The Walking Dead - Season 3 Episode 14 - Recap Video and Review - Prey
Recap video and review of The Walking Dead - Season 3 Episode 14 - Prey:
Most shows will start off strong with a season premiere that announces the series' arrival, establishes the new setting and overarching story, and then slinks off a bit as subsequent episodes meander aimlessly through the necessary story beats until the designated points in the season (midseason finale, February sweeps, season finale) where things will are actually allowed to happen. Along the way, characters might be developed, threats presented and stakes raised, but this isn't always the case. Sometimes a show just coasts.
The Walking Dead is not that kind of show.
Credit: Gene Page/AMC
Season three is that rare season of television that's been pretty consistently excellent throughout. From the discovery of the prison to the establishment of Woodbury, and with it, the threat The Governor (David Morrissey) represents, this season has been both well-paced and considerably well-told. We've lost people along the way, keeping tensions high and always reminding us of just what the stakes are, while we've gained some new people, illustrating that there's a wider world beyond just Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and his people. This has been some truly outstanding television, and "Prey" keeps with that tradition. But for a brief moment towards the end of the episode, Rick and company are completely absent this week, as the story instead focuses on Andrea (Laurie Holden) and her struggles -- not just her attempt to escape from Woodbury and rejoin Rick and the others, but her internal struggle to reconcile The Governor's madness with the man she thought she knew.
Credit: AMC
After an episode-opening flashback to her time with Michonne (Danai Gurira), in which Andrea learns that her pet walkers were two men in her past life who wrong her in some way and "deserved what they had coming, we find Andrea spying on The Governor. He's set up a torture chamber towards the sole purpose of making Michonne's life a nightmare once Rick hands her over. Milton (Dallas Roberts) shows Andrea what The Governor is up to after spilling the beans about The Governor's plan to ambush and kill Rick's group when they deliver Michonne. It's the last straw for Andrea, as she decides the despotic madman needs to die. She takes out her gun and lines up a shot, but Milton stops her. He tells her that this isn't the way, for two reasons: first and foremost, killing The Governor only means that Martinez (Jose Pablo Cantillo) takes his place and the war continues uninterrupted; the second reason is far more poignant, namely that Milton knew The Governor when he was just regular old Phillip, and he still believes that the good man he once knew is still in there somewhere, buried beneath the cold, calculating exterior of The Governor.
Andrea decides she's going to make for the prison, and slips away over the protestations of Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman) and Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green), who try to prevent her from leaving. Andrea instead tries to convince them to get out while they still can, warning them that The Governor isn't what he seems, that he's a sick, crazy man. Though Tyreese and Sasha remain in Woodbury, the seeds are planted firmly in their minds about The Governor's twisted disposition, particularly when they see that The Governor is planning a trap for Rick's group -- a pit full of walkers. Tyreese is horrified at the barbarity of this development and speaks up about it, drawing the ire of his fellow survivor Allen (Daniel Thomas May), who doesn't want Tyreese ruining the good thing they've got going in Woodbury, especially since he has his son Ben (Tyler Chase) to look out for. Allen also harbors a bit of a grudge against Tyreese for rescuing his wife, Donna, from walkers. Allen's bitterness stems from his feeling that he could have saved Donna himself, but Tyreese intervened, leaving Donna convinced that Allen wasn't capable of protecting her. Unfortunately, we know this to be the case, for the most part, as our first introduction to Tyreese's group sees Donna being killed as a result of an attack.
This is one of the more honest characterizations of the episode, as Allen is lashing out at Tyreese out of guilt over his own failure. Tyreese, meanwhile, is growing increasingly unhinged at the idea of having hitched his wagon to someone as transparently evil as The Governor. This creates a conflict between Tyreese and Allen, who eventually get into a brawl when Tyreese accuses Allen of not being able to protect Donna, ending with Allen nearly being thrown into the pit of walkers. This internal division doesn't immediately pay off this week, but it sets up the possibility, down the road, that Tyreese and Sasha might look for a way out from under The Governor, particularly since The Governor remains suspicious of the newcomers, believing them to be responsible for the act of vandalism that occurs towards the end of the episode. Someone has torched the walker pit, along with all the spare walkers in the trailer nearby. The Governor naturally assumes that the culprit was one of the newcomers, since they had gotten into a fight over the existence of the pits themselves. However, when it becomes clear that Tyreese has no idea what The Governor is talking about, the leader realizes that the culprit was Milton. He confronts Milton but doesn't reveal his suspicions. When Milton had refused to accompany Andrea to the prison, insisting on staying in Woodbury, her advice was to no longer turn a blind eye to The Governor's machinations. Though it's never explicitly confirmed that Milton torched the walkers, it appears he took Andrea's advice to heart.
Credit: AMC
And after all, this is really Andrea's episode. From her decision to leave Woodbury to The Governor's subsequent decision to give chase, the episode is as tense as anything The Walking Dead has done all season. It's a classic cat-and-mouse game in two different legs: the first, with Andrea, on foot while The Governor tails her in his pickup truck. This leads to a pretty gutwrenching sequence in the woods where Andrea is surprised by a walker (how does that KEEP HAPPENING? Those walkers are louder than Nightwish) and must fend for herself against three others while being held against a tree by a fourth. She's able to defend herself with her only weapon, a knife, before making a run for it to the nearest abandoned warehouse, with The Governor circling the pickup around to corner her inside. And that's where the episode really picks up.
Credit: AMC
The hunt in the warehouse is a masterful sequence, and one of the best this show has ever done. It's a subtle game of hide-and-seek as Andrea moves from one side of the building to another, quietly killing walkers in her way to avoid alerting The Governor, while The Governor kills several walkers himself, but makes no effort to keep quiet, whistling a creepy tune while dragging his rusty shovel along the ground. There's a sensationally gruesome sequence in which The Governor repeatedly brains a walker with his shovel, and the show takes great pains to luxuriate in the horror of it, really ratcheting up the tension by showing us what's in store for Andrea should The Governor get his hands on her. There are a series of close-calls in which The Governor gets closer but just misses her, and the entire sequence is a triumph of filmmaking, from the lighting to the pacing and even the choices by the actors, as Laurie Holden doesn't play Andrea as someone who's frightened so much as determined, while David Morrissey plays The Governor as someone who's sort of enjoying the hunt. The Governor tries to talk Andrea into coming back to Woodbury, but it's no use, and they eventually wind up face-to-face at the back of the warehouse with Andrea cornered against a door full of walkers. In a last ditch effort to escape, she opens the door and shields herself while the walkers swarm The Governor. He spends all his bullets defending himself before using his shovel and other instruments from around the warehouse while Andrea escapes. In the harsh daylight, Andrea is less than a hundred meters from the prison. She raises a hand and waves at Rick, who is on look-out. But Rick doesn't see her in time. The Governor reappears and tackles Andrea, covering her mouth so she cannot scream. As The Governor returns to Woodbury, he claims not to have found Andrea, but the final reveal of the episode shows that Andrea is the inaugural prisoner of The Governor's torture chamber.
Credit: AMC
"Prey" is tremendous TV for how it tells a relatively self-contained story that still operates within the larger framework of the season, and satisfyingly so. There are only two episodes left, and it's really getting down to the wire, as both Rick's group and The Governor's force are on a collision course, with several conflicted personalities caught in-between (Tyreese, Sasha, Milton, Andrea). Should be a great one-two punch between next week's penultimate episode, and the season finale on March 31.
