'The Walking Dead' Season 3, Episode 3 Recap - 'Walk With Me'

We clearly have a split narrative this season on "The Walking Dead," and it looks like we'll be spending entire episodes either in the prison or in Woodbury without any jumping back and forth. Given this show's propensity for uninteresting conversation, that might raise some alarms... but thus far, things seem to be working just fine.

And so, we take a break from the Ricktatorship to see a different kind of authoritarian: the Governor. As Michonne and the still very ill Andrea emerge from their temporary shelter to hit the road, they see smoke from a crashed chopper. When they investigate, they see another group of men approach the wreck, knife the dead soldiers in the head, and recover the survivor.

Unfortunately, Michonne's pet zombies give up their position and, even though Michonne was quick to slice her own pets' heads off, she and Andrea are taken.

When Andrea comes to, she finds herself face to face with none other than Merle, Darryl's now handless brother whom we last saw chained to a pipe on top of a building in Atlanta. Merle is never the most pleasant person to be around, but Andrea is comfortable enough at least to get him up to speed on everything that happened, and to Merle's credit, he's nice enough to offer his condolences about the death of Andrea's sister.

Past that they meet the Governor, who is so pleasant and put-together that you just KNOW he has to be a bad guy. He has put together an entire community called Woodbury, a town fortified with walls and plenty of firepower but with a quaint main street vibe on the inside. It's clean, there's food and facilities... it might even be nicer than the CDC.

But while Andrea warms quickly to the charming Governor (is that some flirtation I see? My god, Andrea, you have horrible taste in men), Michonne remains wary about the whole thing. It's all a bit too perfect, isn't it? Still, maybe there are better ways to go about things than yelling "WE WANT OUR WEAPONS" every five minutes.

As it turns out, her lack of manners are warranted: after the Governor finds out the location of the remaining soldiers from the injured helicopter pilot, he takes his men out there to murder all of them and take their supplies. What's worse, we discover at the end of the episode that the Gov is keeping heads of walkers in fish tanks. Creepy.

You have to wonder what the real motivations are here. Couldn't the Governor have used some trained military men? If he's so averse to bringing in new people, why welcome Andrea and Michonne? Is it a matter of breeding? Are we going to end up with a "28 Days Later" vibe here?

Next week's episode looks to head back to the prison, but we might get a bit of split focus in Woodbury too. Still, don't expect too many answers to these mysteries for a while yet.

The Governor looks to be TV's best new villain, though. An excellent liar, and ruthless killer under the guise of a kind and calm leader... is he the new Gus Fring?