The Walking Dead - Recap: Life of Brian

However, with that said, "Dead Weight" is a strangely plodding episode, filled with meditative segments that don't really help the momentum of the season. It feels like the show is limping towards the halfway point, instead of racing to it. After two weeks, I'm not entirely sure what the point of this whole Governor detour was, other than to potentially divide our loyalties over whom to root for in next week's showdown, and I don't think the show has given us enough reason to care about this second group of survivors. At least not more so than we care about Rick's group. Hopefully, next week's midseason finale will deliver on the promise of chaos and momentousness, as the season could badly use a point of no return. As for "Dead Weight", well...from a certain perspective, it's an episode that almost renders last week's humanizing hour pointless. Is The Governor all bad? Maybe not. But to see him revert to his old ways doesn't exactly feel like new ground being broken.

Credit: AMC

I suppose if there were a larger point to the past two weeks, other than humanizing The Governor and showing how he came to be back at the prison, it's in showing that, while some people can change for the better, a guy like The Governor never really can. Sure, he can couch his evil actions in terms of protecting those to whom he's grown a sudden, intense attachment. But I get the feeling, with "Dead Weight", that The Governor is using Lilly (Audrey Marie Anderson), Tara (Alanna Masterson) and Meghan (Meyrick Murphy) as justifications for his violence and megalomania. Basically, Martinez (Jose Pablo Cantillo) takes The Governor in, with the understanding that if he's to join their group, he'll have to come to terms with the fact that he's not the boss here. And The Governor agrees, hoping to find safe shelter for his newfound family. What follows is a pretty quotidian look at life in a zombie camp, and it's similar to the setup Lori used to have with Shane back in season one, before Rick was reunited with them. There are RVs and trailers around, with clotheslines pinning up bedsheets and linens and other symbols of a simpler life. But being out in the open leaves them exposed, and supplies are running low. So The Governor accompanies Martinez, along with his partners, brothers Mitch (Kirk Acevedo) and Pete (Enver Gjokaj), on a supply run.

Credit: AMC

Save for a brief, sudden attack by the walkerized family that once lived in the rundown cabin the group is raiding, things are fairly straightforward for The Governor and Martinez's team. They find beer and take the opportunity to sit around and chat about what they all did in life before the outbreak hit, and it's a peculiar detour for the show to take, if only because it's hard to imagine that the other three men wouldn't have had this conversation at some point before. Mitch drove an ice cream truck before parlaying that into work as a tank driver for the army, for instance, which makes about as much sense as anything else this week. Martinez recognizes a change in The Governor, a byproduct of now having something to care for, and when it comes time for "Brian" to reveal what he did when the outbreak occurred, he simply responds, "I survived." This is a man who's trying to disavow his past, not necessarily trying to rewrite it so much as pretend it never occurred. With his new "Brian" persona, he has the chance to become a better man than "The Governor" was. Yet this is proving easier said than done.

Credit: AMC

While golfing on the top of a trailer the next day, Martinez chats with The Governor about the setup they have here at this camp. It seems as though Martinez is warming up to the idea of having a strong guy like The Governor around, as Martinez's mantra for entry into this group is that everybody contributes, no "dead weight". But Martinez perhaps goes a step too far in pulling The Governor to his side: when he suggests to "Brian" that perhaps they could "share the crown" of leadership among the camp, The Governor snaps and beats on Martinez with a golf club. He then tosses him over the side of the trailer onto the hard ground below. From there, he drags the incapacitated Martinez over to the walker pit, repeatedly shouting the entire time that he "doesn't want it". The walkers devour Martinez, and the only rationale I can gather is that The Governor is resisting all temptation to becoming The Governor again, even while he inevitably succumbs to that temptation, grabbing power for himself and casting potential threats to the wayside. Yet I'm not sure that's really the case, as the first thing The Governor does after he commits his crime is to gather Lilly, Tara and Meghan into a car to hit the road, rationalizing that he knows what will happen here, and he doesn't want to be around for when it does, because it won't be safe for them.

Credit: AMC

Much like a novel, much of "Dead Weight" plays out in The Governor's mind, in looks and moments of silent contemplation. It's hard to know what he's thinking, such as when he comes upon a group of walkers in the mud while on the nighttime road, and decides to turn around and head back to Martinez's camp, but his actions all seem to be in service of either resisting his former identity, or embracing it, with almost no middle ground. In the first half of the episode, he's continually trying not to be The Governor, but rather to be "Brian". Yet it falls apart in the second half, as he needs to take a hard-line approach if he's going to keep anybody safe. Meghan almost gets bitten by a walker because Brian is too busy making googly eye at Lilly inside the trailer, and it's as if blowing that walker's head off before he could hurt the girl served as a turning point in The Governor's thinking. Eventually, he lures Pete to his death in similar fashion, and then tosses him into the lake with a weight attached to his leg, leaving him at the bottom of the water as a walker (echoes of The Governor's old walker-head fish tank in Woodbury). More surprisingly, The Governor somehow talks Mitch out of killing him on the spot for his betrayal, and ends up becoming the new de facto leader of the group formerly led by Martinez. And as with any good leader, The Governor needs a mission. And he finds it, once he happens upon the sight, from a distant corner of the woods, of Michonne (Danai Gurira) and the rest of Team Daryl, laughingly chatting by their car on the side of the road. The Governor's mind is made up. It's time to give this prison thing another crack.

Credit: AMC

"Dead Weight" is more about setting up next week's episode than about standing alone as its own, segregated hour, but it's decent enough for how it sticks close to the equal parts evolving/devolving characterization of The Governor. He's a complicated guy, but not so complicated that we should expect him to change. He didn't have to kill Martinez or Pete to accomplish his goal, and even if he's attempting to claim the prison to protect Lilly, Tara and Meghan, he's likely going to slaughter a lot of innocent people to do it. Ultimately, while there are shades of grey to his characterization, these past two episodes haven't been enough to convince me that The Governor isn't still the villain he was last season. But then, maybe changing that perception was never really the point of either "Live Bait" or "Dead Weight". Maybe it's just about watching the world burn in exhilarating fashion. Bring on Prison War II.