AMC's The Walking Dead

Same here. The Governor from the first half of Season 3 had a dark side, obviously, but he was really just a darker version of Rick. The Governor did what he had to do to keep his group safe, comfortable and alive, same as Rick. The angles that took skewed toward "evil," yet he was just a deeper shade of gray than most. It could be argued the Governor was a better leader than Rick, since he was able to confine the worst of the horrors to a small part of Woodbury's population while the rest were blissfully unaware. With Rick's group, everyone shared in the misery.
By the end of Season 3 -- perhaps because his utopia had been cracked by Rick's group -- we saw his paranoia creep in and he became the over the top comic book villain we've all grown to loathe.

 

Exactly, in many ways the Gov. was just further along the line of difficult choices than Rick was, like Shane or Carol.
Villians with real motivations are much more interesting.

 

Figuring out the timeline takes a few moments if you stop to think about it. I'll assume that they ended last season in mid-Nov. (it seemed cooler since they were wearing jackets at the end of the season while outside)

End of season 3 (mid-Nov.): The Gov. kills his people, takes off in truck with his dynamic duo of Martinez and Shumpert.
Start of last episode (mid-Nov.): continues from where they left off
Next morning: Martinez and Shumpert leave The Gov. at campsite
Montage (Dec.-Feb.): A span of 2-3 months of him wandering the land, like Kane. (would give him a good scraggly beard)
Meeting the family (March): First day, they meet him. Day 2, he kills the upstairs zombie. Day 3, he goes to leave, but they ask him to stay and get the O2 canister. He gets hurt and the little girl talks to him.
Commercial break and we come back to him clean shaven and playing chess, and the gash is down to a line above his eye...so that means he's been there for a while as he healed up. It could have been a month or six weeks later. (mid-May).
The dad dies, they bury him and get in the truck. Maybe they were on the road for 3-5 days (just a pure guess).
Martinez finds them in a hole.

Now, couple that with what has been going on at the prison and the fact that showrunner Gale Anne Hurd has said it's been a few months in numerous interviews...it fits into the timeline.
This next episode will fit the gap that is missing between The Gov. in a hole and him outside the prison.

 

I wouldn't assume the Gov.'s henchmen split the very next day.

Anyway, I've had no problem with the timeline.

 

We don't know exactly how long they stayed with him, just that they split and left him as he was sleeping one night.

 

Why not? Your boss just mowed down a bunch of your people and ordered you to get in the truck.
The second he was sleeping, I would be getting the fuck outta there!

 

Am I the only one who thinks the Governor would kill every single person in that prison to give the sweet little girl a safe home? And, you know, because he hates them too.

 

You're not alone in that thinking.

 

How could he?

Also, I didn't like the episode that much, but pretty much everything TyWebb said was stupid. And he said many things.

 

Anyone watch The Returned on Sundance Channel? It's a totally different French take on zombies. Supposed to be creepy. I have an episode DVR'd, but haven't watched yet.

 

Did it just start?
I'm not really a big fan of the zombie genre, that's why it took so long for our house to get on the 'Walking Dead' bandwagon, but I'll give it a look.

 

To say it's "zombies" isn't really accurate on my part. Per the title, more like returned dead people.