The Walking Dead Recap: Say the Word

Last week's episode of The Walking Dead sparked...how do we say this?...a lot of conversation. As a result, there was a good deal of questions raised in its wake as to what might follow it up. The episode opens with Milton and Andrea enjoying cold drinks in Woodbury. Then,  the Governor is shown combing Penny's hair. Oh, wait, yes. TV watchers didn't know yet. Penny is his daughter. She's a walker, who he keeps at home, dresses and feeds her and keeps her clean like she's a real girl. And today, Michonne is standing by, watching the building. Back at the prison, we pick up right where we left off--the baby is crying, and everyone is trying to wake Rick out of his grief-trance. Quickly Daryl realizes that they need to scout for supplies, find some formula; he, Glenn and Maggie get ready to leave. When they realize that the roads are too clogged for a car and that only two can go (on Daryl's motorcycle), Maggie volunteers, leaving Glenn behind.

Rick takes the axe and heads into the prison. Ripping open a door, he begins slashing through every walker he finds--apparently this is catharsis. At Woodbury, the Governor is hosting a meeting for the assembled crowd. "Today, we celebrate how far we come, we remember those we've lost, we raise a glass to us!" At his house, Michonne sneaks in and steals her sword while everyone else is preoccupied. It's then that she gets a look at his family picture, figuring out who Penny is, and at his journal--a sketch of a truly disturbed mind following his daughter's being turned. She hears a sound through one of the Governor's doors, but before she can break in, she hears the Governor, Milton and Merle come in to get more supplies. Milton wants the celebration postponed for ten days to give him time to do an experiment, but the Governor denies him. As they exit through the door, Michonne has exited through a rear window. Behind the house, she finds herself in an area where walkers are being kept locked in cages that look as though they were originally meant to hold propane tanks. Prying open the padlock on one of the doors, she steps away and destroys them all with her katana. This, too, is cathartic for a moment until someone comes back through the rear door and sees her there.

The Governor corners Michonne in a store room, where they have a brief, confrontational conversation in which Michonne drops the name "Penny" and sees him briefly freeze up before he gets his composure back. He threatens to kick her out, saying that he was about ready to give her the sword back, "becuase you fit in," but that her actions are a problem for him. He offers to keep a lid on her behavior if she joins the research team. While he's talking about it, though, she takes her sword from him and backs out of the building. Merle joins the Governor afterwards, asking how it went, and the Governor downplays the problem, planning to head out with the research team to get more walkers. At the prison, we see the clip we've already seen; a despondent Glenn is digging a grave when he's approached by Axel and Oscar who offer him help and condolences. He hands off the pick and the shovel and asks them for three graves. He approaches Hershel, who says Rick is still inside. "Part of me wishes that we killed all of the prisoners on sight," Glenn says. When Hershel tells him that Axel and Oscar seem like good guys, Glenn replies that he'd trade any number of people for one of their group of survivors any way.

The Governor brings Andrea into his office and tells her that Michonne stole the sword, killed captive walkers. When she asks about it, he tells her he can't talk about that right now. He tells Andrea that he wants Michonne to leave, becuase "What works out there doesn't work in here. We're not barbarians." Andrea goes to their bedroom, confronts Michonne, and Michonne tells her that they're prisoners. They disagree as to whether or not they should stay, with Michonne insisting that Woodbury is not what it seems. Inside the prison, Glenn walks through a hallway full of downed walkers, eventually finding Rick at the end of a hallway holding an axe. He's not speaking, not making eye contact, and he seems dazed or drunk; when Glenn tries to get him to come back out of the building, Rick attacks him and pins him to the wall, then tosses him away and wanders deeper into the building. In a clearing in the woods, Merle leads a group of men recovering walkers who have been caught in a booby trap. They lift them out with a crane, examine them and determine which ones are sufficiently rotted to pull teeth. Elsewhere in the woods, Daryl and Maggie find themselves at a playground, where they enter a house that looks as though it used to be a daycare facility. After breaking in, Maggie find any number of supplies that they'll likely later be stealing. She fills a bag with diapers, bottles and the like before being joined by Daryl, who looks forlornly at fingerpainted handprints on the wall, one of which says "Sofie." Deeper inside the building, the pair open a pantry to reveal a live possum, which Daryl shoots with the crossbow. There's a couple of large cans of powdered formula in there, and a can of pacifiers, which Maggie takes.

Back in Woodbury, Michonne and Andrea are making their way down the road away from the celebration when Merle stops them. They explain that they're leaving, and while Merle at first hesitates he soon heads to one of the guards and has some words with him. Andrea approaches Merle to say that the Governor had assured them they could come and go as they please, but Merle tells her to step back before finally opening the gate. Michonne is convinced that they're making a show of it, which Andrea doesn't believe. Michonne wants to leave, but Andrea doesn't want to. Eventually the pair split, with Michonne leaving in spite of Andrea's pleas not to. Andrea tries to call out to Michonne, and eventually stands at the gate to watch her go. After she's gone, the Governor meets up with her on a bench in Woodbury to console Andrea with veiled flirtation, which Andrea accepts pretty readily. At the prison, a small group of walkers are moving toward the prison gates while Glenn watches out for Daryl and Maggie. They arrive without incident as the prisoners man the gates and Glenn picks a couple off from the tower. Inside, they mix the formula and Daryl takes the baby, calming it down, and asks Carl if his sister has a name. Carl rattles off a handful of names of the women they've lost along the way, beginning with Sophia and ending with Lori. Rick comes to the spot in the prison where Lori delivered the baby and died; there he finds a walker, bloated after having apparently gorged on Lori's remains; he puts a gun in its mouth and ends it, then stabs the stomach a whole lot of times while shouting.

As the night descends on Woodbury, the Governor leads Andrea to a large group gathering. Sitting in the stands, Andrea seems confused until she sees a group of four walkers and a man standing in the middle, taunting them. He's quickly joined by Merle, for whom everyone cheers. The pair are standing in the middle of a dirt circle, surrounded by walkers who are tied to the edges of the arena. Merle is clearly getting the better of the exchange at first, but it quickly becomes competitive as the crowd gets increasingly excited. The referee briefly stops the fight and then loosens the chains on the walkers, allowing them to get closer to the combatants. Andrea tries to leave, and the Governor reveals to her that there's no risk to the fighters--that the fight is staged becuase the walkers have no teeth. He says it's to teach people not to be afraid of the walkers. Merle is victorious by the time they're done talking, and celebratory, but Andrea looks ill in the stands. As morning breaks on the prison, Daryl heads out to the fresh graves of T-Dog, Andrea and Carol, leaving a Cherokee rose on Carol's empty grave. Inside, Rick is sitting propped up against the wall and finally starts to process the baby's cries, then hears a phone ringing. He gets up and answers an old, dusty rotary phone.