‘The Walking Dead’ midseason review: Can Rick take down the Governor?

With no more “Walking Dead” season 3 until February, we though we would take a moment to reflect on what the first half of the season had to offer us and compare it to what we’ve seen from the AMC series in the past.

“The Walking Dead” seasons 1 and 2 were fairly slow when it came to action and the only real threat our group of survivors had were the walkers (and sort of Shane – but not really), so it was tough to get really worried about Rick and the crew because they were facing the same foe over and over again. In season 3 we met the Governor and Rick and company had something (someone) to really fear.  The Governor has been toned down from the comic books a bit, but he’s still a pretty bad guy and now that his daughter Penny has been killed by Michonne, most of the humanity he had left died with her.  Now he’s not only a vengeful, cruel leader, but he has a pretty big army of angry citizens behind him willing to do whatever he wants.  When “The Walking Dead” returns in February things look like they are going to go to a very dark place for the Governor and the people of Woodbury.

So what about Rick and his crew?  Rick was thrown into the leader role since season 1, but he never really seemed to come into his own with that role until the end of season 2.  In season 3 he was really starting to rock out the leadership role until Lori died, and now he’s starting to go a little crazy (getting calls from dead people, and seeing visions of Shane at Woodbury).  What will happen to the group if Rick can’t get a handle on his breakdown? Will someone else emerge as a leader?  As crazy as Rick has been the last few episodes, he still managed to lead a full out assault on Woodbury to get Maggie and Glenn back, so he’s already proven that the Governor is no match for Rick – that is if the Governor doesn’t know he’s coming.  Rick being a little unstable might just be the thing that will catch the Governor off guard when they come face to face and give Rick enough of an advantage to take the Governor down.

As far as action goes, season 3 thus far has been action packed and having another human adversary in the picture really amps up the suspense for the viewers. It’s one thing to have a mindless zombie trying to eat your brain coming after you and quite another thing to have a smart, brutally savage man with an army behind him coming after you. When it comes to the characters, we found that this season really started to give them layers and made them more then just people trying to survive.  They have formed deeper relationships with one another and have become a family. The one loose cannon we’ve really enjoyed is Andrea and yes we are aware that not everyone loves her character right now.  The reason we think she’s so interesting is that she can really flip either way at this point and because she’s such a strong warrior, which ever camp ends up with Andrea will be stronger because of it and have an big advantage.

“The Walking Dead” season 3 returns to AMC on February 10th at 9 p.m.  What have you thought of season 3 so far?  Leave us a comment below and tell us what you think they should do for the second half of the season.

Photo: AMC