The Walking Dead - S03E16 Welcome to the Tombs (2013)

Review

The Governor is giving Milton a bit of a spanking due to Milton having destroyed the zombies the Governor was planning to introduce at the meeting with Rick and his team. In his mind the Governor is teaching Milton a lesson, a lesson that Milton doesn't want to learn as he refuses point blank to murder the imprisoned Andrea. Things reach a head and the Governor stabs Milton, leaving him to bleed out and then turn, as the Governor helpfully points out Milton is not going to leave the room without killing Andrea.

Meanwhile the Prison crew are setting in place their plans to survive the Woodbury onslaught, which comes pretty thick and fast. Naturally Rick and his team have learnt a few tricks and totally rout the Governor's forces, sending them fleeing back towards Woodbury. The Governor isn't best pleased with this outcome and stops the convoy, eventually gunning down his argumentative troops. Carl Grimes, proving he is quickly learning the lessons being dealt out by the new world, guns down one of the Governor's soldiers, a boy who may or may not be surrendering. Hershel Greene is shocked by Carl's actions and informs Rick that his son gunned down an innocent. When Rick confronts Carl, the boy points out some home truths and also links his actions to not having pulled the trigger twice previously which indirectly lead to deaths. Rick hasn't got time to reason this out, which he should, as he joins Daryl in chasing after the Governor in an attempt to once and for all finish things. With Michonne in tow they run across the massacre of the Governor's troops and later gain entrance to Woodbury via a massacre survivor and Tyreese and Sasha Williams. The Governor has fled the scene, but the town folk are only too happy to join up with the current Prison population. Bit of a limp wristed ending to the season for mine, but let's break it down and lick the wounds.

If anything Welcome to the Tombs is about framing, the whole episode works as a sort of multi-dimensional frame extravaganza by Director Ernest R. Dickerson, who to be honest should have spent more time on the action scenes and less on the "art for art's sake". The initial frame of the episode is an extreme close up of a single eye, which when the camera pulls back we discover is the Governor dishing out a lesson to Milton. For regular Walking Dead viewers the scene does of course conjure up memories of the first episode of the season, Seed. In that episode the close up was of the milky eye of a zombie, which was about to be dispatched, draw any parallels to the Governor that you deem appropriate folks. Similarly we get a static shot of a grave marker which for some reason seems to sum up the situation. There's a couple of other examples but let's not belabour the point, Dickerson has gone bare arsed crazy with the idea, enough said.

There is absolutely no cliff hanger at the end of this episode!

Guess the episode does underline just how off the planet the Governor is. Besides having learnt a few things from Merle, like throwing a dying Milton into a locked room with Andrea, there's the attack on the Prison, which takes down a lot of the defences the place has against zombies, and then the massacre as the Governor simply loses it completely. Guess we have a future slot on our dance cards with the Governor as he was still raging at episode end, who else thinks major crunch coming in season four?

Naturally the season had to finish with a major character dying, and there are no prizes if you guessed who was going down this episode. Guess we could say two semi major characters if we counted in Milton. Anyways Andrea finally departs the show, thank god, in one of those examples of the Writers of The Walking Dead questioning who would survive the apocalypse and what sort of person would they need to be to achieve that. Carl Grimes has gone from kid wanting to simply play too full on bad arse this season. The dude gets the job done even when the adults are locked in never ending debate. He guns down one of the Governors soldiers as the soldier may or may not have been about to open fire. Carl makes the instant survival decision that Herschel is shocked by, and which I would argue Andrea would not have made. Andrea has resolutely tried to retain her humanity in an increasingly hostile world, while not being prepared to fight to retain that humanity. Rick Grimes, for example, pulls the trigger when he needs to but is constantly questioning what he is becoming. Andrea fits into the Dale mode, i.e. characters that simply don't have the right stuff to survival; I would lob Herschel into the same grouping by the way. Carl and definitely Carol have grown to meet the new hardships and harsh decisions, Andrea never could.

In the previous episode Merle laid waste to the Governor's men, killing eight apparently, which has forced the Gov to call up a lot of irregulars in his assault on the prison. Naturally this is doomed to failure as Rick's crew have been on the road, and are thus battle hardened. The defence of the prison was surprisingly, but ultimately effective, with notably Carl being the only one to take out a Woodbury soldier. Guess the town militia didn't get a chance to check out the lack of casualties they suffered in the aftermath. While the Governor's forces had superior firepower and numbers, Rick's tactic were shock and awe.

Guess I can't put it off much longer; I was disappointed overall with the episode considering the whole season had geared toward the showdown between Woodbury's irregulars and the Prison's smaller more cohesive forces. In a smoke and mirrors sideshow the assault on the prison really wasn't worth writing home about with the Woodbury troops hauling arse as soon as Rick's rock and roll light and sound show started up. Even Glenn and Maggie were carefully missing targets as they continued the harassment of the Governor's forces. Yes I know end of episode we are meant to believe this approach allowed peace to finally breakout, but to be honest that was more due to the Governor going full on sociopath than anything else. Once again the graphic novels are playing harder than the television show, though there are hints the Producers may be looking at other horror shows that aren't pulling their punches, bodes well for season five.

In the wash up I was pretty happy with season three of The Walking Dead as it explored the idea that there are more things to worry about than zombies in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. If season one laid the foundations for the franchise, season two allowed for some calm before the undead storm and explored intragroup relationships, season three showed extra group relationships and the reality of the zombies while being an ever existing threat perhaps not being the major threat on the horizon. The season saw a bunch more major characters fall by the wayside but at the same time showed Rick's team becoming tighter and harder in the face of the increasingly treacherous rural hinterland. The threat of the Governor may have dissipated but it's not gone, and if the television show follows the graphic novels even loosely then there's a lot more maniacs out there controlling some heavy duty firepower. I'm expecting a much more brutal season four and of course more core characters meeting their fate.

While Welcome to the Tombs definitely had some art associated with it, finished a few plot arcs that had been hanging around, and finally got the expected confrontation that had been hinted at all season happening I was still disappointed. The feeling I got from this episode was that they were not playing hardball and definitely pulled a lot of punches. A sort of letdown given where the season was headed, fingers crossed the next season picks up the pieces and gets into zombie central where the series belongs. Fans of the show will definitely groove out to this one but the sometime viewer will be left out in the cold.