Violet recaps Season 4 Episode 6 of The Walking Dead, titled Live Bait, where we find out what the Governor has been up to since the last time we saw him last season! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts on the episode.
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The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 6: Live Bait Recap Overview
Need a quick The Walking Dead episode recap of Season 4 Episode 6, titled Live Bait? Here is a summary of events for the episode. Each event is linked to the more detailed The Walking Deadepisode recap for Live Bait if you need more information!
- Soon after the Governor shot and killed his people, he is abandoned by his two remaining men. He burns down Woodbury, then continues on his own, until he comes to another town.
- The Governor befriends a family living in the building, consisting of two sisters, a daughter, and a grandfather. He says his name is Brian Heriot.
- At the grandfather’s request, the Governor goes upstairs to retrieve a backgammon set. At Lily‘s request, the Governor goes to the nursing home to obtain oxygen tanks for her father.
- Meghan bonds with the Governor — until her grandfather dies and the Governor has to bash his brains in to save Tara.
- The girls leave with the Governor in the food truck. Meghan remains distant from him, Lily gets it on with him.
- The truck breaks down, so they continue on foot. They have to run from a horde of walkers. As the Governor carries Meghan, he falls into a pit of walkers, then kills them with his bare hands. Martinez finds the Governor in the pit.
The Walking Dead Episode Recap: Live Bait, the Details
The Governor Perseveres
Season 4 Episode 6 of The Walking Dead, titled Live Bait, is all about the Governor. It picks up right after the Governor shot all his people last season and drove off with Martinez and the other guy. Later, they are camping in tents, and the Governor is sitting alone by the fire. A walker starts walking toward him, then trips over the fire and begins to crawl toward him, while he just sits there. Martinez shoots it dead.
The next morning, the Governor wakes up and comes out of his tent. He is alone. He takes the big army truck to Woodbury and burns down the town. Next we hear a voiceover of the Governor explaining his situation to someone, that he has been on his own on the road for the past couple months. He says that before, he was in a town where the man in charge “lost it” and that he barely got out alive. Meanwhile, the now shaggy looking Governor stumbles and falls to the ground in a town. He looks up and sees a little girl looking at him from the window, so he goes to investigate.
New Town, New Name
Inside, he is met by two women. One has a gun, and the other has a baseball bat. He holsters his gun, then places the holster on the floor. The girl with the gun takes it.
They let him into their apartment. He says he’s only planning on staying in the building for the night. The girl with the gun, Tara, says she’s Atlanta City Police, and threatens to “put him down” if he messes with her family. They hold onto his gun until he goes. He tells them his name is Brian Heriot — which is a name he saw written on the side of a barn while he was on the road.
Later, Tara’s sister brings the Governor a bowl of Spaghetti-O’s, but he throws them out the window after she leaves. Meanwhile, in Tara’s apartment, the little girl plays backgammon with her grandfather. The Governor comes to leave the empty bowl outside their door, but they hear him, and let him in. Tara explains that their father drove for a food truck, so they have plenty of food. Tara’s sister, Lily, stole some oxygen tanks for their father as well. The two girls go to help their father up, but the Governor picks him up and carries him to his bed.
Backgammon Mission, then Oxygen Tank Mission
Above the grandfather’s bedroom, they hear walkers walking around. The old man says how Tara keeps shooting them, but they keep getting back up. He asks the Governor to get a nice backgammon set from his buddy’s apartment, because it might make his granddaughter, Meghan, talk again.
The Governor goes up and finds the backgammon set. While there, he finds a legless walker in the bathtub, and kills it with a knife to the eye. He also finds a gun sitting on top of the walker, and takes it.
The Governor returns, and gives the backgammon set to the grandfather, then leaves. He takes out a picture of himself with his wife and daughter, then folds it over so that he can only see his wife and daughter in the picture.
The next morning, Lily comes to bring him a couple things for the road, and to give him his gun back, but he tells her to keep it, since he has another one. He explains he found it upstairs. He also tells her that you have to hit them in the brain to kill them. Lily tells the Governor that her dad has stage 4 lung cancer and only has about 2 days left of oxygen. She asks him to get another tank from the old folks home in town.
The Governor goes to the nursing home. He comes across a walker in a wheelchair, and a couple of walkers in their rooms, but ignores them, other than to close a door. He finds a push cart loaded up with several oxygen tanks, and starts to leave with them, but runs across several able bodied walkers, so he just takes two oxygen tanks and runs away.
Pinky Swear
He returns and gives Lily the oxygen tanks, then retreats to his room. Lily, a former nurse, comes in to doctor up the scratch on his head he got from his run in with the walkers. She explains that Meghan thought he was her dad when she saw him, and that Meghan’s dad went out for a Powerball ticket one day and never came back.
Meghan comes in and apparently is talking again. While Lily goes to get ointment, Meghan asks what happened to the Governor’s eye. He has her promise to keep it a secret, and she pinky swears. He tells her he’s a pirate, but she doesn’t believe him, and he laughs. But then he says it happened when he was trying to protect someone he loved.
The next time we see the Governor, he is clean shaven and has gotten a haircut. He is teaching Meghan to play chess. She draws an eye patch on one of the chess pieces. Lily comes out of her father’s bedroom to bring Meghan in. She tells the Governor that he is gone, and she thinks he’s been gone awhile. He tells them they should go, but they say to give them a minute. Tara is sitting at her father’s bedside, when he begins to reanimate and lunges for her. However, the Governor bashes his head in with an oxygen tank.
On the Road Again
The Governor digs a hole and buries the body. When he comes back inside, Meghan runs and hides. Tara thanks him for what he did. He goes back to his room and burns the picture of him with his family, then throws it out the window. He knocks on Lily’s door to tell her goodbye, but she says they’re coming with him, despite his protests.
The next day, they drive off in the food truck, with no set plan of where to go. Tara confesses that she’s not really a cop, but that she was in the academy. They stop by a pond and make a fire. Meghan remains distant from the Governor. That night, they sleep side by side in the truck, with Lily laying next to the Governor. She physically expresses her interest in him, and they decide to get busy right then and there.
Trouble on the Road
The next day, the truck won’t start, so they continue on foot. Tara trips and injures her ankle. As they begin to round the corner, they come across a horde of walkers. The Governor tells them to drop their bags and run. However, Meghan stays behind. The Governor coaxes her to run to him, and she finally runs into his arms, and lets him carry her. Lily lets Tara lean on her for support.
As the Governor runs with Meghan, he falls into a pit — which looks like the same one that he and his men used to burn walkers in. Unfortunately, there are three walkers in the pit. One, he bashes its head into the bones of other walkers on the ground. The second, he rips its throat out. The third, he punches in the head. However, the second has gotten back up and starts going after Meghan, who is cowering in the corner. The Governor takes a large bone and places it into the walker’s mouth, then uses it to rip its mouth backward, unhinging the jaw, thus breaking the head in two. This does the trick, and he picks up Meghan and hugs her, promising he would never let anything happen to her. Meanwhile, we have been hearing gunfire. We find out the source, who is surprised to see the Governor in the pit: Martinez.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 4 Episode 6 of The Walking Dead: Live Bait
So… are they trying to make us like the Governor now? Or at least sympathize with him? Because it’s not working for me. I can see right through their ploy. It reminds me of right before Merle got killed off, when they tried to redeem him in the eyes of the audience, and in the eyes of Rick’s group. It didn’t work on me then, and it’s not going to work on me now. Even with the emotional music that tries to make you feel something for him. I’m not going to forget what a bad guy he was last season, and how he ended up shooting and killing his own people.
Although I did want to know what the Governor has been up to since last season, I didn’t think it was necessary to have an entire episode dedicated to the Governor and the Governor alone. However, if they were going to pick a time to focus on something other than the prison group, that was a good break point, with Daryl returning to the prison and wondering what happened to Carol, and the group starting to heal from the illness.
It looks like the next episode is going to be focused on the Governor yet again, from the point that Martinez found him in the pit. It appears that Martinez is now the bad guy, and the Governor may be leading a new group of followers who think he’s a good guy. My guess is that the end of this next episode will catch us back up to the end of the last episode with Rick’s group, where we saw the Governor standing outside of the prison, and that the subsequent episode, which is the midseason finale, will show us what happens when the two groups meet.
Josh’s Thoughts: The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 6: Live Bait
Obviously, this episode of The Walking Dead is trying to make The Governor appear more human. This episode was slow paced, and rather boring in my opinion, but depending on what the show does with The Governor, it may be an important character building episode.
I am curious to see what he will be doing with Martinez now that they have joined back up. It seems as though Martinez plans to be the leader this time around. It seems as though The Governor has really taken in Meghan, the young girl. We can see that the Governor has some good intentions left him in, considering how hard he fought to get the oxygen tanks for the grandfather. That is, unless he is trying to repent for his ways from before? It is difficult to say his intentions fully so far.
What I can’t wait for is the confrontation between the prison and him. We have been waiting all season for this and it is about time! The next episode looks to be solely with the Governor again, so I do not think it will be this one unfortunately.
Scenes from The Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 7: Dead Weight
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Walking Dead, titled Dead Weight:
What did you think of Season 4 Episode 6 of The Walking Dead, titled Live Bait? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
This episode made me think for a second that The Governor was maybe not that bad anymore. The ripping a walker’s face with his bare hands bit kind of killed that feeling.