Wow, what a good episode! Herschel was certainly the man of the hour, or in this case week, but I believe Carl deserves a mention as well. Mowing down walkers with Rick, understanding his duties, how to follow orders, what his responsibilities are... Carl is pretty damn mature. And had some great lines of dialogue as well, as he often seems to! Hopefully after this week's episode, and all the redeeming actions he has done over the course of the season, he'll finally be fully back in Rick's good graces, and take up his rightful place as part of the main group. Mowing down the zombies really did seem like a rite of passage, especially in light of the conversation he had with Rick earlier.

Herschel is the main star though, and the source of much of the tension in this episode. I never really thought that Glenn would die (though I did worry), but I kept thinking that Herschel was about to meet his end. The episode kept hinting at it, and all the usual signs were there. His resistance to follow the doctor's advice, transporting the dead bodies rather than doing the prudent thing and stabbing them in the head on the spot, his mention that he had yet to kill a walker... It all led me to believe that he would be dead before the hour was through. And yet he survived, and that is the biggest twist of all. Survived and kicked ass. The music, the scene with the Bible, his devastated look after Rick told him about Carol, everything was spot on.

I'm less excited about the Governor's return, because I'm not a big fan of that. I fail to see what he can bring to the table now that he couldn't bring to the table last season, but oh well. This season has been very strong so far, so I'll see where this leads. I am very interested in when they will leave the prison though. Now that the defenses were breached once, it will happen again, and the Governor's presence will probably hasten that. It'll be interesting to see how things unfold.

And finally, there's Lizzie. I used to think that she was a creepy little girl that would end up getting lots of people killed, either by freeing some walkers, or feeding them, or failing to kill one, or something else along those lines. Here she was actually helpful though, and saved Glenn... And that has really changed my perspective on her. I still think she faked her way into the sick bay, and was never really ill to begin with, and some of her behavior is certainly odd... But even her toying with Glenn's blood at the end of the episode didn't strike me as creepy or weird as it would have before. Now it seemed more like something childish and nonchalant. In any case, I'm willing to give her a chance now. I wonder where her story will lead.