For all the
anticipation and careful setup over the last several episodes of The Walking Dead, the show's mid-season
finale was somewhat anticlimactic. Many burning questions were introduced
leading up to the episode. What will Andrea (Laurie Holden) think when she
finds out about the zombie daughter the Governor (David Morrissey) keeps hidden
inside a cage and all those heads floating inside wall-length fish tanks? What
will Merle (Michael Rooker) and Daryl's (Norman Reedus) reunion bring? How is
Rick (Andrew Lincoln) going to get Glen (Steven Yeun) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan)
out of Woodbury? All of these are answered, if not in a particularly satisfying
way. We do, though, get bombarded with more questions. "Made to Suffer"
delivers on tension, action, and confrontation, but it's all pivot and no
release.
The episode's primary focus initially seems to be Rick's mission to
penetrate Woodbury and rescue Maggie and Glen. He remains suspicious of
Michonne, who disappears after helping Rick's group sneak into the town.
Meanwhile, the Governor scampers around trying to manage the residents' fears
that their haven's been infiltrated. He also wants to keep Andrea away from the
action so she can't learn that the intruders are members of her former group.
He's away from much of the episode's action until his confrontation with
Michonne in his quarters, where his cool surface disappears when Michonne kills
his zombie daughter and the two engage in an intense fistfight that ends with
him likely losing an eye. Afterward, he weeps and hunches over his lifeless
daughter with a shard of glass protruding from his eye—the defining image of
the episode and likely the defining moment for the character going forward.
