'Buzz' is a nickname, ''Governor" is a title: My thoughts on the current season of The Walking Dead

   I don't understand the hate many seem to have for the second season of The Walking Dead. Okay, so there weren't a lot of zombies lurching around; I loved season two regardless, especially the second half. I grew up watching shows like Highlander and Star Trek, action/adventure programs dressed up in the trappings of fantasy and science fiction - aliens, space ships, immortal beings who didn't sparkle or drink blood, and so on. The interesting thing about these shows was that they managed to use those trappings to explore interesting moral dilemmas, questions about right and wrong that a normal person could relate to, presented in a larger-than-life fashion though they may have been.

   What does it mean to do the right thing? What do you do when your moral intuitions conflict with each other: for instance, if forced to choose between what's right, and loyalty to a family member or close friend? At times watching Highlander, in particular, was like reading a chapter of Would You? every week; or, as one of the show's producers once put it, like watching "a Talmudic discussion with ass-kicking." You don't see that kind of moral debate going on in a lot of genre shows these days, most of which have eschewed social commentary in favor of romantic melodrama, cheesy monster-of-the-week-style formulas, and byzantine mythology that never really goes anywhere.

   The question Walking Dead most concerns itself with is as old as philosophy itself: how ought man to behave in the state of nature? We all tell ourselves that we're "good people," but we have laws to obey, and a complex judicial system in place to make sure we adhere to those laws (as well as to resolve disputes between people, enforce property rights, and so on without having to resort to violence, at least as a matter of course). But what happens when the institutions we rely on are taken away? If you're part of a rag-tag community of survivors wandering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, what do you do if a member of your group steals from, rapes, or kills someone else?

   What's the penalty - exile, abandonment, a swift kick in the ass... death? And what about other survivors? If you've got a nice little set-up going, say on a farm that's managed to escape the apocalypse mostly unscathed, how do you react if some refugees suddenly wander in from out of the cold, desperate people seeking food and shelter? More mouths to feed, more possibly helpless citizens that you're now responsible for keeping safe. Is it your responsibility? 

   As Rick and company discover a (mostly) abandoned prison at the outset of season 3, the setting is ripe for the show to continue exploring these kinds of issues. With Rick, we have the question of how far you're allowed to go when you're trying to protect you and yours: there are already several inmates present when the gang arrives at the prison. An argument could be made that they have more of a claim to it than Rick's group does. Is it right for them to move in, exile the inmates to a far corner of the facility, and eventually end up killing most of them (or getting them killed)? Does the safety of your community override all other considerations? What if Hershel had ordered Rick and his friends to leave shortly after they arrived at the farm last year? Would Rick have treated Hershel and his family as ruthlessly as he treats the prisoners here? And would we, as viewers, have sided with him if he had? 

   The Governor, meanwhile, is clearly meant to form a sort of contrast with Rick in this respect. Here we have a man who's already carved out what he believes is a safe space for himself and his people, in the form of the walled-up city of Woodbury. The central weakness of the first half of season three, I think, is that the Governor hasn't so far been portrayed as a perhaps once-reasonable man (like Rick) who's been forced to resort to desperate, even depraved measures in order to survive. We know, for instance, why Rick commandeers the prison, why he doesn't trust the inmates, and why he ultimately deals so harshly with some of them. Regardless of whether we condone his actions, we understand why he feels the inmates are a threat, as well as why he believes the prison is crucial to his group's survival.

   We don't know, on the other hand, why the Governor chooses to murder a group of national guardsmen in cold blood; it's not like they rode into town threatening to take over, and we know the Gov is always on the lookout for more hired guns. For all we know, the soldiers would have been a huge asset to the community. We're left to conclude that he kills them simply because he's an evil bastard, or because he's worried that they won't follow his orders as blindly as the rest of his henchmen seem to do. He's not safeguarding his community - in fact, he's depriving it of a group of armed and, presumably, well-trained protectors. 

   And then, as we see him sitting in his study, cradling a machete, staring moodily at a bunch of severed zombie heads; or cooing to his zombified teenage daughter as he tries to brush her hair; or hooting like a good ole boy at a monster truck rally as two men fight inside a circle of chained, toothless walkers; we're forced to conclude that he's not only power-hungry and ruthless, but severely unhinged as well. For the Governor to be more than a mustache-twirling villain, we need to feel that despite everything, he has his community's best interests at heart; that he's in this for something more than power, his own safety, or perhaps to facilitate his morbid experiments. We need to get some sense that he cares for these people, beyond their usefulness as pawns or acolytes, and that the responsibility of protecting them weighs heavily on him.

   We certainly need to know all this, or at least have it hinted at, if the parallels between the Governor and Rick as leaders are to carry any weight. If the Governor is just crazy, or if he started out as evil, then his actions don't reflect on Rick at all, and he ceases to function as a sort of dark mirror of the man Rick might become, which (I think) is what the creators seem to be going for.

   Of course that's just my opinion. Any thoughts?