Remember that guy with the eye patch who totally sucked and we wished would just go away and leave our Prisonites alone? Yeah, he's back. But no one is surprised, are they? I mean, Michonne just decided to abandon the search for him, which is TV code for "he's coming back next episode."
That said, the episode certainly could have been worse. For a guy I couldn't wait to see die, I was actually quite interested in the story of what had happened to The Governor since the day he gunned down all his own people in the temper tantrum to end all temper tantrums.
He stayed with Martinez and Schumpert for a while (why THEY stayed with HIM, I'll never understand), but then he checked out and almost got killed so they left his sorry ass. Took them long enough!
Then Guvs shambled around on his own for a bit, so metaphorically dead inside that even the zombies didn't bother him. Here's an idea - kill yourself! If you're having such a hard time living with what you've done, then don't live anymore! (Side note: I do not mean this for people in general. There is always a reason to keep living. But not for this mass-murdering bastard.)
Just when it seems all is lost for poor, old, psychotic, serial killer Guvs, he finds hope in the form of a hallucination of his twice-dead daughter Penny. Venturing inside a building to find her, he discovers a real-live girl and her mother, aunt, and grandpa instead.
This family is way nicer to a one-eyed creepy stranger than they should be. I mean, they act all tough at first but then they let him in, feed him, get him cleaned up, and show him to an empty (aren't they all these days?) apartment across the hall. I guess if it was me I would be curious about other survivors and the good in me would want to band together with as many able-bodied people as possible. But this guy just reeks of trouble so they're pretty stupid for letting him in.
The daughter, Megan, doesn't speak. But of course Guvs gets her too. Whatever.
The grandpa, we'll call him Grandpa, is dying of cancer and is on oxygen. The mother, Lily, is conveniently a nurse and they conveniently grabbed a bunch of oxygen tanks before this all went down. Grandpa also conveniently was a truck driver and they have a huge stash of spaghetti-o's and beef jerky. The sister, Tara, says she's a cop but I'm thinking she's more of the mall cop variety.
Lily offers "Brian" (that's Guvs' new name) a plate of spaghetti-o's which made me want to eat a plate of spaghetti-o's and I'm not even in the Zombie Apocalypse! But this bastard just dumped them out the window because he doesn't want to accept help from anyone. Hey! Over here! On my couch! I'll eat them!
Brian eats cat food instead, like a man.
Grandpa asks Brian to go upstairs to the neighbor's house and get his backgammon set. Brian reluctantly helps. He discovers the neighbor tried unsuccessfully to kill himself, so he puts the dude out of his misery before snagging the backgammon set. We learn that the family didn't know you had to get the zombies in the head in order to kill them, showing us just how sheltered these people really are. They've survived this long because of some fortunate circumstances in the beginning and then just holed up ever since. Not actually that bad of a strategy.
Then Grandpa starts running low on oxygen, so it's good Brian showed up when he did! He goes on a mission to a nursing home full of some seriously creepy zombies and makes it out with way fewer tanks than a supposedly badass guy like him should have.
But then Grandpa goes and dies soon after, like the ungrateful plot device that he is. Brian bashes his head in with an oxygen tank and it's seriously brutal. I mean, I know Gramps is dead so it doesn't hurt, and I know we don't want him to reanimate (something else the family didn't know about - that everyone comes back as a zombie), but I think he went a little overboard. Showing us, the viewers, that he can change his name but he's still a bad guy deep down. He kills because he likes to.
Brian decides to part ways with the family he just scarred for life (but at least they have a new backgammon set!) but the family decides to go with him. Why leave the relative safety of the house to go with a one-eyed weirdo? I would stay there until my spaghetti-o's and beef jerky stash ran out, just playing chess and backgammon, letting the rest of the world deal with the apocalypse. Way better than roughing it on the road with a stranger. But I guess that would make for an even more boring episode than the one we got.
So off they go, with Brian taking his new pseudo-family under his wing. Anyone else have a bad feeling about this?
And... I was right. Lily and the Governor get the truck a-rockin', while Tara and Megan sleep right next to them. BARF.
Then the truck breaks down (that must have been some rough nookie) and they take to the road on foot. Now I have a really bad feeling about this.
And... I was right. Tara twists her ankle doing practically nothing (I think she was looking at some birds? When I twisted my ankle it was from drunkenly trying to karate kick a car tire two nights before my wedding for who knows what reason. I win.) and while Lily is helping her, Megan freezes in the middle of the street. I knew I didn't like that girl. Dummy. Then Guvs, idiot, tries to coax her to run to him instead of just running to her and picking her up. She takes FOREVER but finally comes, then they run, then fall into a walker pit. Wait a minute. I thought the walker pits were a thing from Woodbury?
Oh, that explains it. Martinez peeks around the edge (along with his gun) and we're left wondering what will happen. Kill them all, I say! But I guess we'll find out next week!