‘The Walking Dead’ review: David Morrissey brings Woodbury to life

We knew that we were going to enjoy Sunday night’s new episode of “The Walking Dead” based simply on the fact that it was serving as an introduction to The Governor. What we did not realize, however, was just how good that the character would be on TV. David Morrissey gave us a master class here in playing a character that appeared to be a fantastic leader of a quaint little down on the surface, but had something dark inside of him that burned so intensity it was hard to even describe.

You really have to give a round of applause here to executive producer Glen Mazzara for his creation of a world here in this episode that was frightening only in its lack of danger. When Andrea and Michonne entered Woodbury, everything appeared to simply be okay; there were no dangers, no problems, and everyone functioned as a semi-normal human being.

We’ve given the show a hard time in the past for being slow-moving, but on this occasion we understood the decision to focus on dialogue. This was a town where there was no violence erupting 24/7, and Mazzara did a nice thing in really giving us the full hour to digest this rather than just leaping back and forth from what was going on here to the prison. We also saw the return of Merle, but the only thing that was more surprising than seeing Michael Rooker again was that he did not appear to be anxious to blow someone’s head off in a matter of seconds.

In some ways, Woodbury within this episode gave “The Walking Dead” a new lease on life. It provided something different besides seeing the survivors do the same old thing every week in killing walkers, and it finally introduced us to a villain who literally has a brain and knows how to use it. We are already on the edge of our seat for The Governor and Rick to meet, just because the fireworks that come there are sure to be insane.

What did you think about this episode?