wants to stay on his road to redemption.

Rating:

8/10