The Walking Dead recap: 'Arrow on the Doorpost'

You could tell things were getting serious because Daryl Motherf—ing Dixon was wearing sleeves. Rick, Daryl, and Hershel had driven out to a remote location. They looked nervous. They scouted the perimeter. Rick walked into a shack and found a table under a spotlight, with two chairs awaiting. Out of the shadows walked a man with a smile on his face and murder in his one eye. “We have a lot to talk about,” said the Governor. Protagonist: Meet Antagonist.

This season of The Walking Dead has been about a lot of things. The Forced Colonization of the Prison. The Brilliant Death of Lori Grimes. The Annoying Afterlife of Lori Grimes. Rick’s Descent Into Madness. The Dark Secret of Wonderful Woodbury. The Reunion of the Dixon Brothers. Carol’s Remarkable Ability To Avoid Being Killed. Michonne Swinging Her Sword Real Good. But the uber-plot of this season has always been the clash between the Prison and Woodbury — and, more specifically, the clash of kings between Rick and The Governor. It has taken a long time to get here. In the Dead graphic novels, Rick met the Governor right away…and, without spoiling anything, let’s just say that it didn’t take very long for the two to become blood rivals. The TV show has taken the slow burn approach. If their relationship resembles anything, it’s Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat: Two men on separate but similar tracks, marching towards an inevitable showdown.

Last night’s episode was their Café Scene. It didn’t get off to a good start. Rick didn’t think there was much to talk about. The Governor attacked the prison, killed poor Axel. But The Governor noted that that attack was really just a message. “I coulda killed you all,” he said. “I didn’t.” The Man Who Was Philip wanted to negotiate in good faith. He set his weapons down. Rick kept his gun. A good call, since The Governor had a gun hiding under the table.

Outside, Daryl and Hershel faced off against an arriving car from Woodbury. Martinez and Daryl moved into Standoff mode immediately. Andrea emerged from the car, already out of her element. She didn’t know that Governor had already arrived. She ran into the room where Rick and the Governor were deliberating — let’s call Appomattox Shack — and gave a speech about the importance of Andrea. “I asked you to come here,” she said. The Governor ignored her. He told Rick, “You know all about me, and I know all about you.” The time had come to move forward.

From there, the episode played out in two main arcs. Inside the Appomattox Shack, the Governor and Rick tried to hash out their differences. Outside, their respective soldiers waited, maybe treasuring a nice moment of peace before the war. What happened inside the Shack felt purposefully momentous, but if you ask me, the real fun was outside. The best moment of the episode came when Daryl asked who Milton was. “Milton Mamet,” he said. “Great,” retorted Daryl Motherf—ing Dixon, “He brought his butler.” But that was only a bit better than when Martinez referred to Daryl as Rick’s henchman. He’s not wrong: Daryl might have his head together better than Rick, but half his life is spent firing arrows wherever Rick points. (ASIDE: Did you all notice Daryl’s new crossbow, lifted from Morgan’s armory last week? The old crossbow was named Daryl Junior; let’s call this one King Daryl III. END OF ASIDE.)

Inside the Shack, Rick started negotiating. He pulled out a map. Woodbury would own West of the River; the Prison would take East. “Nobody crosses,” he said. “Nobody trades.” The Governor laughed. He wasn’t here to carve up the landscape of Apocalypse America; he wanted Rick’s surrender. Andrea started to say something, and both Rick and The Governor blessedly cut her off. “Step outside, Switzerland, the grown-up countries need to talk,” is basically what they said. Andrea stormed off. Rick looked at The Governor and said a hilarious line that only really worked because Andrew Lincoln can make anything sound like an angry plea from a desperate man with his finger on the trigger: “So. You’re the Governor.”

NEXT PAGE: The Whiskey SummitThey both offered their perspective on recent events. The Governor claimed that Merle didn’t kidnap Maggie and Glenn on his orders; “I was trying to sort it out when you attacked.” Rick cross-examined his opponent. “I thought you were a cop, not a lawyer,” said The Governor. Rick was blunt: “You’re the town drunk who knocked over my fence and ripped up my yard.” The Governor more casual. He had heard of Rick. He mentioned casually the great Original Sin of The Walking Dead: The baby that might not be his, that might in fact be the daughter of the best friend he killed. Then the Governor concluded: “I brought whiskey.”

Outside, Milton had a suggestion. Maybe the hench-people could explore the issues themselves. Milton is a toadie for a post-apocalyptic despot, but there is a side to him that is still recognizably modern. He brought out his notebook and explained that he’d been recording everything. “It’ll be part of our history.” Martinez scoffed at that. So did Daryl, probably. The idea of recording the events of this sorrowful life must seem ridiculous. Either the human race doesn’t have a future…or it does, and no one will want to remember the terrible days of the zombie plague.

As if to remind them of that fact, a few walkers showed up. Martinez broke out his baseball bat. He and Daryl engaged in a Measuring Contest: “You first.” “After you.” We haven’t really gotten to know very much about Martinez this season; he’s one of those characters, like Tyreese, who seems mostly defined by his choice of weapon. Martinez prefers a baseball bat, which he swings around like it’s a ninja weapon. Daryl stole one of Martinez’ kills with a throwing knife. But Daryl also grabbed cigarettes off a dead walker and offered them to Martinez. “Eh, I prefer menthols,” said the Governor’s henchman. “Douchebag,” responded Daryl. Oh, get a room you two!

Listen, I enjoyed this episode quite a bit. But as much as The Walking Dead tried to structure the Rick-Governor meeting as an Event, I found that the best scene of the whole episode was what came between Daryl and Martinez. They were like those soldiers in WWI who called a truce during Christmas. “I just hate these things,” said Martinez, “After what they did. Wife. Kids.” “Sucks,” said Daryl.” “Thanks,” said Martinez. It was a solid human moment, unadorned, helplessly badass but also realistically traumatized. And, just like those soldiers, both Daryl and Martinez knew exactly how this was going to all end up. They’ll have each other in their sights soon, one way or another. Milton and Hershel had their own bonding session — a meeting between two thinking men. Milton asked to see Hershel’s stump, leading Ol’ Stumpy to declare, “At least buy me a drink first.”

This was all light stuff, given gravitas by the sense of approaching terror. Back in the shack, The Governor and Rick were talking about larger matters. “This fight, it’s a failure of leadership,” said The Governor. Both men are leaders, and both men take their leadership seriously. They aren’t in danger of being replaced. The danger is more existential: If they can’t make their people believe in them, then their whole society will fall to pieces. Or at least that’s what they believe. And their power is real. “If we choose to destroy, we’re going to kill everyone we know,” said The Governor.

From there, The Governor segued into talking about the day his wife died: How she had left him a voicemail, and how he had listened to that voicemail after she was already dead, a voice from beyond the grave. Rick, you may remember, had a full-fledged phone conversation with his dead wife earlier in the season. On one hand, I found this connection intriguing: Just a couple dudes, talkin’ dead wives. The Governor’s main point seems to be: We’re not so different, you and I. The show seems to agree with this, too.

But they are different: In the very first episode that we met The Governor, he gunned down a whole platoon of soldiers in cold blood. Rick has gotten his hands dirty, but he’s never killed without provocation. At a certain base point, Rick still feels too obviously heroic — and The Governor too obviously evil — for the Heat comparison to hold. Dramatically speaking, this was Evil One-Eyed Darth Hitler talking to Nobly Widowed Daddy Franklin Delano Eastwood.

NEXT: Merle has a plan

Merle Rooker Dixon didn’t like all this talk about diplomacy. Back at the prison, he was rallying a special squad for a special mission. Call it Team Backstab: Kill the Governor now, when his guard is down. (ASIDE: From what we saw, The Governor only brought three people with him — and only one of those people, Martinez, was a legitimate threat. Clearly, he must have had snipers in the forest around the conference area, right? Like, if you’re a war chief with a well-armed security force, you wouldn’t meet your worst enemy with just Milton watching your back, would you? END OF ASIDE.) Carl said that Rick had the situation in hand. “Your dad’s head could be on a pike real soon,” Merle pointed out. Glenn was the ranking officer at the prison, and he said: No Backstab.

(EVEN MORE IMPORTANT ASIDE: What’s the chain of command in the Grimes Gang? Rick is pretty clearly in charge; Daryl Motherf—ing Dixon is the Sizemore, the Chief Lieutenant who should probably always be second-in command; then comes Glenn. Who’s after that? Maggie? Hershel? Does Carl qualify for an officer position at this point? Isn’t he basically that kid from Master & Commander? Can’t we all agree that Master & Commander is a great movie? END OF ASIDE.)

Finally, Merle couldn’t take it anymore. He was going stir crazy, which for Merle is just crazy on top of crazy. He grabbed a raft of guns and made for the door. “Yoouuu shall not paaaaassss!” said Glenn. Then Merle made an unseemly reference to The Governor “copping a feel” on Maggie. Glenn tackled Merle. Merle strangled Glenn. Maggie tackled Merle. Basically the entire Grimes Gang had to restrain the guy, and then Beth fired a gun into the air, which had the double effect of stopping Merle and of reminding you that Beth is still on this show.

I would’ve thought that, after a showing like that, the Grimes Gang would’ve locked Merle up in a cell and given him some time to calm down. (By “calm down” I of course mean “ram his forehead into a wall until the wall said ‘Uncle!'”) But a little bit later, Merle ambled over for a chat with Michonne. He pointed out that there was no way the Prison would win this fight. If this was a war, it was a war between an actual army and the Island of Misfit Toys. They tried to clear the air a little bit. When Michonne asked him why he hadn’t killed her, Merle said, “I must’ve been seduced by your sterling personality.” Then he offered her a plan: “You shogun the Governor’s ass. I’ll take care of the rest.” Merle wins the week for using “shogun” as a verb. But Michonne wouldn’t do it.

Meanwhile, Glenn was outside keeping an eye on the perimeter. Maggie asked to keep him company. They joked about Maggie’s chokehold. Then Glenn had to apologize. “I made it all about me,” he said, referring to their return from Woodbury. Maggie told him: “I’m with you. I’m always with you.” They started making out. And then they started mwaking out. The Walking Dead doesn’t really do sexuality. It’s very much a modern entertainment: The violence is ridiculously graphic, and the sex is almost nonexistent. But the Glenn-Maggie scene felt like a nice, relatively unadorned moment — two young attractive people, crazy in love, escaping from the madness outside for a couple precious minutes.

NEXT: The Governor wants vengeanceAndrea. Andrea, Andrea, Andrea. Listen, there are other problematic characters on The Walking Dead. As much as I respect the pure dripping Mifune badassery that Danai Gurira brings to Michonne, I’m not sure the show has really established anything clear about her as a character: She’s a loner except when she’s not, she’s suspicious of everyone except when she’s not, she sort of loves Andrea but barely seems to know anything about her. After almost a full season, we still don’t really know anything about Milton besides that he sure seems real nervous; after almost two full seasons, we don’t know anything about Beth besides that she sings real pretty.

But that all pales in comparison to Andrea, a character whose whole character arc seems to be based on the writers trying to figure out what to do with Andrea. When she walked up to Hershel and said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” you could hear a nation of Dead viewers respond, “WE DON’T KNOW EITHER.” She seems to love The Governor; she seems to just want everyone to get along; she gets a big kick out of killing zombies; she constantly feels betrayed by everyone. Any one of these traits would be a good core for the character. Laurie Holden has a steely look in her eyes, which makes you buy the zombie-murder-addict angle; I’ve grown to suspect that it’s that same steely look that makes all of Andrea’s “Woe is me, I’m so confused” plotlines ring so false. (It’s a bit like Skyfall, when James Bond can’t pass his physical even though Daniel Craig clearly has the same Renaissance-Statue body that all modern action stars have, their contracts mandating six months of weight training before every shirtless scene.)

So here we were, two episodes after everyone told Andrea that The Governor was a bad guy, and Hershel told Andrea…that the Governor was a bad guy. “I can’t go back there,” said Andrea. Later in the episode, she did go back there. This is a problem because, per Dead overlord Robert Kirkman, “The rest of the season really is about what Andrea is doing and how she’s handling this situation.” Pause for a word from Team Grumpy: That’s what the rest of the season is about? You’ve got a half-crazy cowboy war chief, a stealth-ninja biker-god with a crossbow, a badass female samurai, a full-crazy flirtatious racist ex-army wacko, a child soldier, and a one-eyed despot with delusions of grandeur, and the rest of the season is about Andrea?

Anyhow. Back in the Appomattox Shack, The Governor and Rick were getting serious. They were getting to that point in a dudes-having-drinks session when the defenses come down. “They still think I know what I’m doin,” said The Governor — admitting that, really, he’s no more of a leader than Rick is. He told Rick that he knew about the stash of guns he brought into the prison. (ASIDE: So The Governoris watching the prison, and he let Rick walk in with enough artillery to level a small army? Where did these guys learn their tactics? Freaking General George B. McClellan? END OF ASIDE.) The Governor knew that his people weren’t combat-tested, like the Grimes Gang. But he did have more of them. “Let’s end it today,” he said. He wanted to make a deal. Rick had something that he wanted. Resources? Manpower? An amazing ability to grow perfect facial stubble? Nope: The Governor wanted Michonne.

This came as a surprise to Rick…and to me. Rick perfectly voiced my concerns, too: “You’ve obviously got big plans,” said Rick, plans to bring humanity back from the brink, to become Governor of the New New World. “You’d waste it all on a two-bit vendetta? You could have a statue of yourself in the town square. Killin’ Michonne is sorta beneath you.”

These are all very good points. To which I would add: Why would you spent so much time establishing the Governor as a long-range planner — not just plotting two steps ahead but fifty years ahead — only to reduce his ultimate purpose to simple vengeance? Doesn’t this “vengeance” not even make very much sense, since The Governor tried to kill Michonne first? Why did The Governor even try to kill Michonne, instead of just letting her walk away into the magical forest? Why would The Governor go through the whole motions of engaging Rick in an extended rhetorical gambit — “Rick, we’re pretty similar, we’re both leaders, our wives are dead, here’s some whiskey, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, amiright?” — only to suddenly make a request that is the rough diplomatic equivalent of twiddling your mustache and stroking your white cat? Why does The Governor do anything he does?

Here is the Governor’s response to Rick and The Walking Dead‘s response to me:

Thus ended the negotiation. The Governor said he’d be back in the same place in two days, at noon. Bring Michonne, and there wouldn’t be a battle. Do anything else, and the whole world would burn.

NEXT: Rick’s Choice{C}We moved into an ace bit of crosscutting. Rick and his squad returned to the prison; The Governor and his people returned to Woodbury. The Governor had a very direct order for Martinez. In two days at noon, Rick would be bringing Michonne to the Appomattox Shack. “Kill the others, but you keep her alive,” said The Governor. (I had been thinking/hoping that The Governor was using the Michonne thing as a red herring — pretending to be a vengeance-obsessed madman, when really he just needed an easy way to kill the Grimes Gang. But the fact that he wants Michonne alive put paid to that idea. Milton wasn’t happy about that: “That’s a slaughter.” The Governor didn’t think of it that way: It was a way to avoid a slaughter. “No way we can all live side-by-side,” he said. Then he waved at Andrea and said, “Hey hey, girly girl! Thanks for setting up that groovy hang-out sesh with Rick! He’s a cool dude, and we’re totes friends now!” (Andrea walked away, looking very mournful and Andrea-esque.)

Now, on one hand, I like the deeper implications of the Governor’s scheme. There was a time after the zombies came — perhaps six or seven months — where everything was possible, where the old rules had fallen down. However, now we’re in Phase 2. Groups have formed — and if you aren’t in a group, you are an enemy of that group. But to be honest, this twist also made this whole episode feel…well, a bit pointless. I don’t think any of us viewers ever thought The Governor and Rick would find peace, not unless there was a common threat to unite them. Still, if I followed it correctly, the Governor’s plan seemed to be:

1. Get Rick, a guy with a crossbow, and a one-legged old man with a gun to a remote location, a location that seems ideal for a heavily-armed security force to kill them, and also a location where a smart post-apocalyptic despot could feasibly lay down some explosives and just blow them all to hell.

2. Drink whiskey with Rick.

3. Ask Rick to turn over one of his best soldiers.

4. Generally act like a crazy person who probably should not be trusted. Ideally, this should involve lots of Smiles That Turn Into Murderous Frowns.

5. Send Rick and his men back to their secured headquarters.

6. Sit back and wait for Rick to return to the remote location, and then kill him.

I was much more convinced by Rick’s post-summit actions. He assembled his people together. He told them, “I met this Governor. He wants the prison. He wants us gone, dead, for what we did to Woodbury. We’re going to war.” Rick looked out on his people. They weren’t the Grimes Gang anymore; that implies a random assemblage of people. They have become Tribe Grimes: A family, an army, a barely-civilized society united in their simple but fervent desire to Keep On Not Dying.

Outside, Rick was less certain. He told Hershel about The Governor’s deal: Give up Michonne, and it all goes away. Hershel told Rick that wasn’t fair: She’s earned her place. “Are you willing to sacrifice your daughters’ lives for her?” asked Rick. Hershel had no response to that. Except a question: Why was Rick even telling him this? “I’m hoping you can talk me out of it,” said Rick, as the camera rose up into the sky and the cicadas sang all around.

This was a curious episode of The Walking Dead: Slow-moving but rife with drama, filled with some great off-handed moments and some less-great Big Moments. I’m not sure that The Governor’s plan makes sense, and I’m concerned that, at least according to that last scene, Rick seems to be the last man on earth who thinks The Governor should be trusted. We’re approaching the endgame of this season, with only three episodes left to go. I’m guessing that the Mazzara era of Dead will end strong. The first three episodes of this season were fast-paced; I bet/hope the last three will be, also.

Fellow viewers, did you dig the Whiskey Summit? Do you think The Governor really just wants vengeance on Michonne, or do some men just want to watch the world burn? Would you watch a show about Martinez and Daryl Motherf–ing Dixon solving mysteries as a pair of zombie-apocalypse cops? It could be called Daryl and the Batboy. And

Follow Darren on Twitter: @DarrenFranich