The Walking Dead review: ‘This Sorrowful Life’

I apologize for missing last week’s review but I came down with food poisoning. All is well now and I’m ready to talk about this week’s ‘The Sorrowful Life’. The Walking Dead has dragged this storyline on and on and on and on…this war really isn’t going to happen until the very last episode of this season. I was bored a couple of weeks ago and now I’m just flat out tired. Good episodes have now been left to mediocre moments in bad episodes. If you’ve been following my reviews, you might have realized just how much I despise Andrea’s character and they had a full episode focusing on her last week, which I could have done without. Now, we have another episode to drag out the inevitable war with a very disappointing death. Merle was finally becoming a decent character–one we were growing to like— and now he’s gone.

Let’s backtrack a little and talk about Rick’s decision. We all knew he was going to cave. Like he said in his very well thought out speech; it’s just not who they are. There was no way he was going to give Michonne up, even if she wasn’t part of Team Prison, it would have just been wrong and too Governor-like. Rick’s craziness kind of disappeared for the last couple of episodes since he had to step up but it came back this week a little. Ghost-Lori didn’t do so much as freak him out but actually led him to make the right decision in keeping Michonne, so I’m thankful for that.

Two weeks ago, we saw the parallels The Walking Dead drew between The Governor and Rick. They are both leaders of their people and need to make tough decisions. It was becoming frightening just how similar Rick was becoming the sick-minded Governor. It was emphasized even more in this episode how dangerously close Team Prison came to crossing moral lines. Merle makes it clear during his talk with Daryl that while Team Prison is accusing Merle of being the devil for what he did to Glenn and Maggie, Rick was doing the same to Michonne. Their hypocrisy does not make them any better than The Governor. However, with Rick’s final decision and speech and Merle letting Michonne go back to the camp shows exactly how different they are from The Governor.

In other news, Glenn and Maggie are engaged! How’s this wedding going to work? I have no idea. Maybe it’s just for the symbolic meaning and that’s what’s important.

So, the long awaited season finale will be next week and I’m expecting an epic battle plus a crazy cliffhanger. Do you have any predictions for seasons to come? Personally, I’m wondering if they’re going to take the same approach as Lost and show what happened before the zombie apocalypse or better yet, a time jump to following the characters’ lives after they find a cure. What do you think?