AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ recap: The Governor strikes back in ‘Home’

More thoughts, recaps, and analysis of Sunday night’s episode of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” entitled “Home.”

(For the first part of this article, please click here.)

Daryl runs up onto the bridge, where three people and a baby are being attacked by walkers. Daryl helps, including beheading one with a car’s trunk lid. Merle mostly stands by, then pulls his gun on the Hispanic family afterwards. After a few racist comments, Merle starts to loot their car until Daryl stops him by pulling his crossbow on him, and the family leaves.

They argue in the woods, and Daryl tells Merle he wasn’t going to do anything because there was a baby in the car. As they argue, Daryl’s shirt is ripped off, revealing scars on his back. Apparently both Dixon brothers were abused by their father. Daryl walks off to go back to the prison, and Merle says not to leave because he can’t go after what he did to Michonne and Glenn.

Daryl: I may be the one walking away, but you’re the one that’s leaving…again.

Merle thinks about it, and then goes after him.

At the prison, Hershel stops Glenn from leaving. He asks if he’s going to Woodbury, and Glenn says no, he’s just going out there. Hershel tries to talk him out of it, and to soothe his rage. Glenn says with Daryl gone and Rick crazy, he’s the next in charge and drives off.

Rick is in the woods when he hears someone calling his name, but there’s no one there. As he comes back to the fence Hershel is waiting on him.

Hershel: You know I wouldn’t have hobbled all the way down here if it wasn’t important.

Hershel tells him Glenn’s gone off, and they need Rick to come back. He asks what Rick’s doing, and he can’t really give an answer. He just says he’s got “stuff” out there. He finally tells Hershel about seeing Lori, and hearing the voices on the phone. Hershel asks him to come back, but Rick goes back to the woods. Meanwhile, Carol and Axel talk about it, and as Axel starts to say something about his brother, his head explodes from a bullet. Everyone freezes, and we see the Governor with a sniper rifle parked outside the fence.

A gunfight ensues between Rick’s group and the Governor’s men, with a trapped Carol using Axel’s dead body as a shield. After exchanging several rounds, a van appears and rams through the two front games of the prison. Then the back of the vans opens and walkers pour out. The Governor and his men leave, but Glenn, Merle, and Daryl arrive just in time to make the save. However, the prison is no longer secure, since there are walkers everywhere.

Wow. This second half of the season is moving pretty fast, it seems.

Rating: Eight out of a possible ten vans full of the undead.

-- Reid Kerr thinks Daryl and Merle should get a Hope-and-Crosby style road movie. Follow Reid on Twitter and yell at him.