Yeah the episode was a tad shocking given that it seemed to be building to the climatic Rick Vs Gov / Woodbury Vs Prison ending. However looking on it now it is obvious that what we expected, i.e what we have heard from the comic book couldn't really have happened here. The comic book battle is meant to be some epic multi kill war yet what we had here was
Woodbury, tool'd to the nines with loads of folk but most of them being regular sort of fellows just following the Gov due to fear generated propoganda.
The prison more hard bitten fairly well tool'd up but nowhere near enough of them to take on the firepower that came through the gate, certainly not in a face to face combat situation.
What's happened now is the Gov can go away, no doubt regroup with a bunch of folk who are a little more on the same mental batshit wavelength as he is and then come back to face the traitors that are now walled up in their prison, it has potential for a more epic battle, now you could say that they could have covered this scenario in this season alone perhaps, the season did have some down time episodes but having the Gov lose, go off regroup and then come back, perhaps not.
They will no doubt do what they did with the Season 2 and 3 gap. Season 4 will be set a few months after the events of Season 3.
Some thoughts though.
The prison group not grabbing the .50 cal or disabling the vehicles. Remember the place still has walkers roaming around, anyone at the .50 cal or vehicles would have been instant walker bait and given that their plan worked on surprise the last thing they needed was for those people to be firing weapons while trying to fend off walkers.
The prison plan was not clear, until after the event. The prison group didn't know what was coming for them other than they had more people and more fire power. It is only when the Woodbury group gets spooked and the majority of them do a runner does it become clear what the objective was. Rick says 'we did it we drove them out'. The plan changes when Michonne says 'we should go after them' agreed with by Daryl saying 'we should finish it' then Maggie chimes in 'it is finished did you see them high tail it out of here' only at THAT point does it become clear to the prison folk that they were dealing with a bunch of scared folk who were only their because their 'leader' had scared them to the point that they felt they had no option.
Carl, well bad ass and to be honest the road he is going down is a little delayed version of the one that the rest of the group went down, remember a few episodes before hand were Michonne, Carl and Rick just left the hitch hiker to get munched on by walkers and then to add insult to injury took the dead guys backpack on the return journey. H'es just following the road his dad has liad down for him, plus I am with Carl on that one it was a justified kill the guy was slowly reaching towards Carl despite being told to put the weapon down. The only issue is perhaps the lack of emotion he showed.
Andrea, yeah dumb, but still kinda sad also shocking given that in the comic she is actually one of the few main characters that is still alive. Why it took so long for her to do anything, well I think the show was trying to portrait two things here
1). That she just wanted to settle down after ALL the crap she had been through, it is referenced many times through out the series and re emphasised in this episode when she says more than once she just didn't want anyone else to die.
2). That despite the mad, the Gov is clearly someone who was able to polarise folk and bend them to his will, even when they should have been able to see that he was clearly barking.
