'The Walking Dead' recap, episode 310: 'Home'

Holy Hannah! What the heck was all that you guys?

Axel is dead (Good night, sweet prince), the Governor strapped it up and gleefully squeezed off rounds on the prison stronghold, Glenn is having major leadership and relationship issues, and Daryl and Merle cut their Oregon Trail LARPing adventure short to return to cell block C.

Also, Merle peed on a tree and he and Daryl spit everywhere.

Were they suggesting that Merle and Daryl had huge, fat lippers in, or are they just saying that backwoods people love to spit all the time?

I think that a good mobile game would be a Merle Trapping Small Woodland Creatures game.

Do I have to comment on the whole Lori spectre thing again? This time she was standing near the graves all spooky like, and Rick eventually walks right up to her and we see her pretty face again and everything. But what's the point? It's all in Rick's head so there's no real payoff.

I think now that the bullets are whizzing around again he'll just snap out of it anyway.

The Governor has initiated a transfer of power from himself to Andrea. But is he fa'real, or just messing with her mind?

Well there will also be some water cooler talk tomorrow about when Daryl slammed the trunk of that Subaru onto the zombie's head. My big question was why did he have to mess up the car? He really ruined the upholstery of that thing when he could have just made that mess out on the road.

And then what was going on with Milton? What's in that tea he's always drinking anyway? He was acting very bizarre and awkward. I bet hip people in Woodbury call him "space cadet" all the time because he's always spacing out and acting like a weirdo.

He's sitting there in his labratory playing Virtua Boy and listening to dolphin mating calls when that jock the Governor comes in and is like "HEY NERD!"

Here are a few of the unusual things Milton stammers in this episode:

• "I was trying to induce a medita-ta-ta-tative state. I'vebeenhavingtrouble. Your battery, it's over here..."
• "I ... thank you … I feel … me too."
• "You! ... startled me... "
• "I'm not sure ... I, where he is, I mean, not whether it's a question or an answer it wuzzun answer."

Speaking of crazy people, we saw Rick reach a peak of craziness when he was standing outside the prison gate doing that bit where he hugs himself and makes making out sounds and pretends that he's playing seven minutes in heaven.

Hershel is like, "Oh Rick, won't you stop acting all batty out there and come back inside and eat a hearty bowl of Dinty Moore stew?"

I bet that Rick is going to slowly start to regain his grip on the frayed ends of sanity now that there is a direct threat for him to focus on and react to.

Daryl and Merle's story arc also bears mention. I thought that the scene where they rescue that family being assailed by the zombies at the bridge was pretty cool, just because it's neat anytime you meet new characters. What were those guys speaking, Italian? Does anyone know what they were saying?

I'm pretty happy that Daryl and Merle have come back to the prison. Not so much because I'm a huge Daryl fan like everyone else is, but because we'll probably get to see more Merle.

I found the scene where Daryl almost ditched Merle very touching. Merle starts to get a little choked up. Michael Rooker acting FTW!

Do you think that Glenn's rage would have got him killed? Or would he have been smart to eliminate his enemy by hitting him in his sleep?

I don't know if anyone else liked Axel as much as I did, but I'm sure gonna miss that guy. Pretty much every time he opened his furry little mouth, something memorable came out.

I also liked when he told his origin story about how he robbed a convenience store with a water pistol and he hid out at his brother's house. I bet his brother looked like Dale Gribble from "King of the Hill".

Poor Axel. He and Carol really seemed to be hitting it off, too. After he got shot in the head, Carol at least gave him a consolation prize by spooning with his corpse.

The Governor's attack on the prison involves some guy dressed up in a ninja costume hauling ass through the gates in the truck from the Coal Chamber album cover. Then they release a bunch of zombies out of the back.

Well I don't think that was such an awesome plan. All the people inside the prison are already used to killing zombies pretty easily, so it's more of just a nuisance. If they really wanted to cause trouble they should have taped guns to the zombies hands or put more soldiers in the back of the truck.

There seemed to be some new extras in this episode standing on the wall in Woodbury. None of them really did anything notable except for this woman named Karen who had a flame war with Andrea. Andrea is like "Where is Martinez?" And then Karen is like "???" And Andrea is like "SMFH".

Well Karen is this actress named Melissa Ponzio. She is a hotty and she was born in New York in 1972. She did a bunch of commercials and some TV shows. She was in a movie called "Road Trip: Beer Pong". Her character is probably going to die in a violent manner soon.

I should take this moment to give credit to The Walking Dead Wiki. They do a really great job of identifying new cast members as soon as they show up and keeping an encyclopedic database of The Walking Dead. They should have called it WalkingDeadia though.

• That creek where the family was stranded on the bridge was called Yellow Jacket Creek.
• Maggie's gun was shaking around like she was the shakiest gun in the west, but she somehow sniped off that sharpshooter up in the guard tower. While I'm at it, who was that guy and how did he get up there?
• One of the cars had a decal that just said "NATIVE".
• That commercial break thing said this: Norman Reedus on which TWD character he would like to be stuck with in an actual zombie apocalypse:
  
  "I think it would be Rick, not just because I have an obvious crush on the actor who plays him. Rick is confident and he's well-mannered and he truly cares. If not Rick it would be Glenn. I base both of these answers on the actors, perhaps more than the roles they are playing, but I'd go with those two."
  
  Man these things are really dumb. And why are they always hassling Norman Reedus to do them? Is he being punished? Again, I'd rather see the top ten zombie vidya games of all time, or the top ten most violent Cannibal Corpse song titles, or something other than this.
• The scene where Glenn talks to Maggie with the sun glinting over his shoulder looks like it could have been a cell from the comic book.
• Daryl seems to have only two arrows that he reuses over and over.
• Daryl accuses Merle of abandoning him when they were kids because their dad (step dad?) was beating both of them.
• Daryl has a sick Glenn Danzig tat on his back.
• Axel has a sick tat of two tumbling dice on his neck.

• Years before he became an actor, Lew Temple (Axel) was MVP of his college baseball team (Rollins College) and a scout for the Houston Astros. (Thanks "Talking Dead"!)
• The Governor's assualt rifle was a Steyr AUG 5.56mm. (Thanks AMC Story Sync!)

Governor: "I thought this place would be something else, something better … I wasn't up to the challenge and I screwed it up. I've done some terrible things. I'm not fit to lead these people."

Merle: "Is that what your new friends taught you? Hmm? How to loot for booty?"

Axel: "I hope nothing happens. Guns scare the bejeezus out of me."

Axel: "You quite a lady!"

Merle: "Whoa, take it easy little buddy. I'm just trying to have a little fun here. No need to get your panties all in a bundle!"

Merle: "Wild animals gettin' wild ...  oh come on why don't you just piss in my ear and tell me it's raining too. That there is the sound of a couple 'coons making love, sweetie love. Know what I mean?"

Merle: "The least they can do is give us an enchilada or something. Easy does it senorita, everything is gonna be fine..."

Daryl: "You lost your hand cause you're a simple minded piece of sh!t!"

Daryl: "He's Korean!" Merle: "Whatever, man."

Daryl: "I may be the one that's walking away, but you're the one that's leaving!"

Rick: "I, I've been, I've got stuff … out here. stuff..."

Axel: "My brother? Hell no! He had a real money problem … he didn't lend me any! One time that sonofa…(blammo!)"

Winner: Merle. DUH!

I know that zombie's heads are kind of decayed and stuff but do you really think that its head would smash up so easily? A human skull is pretty strong. And aren't those trunks built to not slam too hard, probably so people couldn't slam a trunk on someone's head and kill them?

• Where are Morgan and Duane?
• How do Milton's inventions work?
• Where did Tyreese and his group go?
• Who was that foreign family and what were they saying?