The Walking Dead - Season 3, Episode 5 "Say the Word"

After a great start to the season, "Say the Word" continues the recent trend of mediocre Walking Dead episodes.  It seems that the "mid-season slump" has become a tradition of sorts for Walking Dead, and season 3 has been no exception thus far.

So what went wrong in this episode?  Well, like "Killer Within" before it, the lack of forward movement storyline-wise is disconcerting, particularly where the issue of Woodbury is concerned.  It's hard to believe that it was only a few episodes ago that the residents of Woodbury and The Governor where first introduced, and I sang the praises of each at length.  At the time, it seemed like the town of Woodbury would be a breath of fresh air within the often stagnant Walking Dead universe, and that The Governor would be a rich and compelling character.  Well, the Walking Dead has a way of wearing out the welcome of certain characters and settings, and they've gone and done it again here.  The Woodbury storyline is advancing at a banana slug-esque pace, and The Governor has just been boring recently.

Even the big "reveal" near the end of this episode (that The Governor and his people are staging mock gladiatorial bouts in walker-lined arenas) failed to impress me.  Sure, it's kind of a messed up , but we've seen plenty of messed up stuff over the course of this show, and The Governor's explanation of the situation actually kind of made sense.  Andrea has never been one of my favorite characters on the show (possibly because she has only one facial expression), and I thought she came off as preachy and reactionary during that sequence.  I've been waiting a while for some terrible secret of Woodbury to be revealed, and while I think there is more yet to come, I'm afraid that Walking Dead is falling into the old familiar trap of waiting too long to show it's hand; however impressive that hand may be.  Instead of all this boring exposition about the nature of the town, I would love to see some actual progression in the way of merging the Woodbury storyline with that of Rick and his crew, and soon.

So what are Rick and company up to this week?  Well, the death of Lori has driven Rick insane, and he goes on a one-man walker killing rampage that was actually pretty bad-ass.  That isn't the freshest or most subtle development in the history of The Walking Dead, but it is the most interesting Rick has been in ages, and it provided some very cool zombie slaying action, so I won't complain too much about that.  Other than that, though, nothing of note really happens.  Darryl and Maggie go on a side mission that further establishes Darryl as a stand-up guy (something we already know well at this point), but failed to be very exciting or accomplish much of anything else otherwise.  And the episode ends with Rick picking up a ringing telephone.  In theory, the final scene of "Say the Word" could lead to somewhere interesting, but I'm more than a little worried that the next scene will reveal the ringing telephone as a "Crazy Rick" hallucination.  At this point in season 3 of Walking Dead, there have been as many very good episodes as so-so ones.  We can only hope that the next episode, "Hounded", tips the scales back in a positive manner.