‘The Walking Dead’ season 3 episode 10 recap: No Place Is Safe

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Hi, my name’s Rick Grimes and I’m basically completely losing my marbles. Well, so much for the prison. This week’s The Walking Dead seemed pretty slow until the last five minutes, but then all hell broke loose. Let’s get to the recap.

After the confrontation that ended last week’s episode, Rick takes off into the woods to run down the ghost of Lori. Quick tip: going into the woods after a ghost has never led to anything good. Rick knows that Lori isn’t real, but he tells Hershel that the visions have to mean something so he needs to follow where they lead.

While he’s gone, Glenn decides that he’s probably the most qualified to step into the leadership vacuum, and he talks with Michonne about taking the Governor out once and for all. He’s still pretty wounded from his ordeal in Woodbury, and his relationship with Maggie is pretty screwed up. This is a logical progression for him, but I can’t see it ending well. Glenn doesn’t have the killer instinct when the chips are down.

Back at Woodbury, the Governor is stepping aside for a little while, leaving Andrea in charge. I literally can’t think of a person I’d want in charge of my survival less. He then takes off to “go for a run.” Needless to say, this doesn’t involve a pair of New Balances. We’ll get to that later.

Daryl and Merle are off together walking through the woods, and things are already starting to get tense between the brothers. Daryl wants to head back to the prison and stability, but Merle wants no part of it. They then run into a family holding off a group of walkers and Daryl takes out a bunch of them, only for his one-handed brother to return to his crappy ways and start insulting them and trying to steal from them. The two finally came to blows and we had the episode’s best moment, when Merle realized that his dad had tore up Daryl just as badly as he did himself. It all ended with Daryl in charge and both heading back to the prison.

Unfortunately, before they get there everything turns to straight doodoo. The Governor mounts a surprise attack with a machine gun and some scumbags, popping Axel right in the head and routing our protagonists. One of his dudes drives a white van through the front gate loaded with walkers and the bad guys beat a retreat, with the prison unavoidably compromised. The Dixon boys show up to pull Rick’s ass out of the fire (again) but things are as bad as they’ve ever been for the crew. Our last shot is Rick looking through the fence with a look of absolute sociopath murder in his eyes. This won’t end well.