The Walking Dead Season 3, Episode 6: Hounded

Yeah, I know, the recap's late. The holiday happened. Deal with it,

SPOILERS!

• I knew the Governor wasn't going to let Michonne just up and leave Woodbury. Especially not after she held a sword to his neck.

 • Loved Michonne's "biter-gram!" Only The Walking Dead could find humor in a pile of rotting body parts.

• Once again, Michonne demonstrates she's quite the badass, dispatching three of Merle's search and destroy team in seconds. OK, Walking Dead writers-- you have thoroughly demonstrated that Michonne is a force to be reckoned with. But enough with the strong silent routine, eh? It's time she started speaking in complete sentences. We know absolutely nothing about her. It would be nice if she spoke a few words and let us in on who she is and where she came from and how she got to be the way she is (yes, I know there's a special Michonne origin story comic out there that explains all this, but I want to see it on the show).

• Last week's episode ended with Crazy Rick answering a mysteriously ringing phone. Readers of the comic had a pretty good idea who was on the other end, but I have to wonder if non-readers were disappointed to find out it was Rick hallucinating various dead members of the group, including Lori.

For the record, the people on the other line were Amy, Jim and Jacqui, people who all died way back in Season 1. And Lori of course.

In the comic, Rick took the crazy act a little farther, carrying around a toy phone for a long time and talking to only Lori on it.

• What in the holy hell is wrong with Andrea? First she says the zombie fights disgusted her, now she says she liked them, and once again she crawls into bed with the most dangerous man she can find. I don't know, maybe the end of the world does something to a gal. I just wish they'd write TV Andrea a little better; more like Comic Book Andrea.

• So in addition to being a motorcycle riding, crossbow shooting nanny, Daryl is now dabbling in child psychology by telling Carl the story of how his mom smoked in bed and accidentally immolated herself. Carl trumped his story though by admitting he shot Lori in the head before she turned.

• Speaking of Daryl, it's inevitable that he's going to meet up with his brother Merle at some point this season. I wonder how that's going to play out? Will he be happy to see him? Daryl's really grown since hooking up with Team Rick and has become an indispensable member of the group. Will he want to go back to being Merle's little brother again? I have a feeling he's not going to be happy to see him.

• I found it odd that Michonne spent many months walking around with two tame zombie bodyguards in order to repel the undead, but didn't know that smearing dead guts all over you makes you invisible to walkers.

By the way, the scene where Michonne disembowels the zombie and gets covered in its guts was extremely gory and disgusting. And of course I loved it!

• When Daryl and Oscar are walking through the prison, Daryl hears a thumping at a door. He makes the world's lamest excuse by saying it sounds like a walker on its last legs or something, and says they'll take care of it when they come back through. WTF? Why, oh why oh why would you leave a "live" walker behind you? And did anyone in the audience NOT realize at that point that it was Carol behind the door? Surely there was a better way to write that scene.

• So I was right, Carol's not dead. I told you all that if you they're never dead if you don't see a body! So now I'm curious-- who or what is buried in her grave? You know, the grave Daryl laid a flower on last week? Glenn dug three graves (helped by Oscar and Axel) and of the three, I don't know that there's anything in any of them. T-Dog might be in one, if there was anything left of him after he became a zombie buffet. We know Lori's not in any of them, as she now resides in the belly of a bloated walker. And now we know Carol's not in one either. So why did Glenn dig the graves in the first place? Therapy? Out of habit? Did they just make tombstones and then fill the graves back in, or did they place some remains they thought might be Carol's inside? I'm confused.

• Well, Glenn and Maggie's run-in with Merle didn't go well now, did it? I have this terrible feeling that either Glenn or Maggie isn't going to leave Woodbury alive. Hopefully things will play out differently than they did in the comic. The whole Woodbury story arc in the comic was really, really grim and brutal and probably couldn't be shown on TV (even on cable).

• So after the Ghost of Christmas Lori tells Rick to shape up, he showers and gets all gussied up and finally holds his baby, or what I guess we are all finally assuming is his baby (and not Shane's). Then he meets Michonne, and the plot thickens.