Day 27: We're seeing too much of The Governor this season

(The love-gov, pre-eye incident. Illustration courtesy of Fresh Doodle)

So, I watched The Walking Dead yesterday (semi-spoiler alert!). And for the second straight episode, the plot focused on the antics of the show's notorious one-eyed crazy person: The Governor. The episode... I didn't like it, and I didn't like it because I quite frankly don't care about what The Governor is up to each week. I don't have a disposition to dislike him, as a character, but good gracious have these last two episodes been a waste of time.

I mean, here's the thing with The Governor. In the last episode of Season 3, the dude took out a machine gun and just murdered like 30 people on the spot for no reason whatsoever. Now, when you do something that crazy and evil, there's no going back. You're now a full-blown, mass-murdering psycopath. The whole well-maybe-he's-not-as-bad-as-it-seems thing goes out the window at that point.

Which is why these latest two episodes annoyed the hell out of me. The show, two episodes ago, was trying to construct the idea that The Governor was reformed and ashamed of what he had done and a better person. But, again, this is a dude who shot 30 people for no damn reason not that long ago. Like, he pretty much spontaneously became a serial killer. It doesn't matter how nice and docile he might have become, because there's no way to become redeemable after doing something like that. It'd be like watching Ted Bundy try to settle down with a family while claiming that he's a rehabilitated, normal member of society. You may watch it out of morbid curiosity, but by no means could you possibly ever, ever root for the guy. When the show put The Governor on the screen for a full hour a week ago, I honestly shrugged. I thought, "God, can this guy just die already?"

And in this latest episode, The Governor went right on back to being a full-blown murderous nutso guy, killing all the people I expected he'd kill to get to the top of another group's food chain. So essentially, the show went through the trouble of establishing this completely unbelieavable premise that The Governor was a jolly ole nice guy, only to then immediately reestablish him as Mr. Murder. What a waste of time. Maybe I wouldn't be so harsh about him, but I seriously don't think the show has any idea what to do with him. They just keep turning his character dial to RUTHLESS MADMAN, and that's not interesting to me.

So will he die in the next episode? God I hope so. I'm guessing he won't though. I'm guessing the show-runners are trying to build up The Governor as the official long-running antagonist of The Walking Dead -- a dude who will torment Rick and the others for season after season after season, like he's the show's version of Lex Luthor or Skeletor. But boy, do I hope I'm wrong about that.

Aight. Let's talk about some fantasy stuff, since that's what we're all here for, right?

• The Bulls got annihilated in their first game without Derrick Rose, losing to the Clippers by 39 points. Kirk Hinrich had 9 points and 7 assists, which is pretty good considering he didn't play at all in the fourth quarter. Hinrich is looking like he'll be a terrific source of assists and steals for the remainder of the season. Sure, there's a chance Rose could come back, but I don't think I'd be saying anything usual if I expressed skepticism in D-Rose's ability to come back from an injury in a timely manner.
• Jared Dudley had 21 points and 4 three's for the Clippers on Sunday. With Matt Barnes out with an eye injury, Dudley should get a nice boost in minutes over these next two weeks. But he just doesn't offer enough long-term upside to invest in him.
• Rodney Stuckey was terrific for the Pistons, scoring 27 points and dishing out 6 assists in 31 minutes off the bench. Stuckey is playing fantastic right now and obviously needs to be scooped up from the waiver wire if he hasn't been already. He's scored at least 16 points in six straight games despite not playing more than 31 minutes in any of them.
• Tobias Harris made his long-awaited season debut for the Magic, producing just 6 points in 16 minutes of action. Orlando is so deep at power forward that they have Andrew Nicholson, Glen Davis and Tobias Harris all coming off the bench right now -- all of whom are capable and deserving of major minutes at the four-spot. We've seen how incredible Harris can be when the rest of the team clears out and lets him operate. Still, it's hard to see him being tremendously useful until the team can find a way to get him major minutes again. Assuming that happens, Harris is currently someone to hold on to. But again -- expect a radically less productive version of him than he showed a season ago.
• Joe Johnson had his best game of the year for the Nets: 34 points on 8 three's with 4 assists. Johnson was the beneficiary of Deron Williams and Brook Lopez being out, and while those two guys aren't exactly surefire locks to always be around, this is probably a good time to sell high on him, as Johnson happens to be an aging vet himself. (By the way, the Nets lost again and are now 3-10. So, uh... Jason Kidd is going to get fired, right? Because this team seriously has a one-year window to do anything.)
• The Jazz have decided to move Enes Kanter to the bench, where he scored just 10 points on Sunday. His replacement in the starting lineup, the never-reliable Marvin Williams, had 4 points on 2-8 shooting. Utah is a horrible team no matter what they do to their lineup, but it seems unbelievably counterproductive for them to squelch Kanter's progress by sending him to the bench -- especially when they literally have nothing to lose. I consider this a great buy-low moment for him, as I can't possibly imagine he'll be coming off the bench for any great length of time.
• Russell Westbrook took the night off on Sunday, which allowed Reggie Jackson to start and put up 10 points and 7 assists. That's not a horrible line, but still. Jackson shouldn't be on your fantasy team when Westbrook is healthy.
• Greivis Vasquez finally had a good game for once, putting up 20 points and 7 assists against the Lakers. He's still far less valuable than Isaiah Thomas, however, who's clearly the team's point guard of the future.
• Boy, do I need to retract my passive endorsement of Blogger's mobile configuration. I spotted that I wrote "Mr. Mister" instead of "Mr. Murder" earlier, which sent me on a quest to correct the error. But it's almost impossible to make a series of edits on Blogger through a mobile device without the page failing to load. And just getting the curser to highlight the issue takes a crazy amount of effort.