The Walking Dead, Season 3, Episode 6: Hounded, Review

Last week’s episode ended with Rick picking up a phone inside the prison.  So, let’s find out who is on the other end of the line, shall we?

This episode starts with Merle and three other guys out in the woods looking for Michonne.  They find a grouping of zombie parts on the ground that spell out “Go back;” clearly created by Michonne.  Merle calls out to her, as he hears her rustling in the bushes nearby.  She jumps out, decapitates one of the men and slices up another one.  Michonne finds Merle and Neil a little later and attacks them.  While she’s attacking them, they are all attacked by zombies.  Michonne slices open a zombie’s guts and they spill all over her–truly gruesome!  She runs away before Merle or Neil can kill her. Merle then wants to give up and go tell the Governor that the two killed Michonne.  Neil doesn’t want to do that.  After a brief argument, Merle kills Neil via a shot to the head.

In an interesting development, soon after Michonne has guts dumped on her, a group of four zombies approach her, but walk right by.  Michonne notices why they walked by her and takes note.

Rick picks up the phone, there is a frantic woman on the line saying she is safe.  Rick asks her if she is able to take in other people.  Rick returns to the group after his conversation.  Everyone updates each other on the situation and Rick leaves again. 

Andrea and The Governor discuss the zombie MMA thing they had going on last week and how she disapproves.  She says, “it’s brutality for fun, and the world’s brutal enough already.”  Andrea connects with the young girl who is teaching her how to shoot a bow.  Andrea jumps over the wall and kills a zombie.  The Governor tells her she isn’t needed on the wall anymore.  Andrea tells the Gov that she actually enjoyed the fighting last week, but didn’t want to admit it.  Andrea and the Governor share a drink and a chat.  At this point, it’s clear–Andrea and the Gov are going to do it.  And, yes, they do.  I’m not going to lie, though–this storyline bores me.  Andrea’s character is probably the least interesting to me and I feel all of her drama is unnecessary time-filler for the show.  Unfortunately, if the show continues to loosely follow the comic book, Andrea isn’t going anywhere for a while (she is still alive in the comic book series).  So, we can expect to deal with this some more in future episodes.

Rick gets another phone call, this time from a man. The man asks Rick if he has killed any people.  Rick tells him that he has killed four people.  The man asks Rick how he lost his wife, and Rick tells him he doesn’t want to talk about it.  The man on the other end of the phone hangs up.  Rick snaps.  Herschel finds Rick.  Rick tells Herschel about the woman on the phone.  Hershel offers to sit with Rick while he waits for the phone, but Rick refuses.  The female calls back, this time she calls Rick by name and then hangs up.  The last phone call is from Lori and she tells him the phone calls were from some of the previous dead characters in show.  Rick has clearly snapped, and is hallucinating due to the traumatic event of his wife dying. 

Rick then hangs up the phone–a gesture that shows he is ready to try and move on.  He returns back to the group and holds his newborn baby. 

Daryl, Carl and one of the inmates go on a search for Carol.  Daryl tells Carl the story of his mother burning in her own bed because she fell asleep smoking a cigarette.  Carl tells Daryl he shot his mother so she wouldn’t turn.  They both say they’re sorry about each other’s mothers dying.  Daryl finds a zombie stabbed with Carol’s knife and continues the search.  After almost giving up and showing a lot of frustration, he finds Carol holed up in a door somewhere, and rescues her to safety.

Glenn and Maggie make a run into town for supplies.  Michonne watches nearby without their knowing.  Maggie and Glenn are confronted by Merle.  Merle takes Maggie hostage and orders Glenn to drive him somewhere–yes, Michonne is still looking on at this point.  Merle goes back to Woodbury and tells the Governor he has Maggie and Glenn. 

The end of the episode brings Michonne to the prison.  Rick sees her standing outside the fences in the middle of a group of zombies, completely undetected by the zombies.  She is holding the baby formula that Maggie and Glenn went to get.  This is not how Michonne entered the group via the comic book series.  In the comic book, Michonne enters the prison via a flurry of zombie kills to make her way inside.  Clearly, this is a much more action packed moment in the comic than in the TV series.

Tonight’s episode didn’t contain many zombie kills and lacked action.  It was more focused on the story, which is typical of the midseason episodes of the previous seasons.  We did get to see Andrea and the Gov hook up, Maggie and Glenn get captured by Merle, Daryl found Carol and Rick appears to have snapped out of it.  While not an exciting episode, it was a necessary one to further develop the story.

Next week, we will see Michonne tell Rick and crew about what happens to Maggie and Glenn and as a result will probably see some sort of rescue mission put into place to save the group members.  I am curious to see how Daryl will react to finding out that his brother is still alive.  After all, we have seen major growth in Daryl becoming more emotionally invested in the group.  I have a feeling that Merle is going to take away from that somehow.  I also think that Carol and Daryl are going to become an item, as it is clear that Daryl cares for Carol more than he wants to.

Episode Rating: 6/10

Gore Meter:  6/10