Spoilers.

As a fan of The Walking Dead I’ve more or less resigned myself to the fact that the show is dependent on the main characters not having an ounce of common sense and doing incredibly stupid things. Take the ongoing premise of zombies wondering around outside an indestructible chain-link fence. It’s been repeatedly demonstrated over the last season that it’s ridiculously easy to attract the zombies by shouting at them. Is there any reason why the main characters don’t pick up an iron spike or crowbar or reasonably sturdy stick and walk along the fence, attracting the zombies and carefully and methodically stabbing them in the face through said fence? There is literally no possible way to fuck this up. There’s about thirty to forty zombies, so for someone with a solid work ethic,  it would take about 25 minutes to kill each and every zombie hanging out outside the prison with absolutely no danger to yourself. Why don’t they do this? They’re fucking morons.

But, like most people, I like watching attractive people shoot zombies in the face, and when The Walking Dead does things properly it’s one of television’s finest dramas. All the way up until the season finale on Sunday, which was one of the most incomprehensibly bad hours of television I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like taking a bite of a strawberry immediately after dipping it in a chocolate fountain only to realize what you thought was chocolate was actually diarrhea.

To recap: Andrea’s chained to a chair locked in a room with a man who is slowly bleeding to death, after which he will turn into a zombie and chew her face off. Her only hope is to somehow pick up a pair of pliers left on the floor and free herself. Like any rational person with the upcoming threat of being eaten alive she stops trying to get the pliers to have an emotional, thought-provoking conversation with the dying man. Why? Because she is literally too fucking stupid to live.

There’s absolutely no reason for this, not even as a plot device. How much better is this scene, how much more emotional and terrifying is it if Andrea has this conversation with him while she desperately tries to free herself? How much better is this scene if we see Andrea wrestle with wanting to share a few last words with this man she cares about while simultaneously knowing that at any minute he’s going to reanimate and want to tear her intestines out for dinner?  Why do this show’s writers not understand that when an audience is literally screaming at the screen for someone to stop doing stupid shit that it pulls them out and ruins whatever sappy, ham-fisted drama you were going for?

Later, she has one arm free and a pair of pliers in her hand while a doughy zombie waddles towards her. It would be the easiest thing in the world to casually stab him in the forehead with the pliers, but she manages to fuck that up as well. Given the producers’ track record, I’m guessing this is because she has ovaries.

Meanwhile, the Governor launches his all-out assault on the prison using the indescribably stupid plan of….having all of his soldiers attack from the same position by running in a straight line in through the gate. Had Team Rick set up a simple L-shaped ambush they could have very easily turned them all into mincemeat, but I guess that would be too easy. To Rick’s credit, I wouldn’t have guessed the Governor to do something that moronic either, so he gets a pass. Anyway, the plan was to lure them all into the prison, toss in a few smoke grenades, hit the alarms to alert the zombies, wait for the Governor’s soldiers to panic and run screaming, and then…do nothing.

Well, I guess that isn’t really fair. Glenn and Maggie are outside in an elevated position with clear lines of sight and a couple automatic rifles, and as a bunch of terrified, confused idiots run outside screaming in terror without using cover, they successfully manage to open fire and not hit a single person. They also get an opportunity to take out the Governor and whiff on that as well. At this point, we can all pretty much count on Glenn and Maggie to fuck up whatever it is they are doing, but it seems like it takes actual talent to suck this much. You’d think they’d choose someone who’s a good shot, like Daryl. You know, the person who should have a pretty personal grudge against the Governor who just murdered his brother? Have you forgotten what just happened last episode when Daryl found his brother with a gaping gunshot wound in his chest?

Apparently Daryl has, because he’s forgotten all about it.

And that’s about it. That is the explosive climax. They spent an entire season doing nothing but building up to this point, with minor skirmishes, betrayals, double-crossings, planning, mounting tensions, and when we finally get to the prison showdown, a few zombies are shot and then the Governor and his entire army run away terrified without suffering a single fucking casualty….at least none that are shown on-screen. In terms of satisfying climaxes, with ten being Inglourious Basterds and one being Twilight: Breaking Dawn, it gets a zero.

Afterwards, none of the Governor’s troops want to head back to the prison, so the Governor responds in the cold, clinical, calculating way that makes him a formidable enemy by mowing down all but two of them. Then he wanders off with his last two henchmen and it’s the last we see of him. Great, so no closure on the Governor storyline but fortunately he’s lost all of his firepower and artillery and ammo so he’s not a threat any more. That’s a wonderful way to raise expectations for next season!

I’m mostly annoyed by all of the wasted potential within this episode. Television and movies are interesting because characters are forced to make choices that we as viewers do not face. One of the primary differences between the Governor and Rick is that The Governor has no problems killing non-zombie people, believing in survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, what have you. Rick and (most) of his group are different. Regardless of whether they welcome people to their group, they choose not to kill other people and value human life. That was literally the entire point of the Michonne decision: Rick making the morally correct decision.

But now, of course, you have this season which is almost entirely about the conflict between two groups of human survivors and it felt, certainly, that they were carefully building towards this turning point in the series where Team Rick would be faced with the fact that other people were coming to kill them and that they would have to fight back, they would have to take lives in order to survive. Think about how much potential for drama is there, and how these characters might react after having to kill another living, breathing human being for the first time in their life. How that might change and shape the group?

Instead, the producers opted to carefully avoid the entire issue, which is great, because as we all know, avoiding conflict  makes for fantastic television.

2/10. Both stars are for Carl’s little arc. He’s becoming a demented little psychopath and I love it.

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