4.06 "Live Bait"

From en.wikipedia.org

[i]In a flashback, The Governor (David Morrissey) flees after his massacre of the Woodbury Army, along with his two most trusted henchmen: Martinez (Jose Pablo Cantillo) and Shumpert (Travis Love). They later set up camp at the military outpost where they ambushed the National Guardsmen months earlier. The Governor is sitting in front of a campfire, when a female walker approaches him. She falls into the fire and proceeds to crawl towards him, whereupon Martinez shoots her in the head. Martinez notes that The Governor did not react to the walker approaching him or the subsequent gunshot. The following morning, The Governor finds Martinez and Shumpert have abandoned him, leaving him to fend for himself. He then drives back to Woodbury, which is overrun with walkers, and burns down the entire town.

A few months later, The Governor is still on his own. He sees a young girl, about the same age as his dead daughter Penny, in the window of a nearby apartment building; he then pulls himself back to his feet and investigates. He finds the Chambler family residing inside: two sisters, Lilly (Audrey Marie Anderson) and Tara (Alanna Masterson), Lilly’s daughter Meghan (Meyrick Murphy), and the sisters’ father David (Danny Vinson). The sisters, at first, warily hold The Governor at gunpoint, but then they confiscate his pistol and lead him to one of the adjacent apartments.

After hearing how The Governor has survived the last few months, they ask him how long he plans on staying. He replies, “Just for the night”. They also ask him his name; he replies, “Brian Heriot” (a name he saw in paint on a barn while walking). Later, Lilly comes to the apartment where he is staying and offers “Brian” some food; he accepts, but after she leaves, scrapes the food off the plate and out the window and then resumes eating a can of tuna. He goes to the Chamblers’ apartment to return the plate and is invited inside. He sits down as he watches Meghan and David play a makeshift game of backgammon. After the two sisters request his help getting David up, The Governor carries the elderly man to his room. David asks him to do a favor and get the backgammon set that Bill Jenkins, one of his war buddies, had in his apartment up on the floor above them. The Governor ventures and finds both the backgammon set and a few rounds of ammo. He then hears a noise from the bathroom and finds an undead Bill lying in the tub. The Governor mercifully kills him and notices a revolver in Bill’s hand, which he takes from the corpse. The Governor returns to the Chamblers’ apartment, gives David the game, and leaves.

The following morning, Lilly comes by to give The Governor his gun back and wakes him. He tells her to keep the gun and reveals the revolver that he took. Lilly asks him for one more favor before he leaves: David has Stage-4 lung cancer and his oxygen tank is nearly empty, so he needs a new one. She tells The Governor of an “old folks’ home” located nearby and asks him to grab one or two tanks. The Governor makes his way there and encounters several walkers, but avoids them. Finding a cart of oxygen tanks, he begins to leave, but more walkers appear. After several struggles, he is able to escape the walker-infested nursing home with two tanks. Lilly thanks him and cleans a minor head wound that he received. She lets Meghan stay with him while she goes back to their apartment for more first aid supplies. Meghan asks The Governor how he got the eyepatch; he claims he was a pirate, and they both laugh. He says he will tell Meghan the truth, but only if she does not tell anyone. (He vaguely relates that he got hurt while trying to protect a loved one, who ended up getting hurt, too.) Later, The Governor is teaching Meghan how to play chess, when Lilly reveals that David has died. The Governor tells the surviving Chamblers to leave the room, but Lilly wants another minute alone to say goodbye. David reanimates and nearly bites Tara, but The Governor is able to save them by bashing David’s head with one of the very oxygen tanks he had brought from the nursing home. The women are horrified at first, but Tara and Lilly come to terms with The Governor’s having had to put down the reanimated David and with the fact that he would have thanked “Brian” for it. Meghan, however, avoids The Governor.

After The Governor buries David, he burns the photo of his wife and daughter. That night, he goes to the Chamblers’ to say goodbye, but Lilly insists that he stay. The Governor says they cannot go with him, but Lilly reveals that she saw the photo of his family. She further admits that they are not his old family, but he has become a part of theirs. They leave the building in a food delivery truck parked outside. The morning after they have camped overnight at a lake, their vehicle breaks down, forcing them to abandon it and continue on foot. The Governor and Lilly become intimate. Down the road, Tara injures her leg. The Governor goes ahead and, seeing a group of walkers, orders the group to drop their bags and run. While the rest flee, Meghan freezes in place, and The Governor convinces her to run to him. He then picks her up and leads the others through the woods. When they reach a clearing, The Governor and Meghan fall into a dugout pit and find several walkers inside. Meghan cowers in a corner of the pit as The Governor kills the walkers one by one, with his bare hands. During this scene, gunfire can be heard in the background; it stops soon after The Governor kills the walkers in the pit. The Governor hugs Meghan and says, “Cross my heart”, that he will keep her safe from anything that may harm her. He then hears a surprised voice coming from outside the pit. He looks up and sees Martinez standing above him. The Governor repeats, “Cross my heart”, as he strokes Meghan’s hair, staring up at Martinez and his gun.[/i]

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