The Walking Dead 3.9 Review, “Suicide King”

rating: 4.5

So Andrea finds it appalling that her many months long savior and partner in the apocalypse would dare question a cult-like utopia. Fine.

But the man she's doing turns out to be a cult leader, who keeps zombie heads in aquariums, and a dead girl in a cage, holds zombie gladiator fights for fun, not to mention he murders people in cold blood, instills lethal force on people escaping for their lives, murders someone in cold blood, and tells you to back off since you were just someone he wanted sex from, but that's okay.

He's just working through some issues, I'll stand by him and be his rock. Damn, Andrea, you just get stupider and stupider.

And boy was that speech she gave Woodbury ridiculous and cheesy. This character has proven to be so void of guts and common sense, it's laughable by now. Even after everything she's seen, she'd rather live in a facade of a town, rather than go out and look for her friends immediately after she learns they've alive from the Governor. "Suicide King" is filled with a plethora of difficult decisions and difficult dilemmas that constantly will keep viewers second guessing characters left and right. Sure Merle is a complete and utter jerk with an ability to get in to Daryl's head and twist him to his liking, but Daryl's commitment to his family ultimately meant a loss that the group will be feeling for a very long time. Until the writers decide to bring the brothers back in sometime soon. As for the new survivors, Tyreese's friend did have a point that seizing the prison would be a cake walk with Rick gone, but then at what cost? Who could go out and help look for food once you've eliminated your resources? Tyreese is essentially the character from the comics, so far, sans the dead weight of his daughter. He's a soft spoken and humble giant of a man who spends most of the episode biding his time and awaiting his chance to show that he can contribute to this new society and the new world around him. His potential calamity with his friend planning to seize the prison at its weakest was a true test of character, and his diffusing of the situation was a master stroke of the character.

Tyreese could realistically snap Carl like a twig, but he knows that deep down that's not going to help anyone in the long run. At this moment Tyreese and his group need Rick's clan just as much as they need him. Rick slow and steady descent in to madness has been somewhat faithful to that in the comics, where Rick has taken on the task of deciding and judging all on his own and is now feeling the result of those moments. He's clearly taken on responsibility for literally everyone he's met since he awoke from his coma--as we saw with his interaction with his phone--and now seems to be unraveling more and more. With Tyreese and his group begging for safety and willing to contribute, Rick has to face that he's not only leading a group, but being forced to make decisions that could make or break their world. Not to mention with the Governor planning a swift bit of retaliation after the group's raid on Woodbury, Rick will see bodies fall more and more around him/. And he will have to face that some of what he's done has been wrong and he will have to live with that until the very end. As we saw with the ghoulish spine tingling final scene, Rick has clearly lost each and every essence of stability we saw him hold since "Guts," and now we may soon have to see the Ricktatorship end and transform in to a democracy, as we saw in the later issues of the comic book series.