I'll be honest. I wasn't very interested in learning about what The Governor had been up to since we last saw him in season 3. I like David Morrissey, but I just haven't been impressed with the way his character has been written on the show. And so the idea of an entire episode devoted to The Governor didn't exactly strike me as a potentially great hour of television. Walking Dead had an excellent opportunity to prove me wrong in that regard with "Live Bait", but unfortunately the episode failed to do so. In the end, I felt this sixth episode of the season was just as unnecessary an exercise as I suspected it might be beforehand.
If the makers of Walking Dead were absolutely set on presenting us with the information we got from "Live Bait" , I would have been fine with starting things where the episode ended: The Governor meeting up with Martinez (a character who I guess isn't going away for some reason). From that point on, he could have recounted his story himself, in the form of a flashback and in a much more succinct fashion. That way, we could have kept our Governor-centric episodes down to 1, instead of the 2 that it looks will we get. Once again, I don't blame David Morrissey for the shortcomings of this story arc. His role in "Live Bait" is a challenging one, and he actually does a pretty good job given the material he is given.
But the writing on Walking Dead continues to be a weak link, and that fact stands out like a sore in quiet, largely event-less episodes like this one. The sequences at the beginning, with The Governor shuffling around like a zombie hybrid of Forrest Gump and Snake Plissken, bordered on laughably bad. And his scenes with the Chambler family aren't much better. The Chamblers babble away their entire life story shortly after meeting "Brian", obviously providing some needed exposition, but it's unclear why they would be so forthcoming with information given that The Governor doesn't appear to be even a slightly willing conversation partner. Additionally, there is precious little chemistry between The Governor and his new love interest Lilly.
I understand what the show is trying to do with "Live Bait". They want to make The Governor into a more sympathetic character, and they succeeded somewhat in doing so. But I question whether we needed to devote an entire episode to that endeavor. Especially when the action was just beginning to heat up at the prison. The result is that the momentum of season 4 has come to a screeching halt just when it should be reaching a fever pitch heading into the mid-season hiatus. Here is hoping that, next episode, some of our other main characters will pop in to make things more interesting.
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