Well, I'll give this twosome of Governor-centric episodes of Walking Dead this much: they have succeeded in giving The Governor a lot more depth as a character (of course, they were starting from zero, so any development in that area would have been an improvement). Unfortunately, the bad part is that, even after spending these two hours with The Governor, I just don't like him very much. And that isn't because he is a bad guy. Merle was (mostly) a bad guy, but I recognized his value as a character. I don't like The Governor because, despite the best efforts of this show, he just isn't very interesting.
I used to think that the performance of David Morrissey wasn't the problem with The Governor. After "Dead Weight", though, I'm not sure anymore. You see, we're a season and a half into this Governor thing, and it still just hasn't clicked. Sure, you could blame the problems with the character on the writing, but if Morrissey were truly great in the role, he would have risen above such issues by now. Walking Dead the TV show obviously decided to go a different route with the character of The Governor than the comic, but I'm wondering now if they wouldn't have been better served sticking more closely to the comic book version.
The Governor in the comics is a lot less complex character than the one they are trying to create with the TV show, but he is a lot more interesting. And a character like that (with little more motivation or backstory other than being a complete and utter evil psycho) might have been a little easier for the show to convey. Alas, that ship has sailed, and we are stuck with this version of The Governor. As I said, all is not lost: the character has become somewhat more compelling over the last two episodes. But I REALLY wish they had compressed this story into one episode instead of two. Yes, the transformation "Brian" undergoes might have been a little more jarring under those circumstances, but the Walking Dead is hardly Shakespeare in the first place, so why concern ourselves with quibbles like that now?
I complain a lot about the main characters of Walking Dead (mostly about how boring/unnecessary/poorly-written most of them are), but I was absolutely begging for anybody (yes, even Bob or Carl) from the main story-line to pop up during this episode. The characters we meet in "Dead Weight" are all pretty uninteresting, and most of them will probably be dead within a few episodes anyway, so why force us to spend an hour with them (and only them)? Luckily, this episode ended on a note that indicates our weekly Governor Power Hour is finished, and some stuff might actually happen that affects our main characters (you know, the ones we have spent four seasons with and actually care about?). Cheers for that, at least.
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