The Walking Dead 3.7 Review, “When the Dead Come Knocking”

rating: 4.5

SPOILERS INCLUDED Dear The Walking Dead, It's okay to have more than two ethnic characters on the show. Just saying. We have Michonne, we have the African American prisoner, and soon we'll be meeting Tyreese. It's fine to add more ethnic characters in an already rich series. I want more, please. "When the Dead Come Knocking" is filled with psychological games, and torture that is based around bringing people down mentally more than physically. There's a huge change up in the prison storyline, as is the norm for the television series, and much of what occurs in this episode involves characters trying to keep their mental faculties about and solid. Now that Glenn and Maggie have been taken hostage by Merle, Michonne has been given the chance to find the safe haven in the prison. Using the opportunity presented by Merle, Michonne takes full advantage and appears at the prison. She's too hurt to survive on her own, but too proud to ask Rick for help. Instantly Michonne takes to action once the zombies begin to sense she's not one of them, and it's an interesting action when the first person to help Michonne in the front of the prison is Carl, who begins shooting walkers. Michonne is posing to be the most formidable and wise character in the show so far, and her judgement upon entering the prison is representative of an individual who has seen the world for what it is long before the walkers appeared. She scans literally everyone and immediately seems to warm up to Rick Grimes, in spite of the fact he seizes her katana and locks her up much like the Governor did. There's something about Rick that seems different to Michonne, in spite of the fact she enters the prison in the exact same conditions she did with Woodbury. The torture of Glenn and Maggie is just as grueling as it is in the comics, but the writers of the show was subtle in their way of inflicting pain on the young couple. Kirkman was relentless in depicting the torture of the characters seized in Woodbury, while the writers intend on depicting what we don't see as the pain. Glenn has come a long way from the young man on the roof in "Guts" who submitted to Merle Dixon, to the man in this episode who rebutts Merle Dixon's interrogation with a bash to the face, royally pissing him off. The confrontation with a walker that Merle throws in to the interrogation room as a means of destroying his confidence is also a truly defining moment in the mythos of Glenn's television persona. He's always a man who has improvised ways of hiding and escaping. Truly he's a man who can improvise ways of battling a walker. Maggie's interrogation is quite possibly the worst scene ever depicted on the series, as her form of questioning is humiliating, debasing, and absolutely degrading. Those who thought this Governor was too docile to measure up to Merle see a new shade of the character, a man who will do whatever it takes to get his goal. Even if it means completely dehumanizing a woman. I'm convinced no matter how old Maggie was, he'd fully victimize her in every form imaginable. The stripping and assault from the governor is a man truly showing where Maggie lies in this situation, and it works. "When the Dead Come Knocking" is the fuse leading in to the massive powder keg, and soon the forces will collide in to an all out assault of conflicting loyalties, secrets revealed, and blood shed promising to destroy the viewers of the series. I predict Andrea will suffer a horrible injury by the governor making her the crusty warrior we know from the comic, and all the wiser now. Or she will suffer a very horrible and disturbing death by the hands of the Governor. While I wish the show would have fully utilized one of my favorite characters from the comic to her potential, I am more than willing to see this yuppy pay for her gullibility. Right now, it's all a matter of placing the right pieces on the proper places on the board. "Made to Suffer" will be the big crescendo before February.