The Walking Dead, Episode 3.10: "Home"

It's amazing how the last five minutes of tonight's episode went a long way towards changing my impression of this week's episode. Prior to then, we had a lot of conflict-driven drama, but nothing really new or inspired… as if we were stalling for time again. For example, we had more of Rick's wacky visions this week… on one hand, I like Rick's talk with Hershel, where he tried to snap Rick out of it; however, Rick's "I'm not finished" response didn't inspire much confidence as to resolving it soon. We also got Merle and Daryl battling it out about whether to go back to the prison or not, where the anger that Merle's been building up since Season 1 bursts out. (But at least, we got that impressive bridge set piece in the meantime.) Although I didn't get the hokiness of splitting the brothers up if they were going to show up at the prison together. (But then again, did you want to keep either Daryl or Merle away from the main action? Nah…)

But what made that final action sequence great was not only how everyone came together to combat the Governor's Truck Full O' Walkers, but how it managed to knock Rick out of his visions, and brought Merle and Daryl into the prison fold - much more quickly than I had anticipated, mind you. My only question is: I wonder how long we'll go between last night's invasion trial run (as Robert Kirkman described it in tonight's Talking Dead) and the real assault.

I did like the enhanced focus on Glen tonight: the Glen/Maggie aftermath was to be expected, but I liked Glen's attempt to step up and become a leader in the wake of the loss of Daryl (and the loss of Rick's mind). On the other hand, the enhanced focus on Axel the inmate backfired… I should've seen that coming. (It also didn't help that Carol decided to use Axel's corpse as a barrier during the gunfire. Poor Axel!)

Meanwhile, in Woodbury, the Governor does some additional preparations for invading the prison, by trying to sway Andrea to step up as a leader of town… while at the same time putting Milton on Andrea Watch, because he "doesn't know where her loyalties lie". And, given how the show's trying to get all the action back to the prison - as hinted by bringing the Dixon brothers back in the gates - Andrea's going to make it over to the prison sooner than later.

Random notes:

• For those keeping track at home, Lori has appeared alive in 4 episodes this season, and dead in 3 episodes - her appearances this week and last, plus the phone episode. I will be impressed if Sarah Wayne Calles manages to show up in the vast majority of this season's episodes without actually being alive. :-)
• Ooh, Chris Hardwick didn't do tonight's hash tag segment! I know these bits caused lots of anger among the Internet commentariat, because of how his loud excitement soured some otherwise-effective act breaks. (Per his words on tonight's Talking Dead, he was called "worse than Hitler!") Oh well… good luck delivering those hashtags, AMC Announcer Guy!
• Tonight's movie trailers: Dead Man Down, THREE (!!!) commercials for Dark Skies, The Last Exorcism Part II,  Snitch, and 21 and Over.
• Tonight's kill count: An insanely high count tonight: 31 walkers, 12 of which were killed by Daryl. Plus, we lost 2 humans: Axel and the shooter in the guard tower.
• Kill of the night: The hatchback. No contest. Combined with the headslam-to-the-window and the (after-the-fact) headsmash-by-tire, I've gotta wonder how many more denouements-by-automobile we could've had in that segment!
• Tonight on Talking Dead: Special guests Robert Kirkman, True Blood's Alcide, Joe Mangianello (whose fandom of the graphic novel we can credit to SNL's Taran Kiliam!), and surprise guest Lew Temple, a.k.a. Axel himself… who demonstrated that his mustache was epically real. :-)
• Next week: The Walking Dead goes up against the Oscars… in a perfect world, the death reels for the Oscars and the Talking Dead episode will air simultaneously. ;-) Here's AMC's clip from the Story Sync feed: