The Walking Dead: The Best Things Andrea Said and Did This Week (No, Really)

We've had a lot of fun with the cluelessness and poor life decisions that Andrea makes on The Walking Dead in the past, but one of the things we've always tried to keep in mind for people is that Laurie Holden, the actress who plays the character, is actually quite good. As Norman Reedus said when faced with a room full of fans who wanted to see Andrea written off the series, "you only think that because [Holden] is so good at what she does." It's been her role for most of the season to play the villain, or at least someone with villain-like traits. So an episode where Andrea was, unambiguously, the week's hero sounds like a pretty daunting proposition going in; the character has frankly been so frustrating at times that ComicBook.com once listed "Andrea didn't appear" as one of the five best moments of an episode. At this point, the notion of Andrea coming through and delivering in a big way almost feels like Charlie Brown hitting the game-winning home run (pitchers go to bat in little league, right? There can't be a designated hitter...). Still, this week we decided to do a little variation on a reader-favorite feature, the Dumbest Things Andrea Said and Did This Week. This week, we're going the other way... 1. Tried to kill the Governor In this way, she succeeded where Rick failed last week. Alright, so it wasn't much in the way of a serious try, but there was a good reason for it. Taking the shot would have been one thing. Attempting to wrest the gun away from Milton and remain unseen for long enough to take the shot would have been virtually impossible. Still, the fact that she was there--she's finally committed to a plan, and when the moment presented itself she didn't hesitate and was just ready to do the right thing, speaks volumes for a character who's been an emotional cripple when it comes to the Governor so far this year. 2. Tells Milton that if he remains in Woodbury, he can't continue to look the other way while the Governor gets away with atrocity. This treads dangerously on the sanctimonious way she behaved last week, but we'll let it slide because, frankly, Milton was exhibiting some pretty substantial moral cowardice in the way he handled the situation. The advice she offered, if he should take it, will set him up either for a pretty terrible fall or, if things go his (or Rick's) way, perhaps set him up to be the next, better Governor when ol' Philip Blake is worm food. 3. Her whole escape plan. I mean--except the part where Tyreese and Sasha got involved, but how could she know they'd be so rigid? Other than that, her escape plan--shaming Martinez into letting her keep her knife, seeking out the new and theoretically most gullible guards and giving them a very plausible reason for needing to abandon their post--all made a lot of sense and had huge potential to go off completely without a hitch. Most of the people we've seen in Woodbury wouldn't have been smart enough to stop the Governor's girlfriend and basically demand to see her credentials. Perhaps the flaw in her plan is that the new, "gullible" people didn't know her relationship with the Governor. Perhaps we're giving her too much credit, because Andrea actually thinking something through seems so remarkable. 4. Her badass flurry of walker combat. Let's face it, there are a great number of viewers--the ones who made themselves known last year complaining about too much talking and not enough action--who really just want to see zombies get splattered all over the screen. After all, that's a good part of the reason Daryl and Merle are so popular--unless there's some demographic I'm not aware of that secretly adores white supremacists, I've always assumed it was just because they were bad-asses. Daryl is like the Arthur Fonzerelli of The Walking Dead (does that make Merle Chachi, or Pinky Tuscadero? We'll let you readers decide.) So, for a lot of people, this will help to redeem her character a bit just on the strength of being action. For me, it's all about moving her away from the hapless character she's been and more into something that resembles her comic book counterpart. 5. That thing she did with the walkers on the stairs. Split-second decision-making? Check. Cool visual? Check. Gimmick nobody's done before on the show? Check. Nearly killing the Governor? Check. Yep, that's a pretty unqualified success, even if he did inexplicably manage to smuggle her back home afterwards to do nasty things.