The Walking Dead Review: “Welcome to the Tombs”

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With season three of The Walking Dead home to some great episodes and some awful ones, it was anyone’s guess where tonight’s finale would fall. Hopefully the 16 episode slow burn building up to one grand conflict would be the epic, awesome conclusion we all wanted and deserved.

But it wasn’t.

After weeks and weeks of posturing, the grand showdown between the prison group and Woodbury turned out to be a near total anti-climax.

The pieces were all in place. The Governor had captured and tortured Glen, Maggie and Andrea, raided the prison once already, killed Merle and much, much more. There were half a dozen characters practically foaming at the mouth to get a piece of him, and what happened?

Practically none of them even laid eyes on him.

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I was on board for the prison gang’s plan at first. Lure the Woodbury army to an empty prison and then ambush them in the tunnels where darkness, panic and fear would be their downfall. But what actually went down?

The entire army is scared away by a few flashbangs, and Glen and Maggie wearing riot gear shooting at them from cover. They all quite literally run for the hills.

I understand that the amateurs in the Woodbury group would be fearful of being attacked, but come on. You gave them guns, they understand they were going to lay siege to a bunch of armed people. They all start fleeing the moment someone dares to shoot back at them? Rather absurd.

But fine, they’re peeing themselves. Then where was part two of the plan? While Maggie and Glen were shooting, what exactly were Rick, Daryl and Michonne doing? I thought for a minute there was going to be some genius moment where the gate slams shut, and the Woodbury group is locked in a quadrant of the prison infested by walkers as everyone in the main group rains down gunfire on them. But no, the other three simply come out later wondering why that was all it took to scare them off. “Really, that’s it?” was their collective reaction. And it was likely the audience’s as well.

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Then we have the Governor, and just in case we weren’t absolutely sure he was evil, he turns on his own frightened people and guns them all down where they stand for being asshole deserters. Then he turns on his magical hypnosis powers and somehow convinces his remaining two henchman to stick with him. What the hell is this ability he has where he can have people watch him commit atrocities and still want to be his best friend at the end of the day? A guy mows down an entire town full of your friends, and you’re pointing a machine gun at his back? Let’s just see where he’s going with this! Sure, I’ll get in your truck!

And whatever, fine. The prison raid is horrible and the Governor is crazy to the point of absurdity. At least we’ll still get that showdown!

Of course we don’t, not even a little bit. The last we see of the Governor his him driving away in his truck with his stupidly loyal henchman. He doesn’t get within 100 feet of anyone in the prison gang for the entire episode, and this same rivalry plotline is going to be stretched into next season. That was way too much build up for entirely zero resolution, and I can’t imagine that many people were satisfied with the way that played out.

The night wasn’t completely without impactful moments. Carl underwent perhaps his most dramatic transformation to date, gunning down a surrendering teen soldier from the Governor’s army. He’s perhaps twisted the badass dial TOO far, and now he’s veering into bloodthirsty territory which worries Rick and Hershel. His speech about letting people live resulting in others dying was inarguably factual though.

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And of course we lost Andrea by the time the night was over. The show thinks a major character death can make up for a lack of a coherent episode, but it can’t, especially not with Andrea. Her character was just mangled so terribly this season that it was just not painful enough to watch her die. Many of us were ROOTING for her to meet her end because of her incessant stupidity all season. I did sympathize with her a little bit this week though, as she explained she simply didn’t want anyone to die, hence all the attempts at bridge building and choosing negotiation over assassination. I mean, it was completely naive given what she knew about the governor, but I did feel a little bad for her.

I just wish she could have had some time to find redemption before the end, like Merle. Rather, her character simply became hated and more hated until she ultimately died in a completely non-noble way, executed by the Governor (by proxy). I mourn her character not because she died, but because she was transformed into such a dislikable, irrational person before she did so, which is the real tragedy.

The show ends with Rick unloading a bus full of Woodbury’s old people and children into their new home at the prison. Wait, what? You now have a completely stocked, leaderless, walled-in town, and you’re moving everyone to the half-destroyed, zombie infested, furnitureless prison? Can someone please explain to me how that makes any goddamn sense at all?

It was just a frustrating evening all around. We were promised an epic showdown that simply never took place, and most of what we did see was completely nonsensical. I really expected more from the show, and hopefully we’ll get it when Scott M. Gimple takes over for Glen Mazzara next year. You know, the guy who wrote “Clear” and “The Sorrowful Life,” the two best episodes of the season.

The Walking Dead is a good show that really should be great. Sometimes it is. Last night, when it counted the most, it was not.

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19 Comments

  1. The thing is it isn’t a good show. It had like 8 good episodes. It still is the show that everyone watches in the hope that we see one of the good episodes. I doubt I’ll even bother next year unless the reviews are amazing.

  2. I totally agree with you. I specially have a beef with prison trap scene, REALLY!!! you trap your enemy inside a PRISON and you let them go and shoot at them with machine guns and nobody gets hurt. SERIOUSLY who the writers think we are.

    I started reading the comics after the first season and the story progressed much better than this [Season], they actually stay in Woodbury and Andrea is still alive; of course they have new problems but they are not fucking STUPID to let the Governor live for future seasons. There is so much more story in the comics that they didn’t need to keep him (the Governor) alive.

  3. Meh.

    All-in-all, I probably wasn’t as disappointed as most regarding last night’s indifference. On a 10 scale, I’d give it a 5. I think last night’s episode might very well be a thumb-at-the-nose to AMC for continually firing its show runners. (Meaning “this is what happens when you keep fiddling in the kitchen, AMC.”) The chief problem I had with it was that it was really about 15 minutes of story stretched into an hour. If they had come up with another 45 minutes of relevant story, then it might’ve been better received.

    The prison clash (???) really made little sense; it was poorly conceived and, as a result, fairly poorly shot. Personally, I liked the Gov finally losing it and blowing away his idiot followers because — frankly — they deserved it as much as he did. As for Carl’s developments, meh. He’s a teenager. He’s gotta rebel about something. Andrea … another one who’s had it coming for a long time. And based on Carl’s pissiness last night, is his demise really that far off?

  4. I have to agree with Mark. Really in the shows entire run there are more crappy episodes than good ones. As a viewer I feel like we keep chasing after the good ones. Thank god for GOT. I think this did it in for me for the walking dead. You can have action and lack of character arcs or you can have character arcs and lack of action. You can not have both. I felt like this episode summed up walking dead perfectly. Big build up and hype, a few small high points, but otherwise the biggest cock tease ever. Just change the name to the writing dead.

  5. Remember the guy in the Center for Disease Control? He had completely given up and thought they were better of dead. When they left he whispered something in Ricks ear. Rick didn’t tell the others at the time because it would rob them of their hope, which is why he left something out when he finally told them they were all infected. What he left out was that the infecting slowly damages the brain, impairing their ability to reason.

    There. Now everything makes sense.

  6. I didn’t have a problem with Carl killing that teenager like everyone else.

    As Carl pointed out, the guy was just at the prison trying to kill all of them and by killing the guy now he might be saving their lives later on. That last point is something all the other characters need to understand.

    But besides those two points I think everyone was over looking something even more important. Carl was protecting a one legged old man, the only potential future girlfriend he might have and his little baby sister. When Carl told him to drop his gun the guy was pulling one of those “I’m dropping it….look…..I’m dropping it…No I’m not! Now I got your gun. Bang! You’re dead” moves. Carl just didn’t give him the chance to try to get a fast one on him and did the only thing he could do and handled it like a survivor of a zombie apocalypse would.

  7. Yeah, I had no qualms with Carl wasting that dude. I literally shouted at my television “you better drop that gun… he said DROP it… THWAP!… too late”. It was crappy for Hershel to rat him out, Rick would have made the same call in those circumstances. In fact, I seem to remember Rick gunning down a couple of guys in a bar in season 2 when they gave him a bad vibe. Carl did the right thing, that kid is dead because he was dumb.

    Beyond just showing that the Governor is evil, he gunned everyone down because he’d lost his grip on his group. There was no going back. After Milton, then Tyreese, and his “soldiers” going full mutiny on him (let’s not forget that Merle apparently took out “8” of the Gov’s most hardcore guys who were setting the ambush the week before) in such a short time, the writing was on-the-wall. His iron-clad, god-like status was gone. Being crazy, he cut his losses, vented a bit, and moved on. Made sense, I’m just bummed it was all so boring and that they are going to draw-out the Gov’s storyline some more.

    Having season ending episode center on the Gov and Andrea, with the prison crew glorified extras in the whole thing, was just dumb. Too many episodes this season put the prison crew and THE ZOMBIES on the sidelines.

    I also need to go back to the DVR and take a stopwatch to the commercial/show ratio. It was feeling damn close to 1:1 last night.

  8. Two gaping problems with last night’s episode. Number one was the insanely long commercial breaks. I knew that they were just buying time because they knew this episode was absolutely deplorable. Annoying.

    Secondly, can someone please tell me where the Governor, Martinez, and the ape-looking guy went?? Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it light outside when they sped off? Could they have gone back to Woodbury? Unlikely since Rick, Darryl, and Michonne were too busy convincing Tyrese, his sister, and the women and children of Woodbury that the Governor is a one-eyed freak bag and to come find solace at their zombie-filled prison. This all occured at sun down! In addition, when Rick and Co. arrived back at the prison, it was already morning! Where else could the Governor and his ‘henchmen’ possibly go? Hide in the prison? I guess next season will patch that up with some transparent duct tape, but wow, what a terrible episode.

    The second half of season three is just an utter disappointment. Yes ‘Clear’ and ‘The Sorrowful Life’ were good, but that is really it. Is it true that Gimple is going to be lead writer for season four? If this is the case, then I may return, but right now, I just can’t continue with the horrendous dialogue and major plot/timeline holes.

    My wife and I need a new show. After Breaking Bad rounds out its supremacy of TV’s #1 this summer, what should we pick up? Game of Thrones?

  9. In addition to many stupid and ridiculous moments last night, one of the dumbest was the fact that the Governor disappears and no one seems to care. He has now been clearly exposed as a sick, evil son-of-a-bitch to all of the townspeople. He murdered over a dozen of them in cold blood! Yet, there is no mention of getting together a search party to track his ass down?!! You just let him go? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

    Oh, and moving the townspeople into the prison when there is a perfectly good town available with WAAAAY better living conditions? Wow.

    What kind of idiots wrote this episode? This does not bode well for next season.

  10. It is definitely the worst “most watched” show out there. I wonder if they keep firing show runners because of the quality of the show, or if the quality of the show is down because they keep firing show runners.

    The arrogance of the show, having another show to talk about it afterwards and such, is really starting to bother me.

  11. While I wasn’t completely happy with the season finale, I think they were trying to make a parallel with the son being bloodthirsty and wanted a huge final conflict and the viewers being like him. But the father realized that the people in Woodbury weren’t all the enemy but just people trying to live.

    Still disappointed the Gov’nor just disappeared though…

  12. I think the reason they went to the prison was sustainability. You have the prison group and now a bunch of elderly people and children. I don’t think they could sustain Woodbury since the governor wiped out the working class.

  13. I think most people recognize the potential of this show and keep holding on to the hope that it will be realized at some point. Every time I get sick of the plot holes and nonsense they deliver a great episode that restores my hope that they will turn it around and become great but by this seasons end they fell too far and the redemption I hoped for in the finale was non existent.

  14. I’d like to point out that this episode was written by now-deposed show runner Glen Mazzara. I think we can see pretty clearly now that he needed to go

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