Calvin Johnson to grace Madden NFL 13 cover

After several weeks of tournament-style voting, Madden NFL 13 has found its cover athlete: Calvin Johnson. Johnson, also known as Megatron around the league, posses some of the greatest hands in today's game, and has played played a major role in the Detriot Lions recent success.

EA confirmed that the 2013 cover athlete contest drew over 19 million votes, a 54 percent increase from last year. The increase is likely due to EA's mass marketing campaign for the contest, which included TV time on several of ESPN's major shows.

“The Madden NFL 13 Cover Vote has been bigger and better than ever thanks to all of our fans voting in record-setting fashion to honor Calvin Johnson, Jr. and we are thrilled to have him be the next face of the Madden NFL franchise,” said Anthony Stevenson, Madden NFL 13 director of marketing. “

Madden NFL 13 is due out August 8, 2012.

Source: [EA press release]

After a series of strong, self-contained episodes, The Walking Dead attempts to repeat the formula tonight, with mixed results.  It’s now starting to feel like these one-off adventures aren’t so much a deliberate effort at self-contained stories within a larger narrative framework, but rather a stalling technique, to give the characters things to do until the big battle that the writers obviously want to save for the finale.  Character consistency is often a problem in this show, but the beginning of tonight’s episode is likely the most this season (and maybe in the whole run of the show) that I could feel the writers at work, pushing the characters around in accordance with where the plot needs to go, rather than how they would actually behave.

I had a second major problem as well, and that’s the death of Merle.  It felt so predictable and standard, not to mention that it robbed us of a character who not only has lots of dramatic potential, but who is portrayed by one of the strongest actors on the show.  Merle’s presence on the show provided interesting conflict with many of the other characters, and let us see another side of Daryl in the process.  He had so many places that he could have gone as a character, and as soon as I saw that tonight’s episode was Merle-centric, my heart sank, because it surely meant that he was a goner.

Everything about Merle’s death felt by-the-numbers, (notwithstanding the sequence itself, which was pretty good) from the way that he monologue about why he was the way he was, to his attempt at a heroic sacrifice by trying to bring down the Governor.  In addition to the fact that his sneak attack didn’t amount to much (apart from taking out a few of the Governor’s men), the ‘heroic sacrifice’ angle just felt lazy, as I would have much rather seen Merle struggle to redeem himself despite the prejudices of his comrades.  Instead his arc felt truncated and predictable, which I think is a shame.  You will be missed, Michael Rooker.  You played the hell out of that racist redneck.

Let’s talk about the first ten minutes of the episode.  Rick has suddenly decided that they must turn Michonne over to the Governor, despite the fact that this is a decision I don’t buy for a second that he would actually make.  Not only are his two most trusted advisors against the idea, but it’s inconsistent with what we saw at the end of ‘Arrow on the Doorpost.’  Plus, Rick didn’t even trust Michonne or Tyrese when he met them, so I have no reason to believe that he wouldn’t instantly assume that the Governor was trying to spring a trap, which we happen to know for a fact that he is.  Between that knowledge and Rick’s sudden naïveté, the whole thing feels awkward and deflated, which is only validated when Rick goes back on his decision ten minutes later because Ghost Lori shows up.

This is also really inconsistent use of Crazy Rick, which the show has mostly backed down from in the past few episodes.  It now sort of feels like the show uses Ghost Lori to justify whatever decision from Rick that it wants, which I hope isn’t a trend that continues.

But of course, it’s too late, and Merle has already escaped with Michonne.  This decision seems odd too, then seems okay when we realize that he’s gonna try to take down the Governor, then seems weird again when you think about it some more and realize that he could have just gone on his own if that was the goal.   I think the idea is supposed to be that he changed his mind partway through, but there isn’t any real impetus for that, apart from his conversation with MIchonne, but she doesn’t exactly say anything earth-shattering.  And even if that’s the case, I’m not really sure why Merle was convinced that handing over Michonne was a good idea anyway.  If there’s anyone that knows how little you can trust the Governor, it’s Merle.
This all means that Rick’s decision to send Michonne to the Governor only existed so that we could get an episode about Merle and Michonne on the road, which is a fine impulse to have, but there’s got to be a way to get us there that doesn’t involve everyone suddenly acting wildly out-of-character.

There was also a subplot involving Glenn proposing to Maggie, which was, you know, fine.  It all played out in a pretty standard way (apart from the weirdly casual proposal itself), but I get that the idea is that they are taking care of their last bit of business before the coming battle.  The fact that said battle is only spanning one episode concerns me a bit, though.  We have all of these episodes dealing with specific issues leading up to the ‘War,’ but wouldn’t it be more interesting if it felt like all of these little conflicts were part of the war?  If the conflict between the two camps slowly escalated, rather than being seven episodes of buildup followed by one of actual conflict?  But I digress.

I know I’m being rough on this episode, but there were things I really enjoyed about it.  The staging of the action sequences was wonderful, but that’s always been the show’s strength.  The bit with Michonne and Merle in the parking lot was really fun, especially because we got to see Michonne be a badass without even having to use her sword.

I also thought that the ending, apart from the implications of the death of Merle, was suspenseful and well thought-out.  The car decoy/zombie herd maneuver was clever, and worked extremely well.  I thought that the actual fight between Merle and the Governor was a bit anti-climactic, but the Governor did bite Merle’s fingers off, so maybe I’m wrong.

The major strength of the episode was the interplay between Merle and Michonne, who found themselves in a very different situation than last time they crossed paths.  Their conversation in the car didn’t feel as momentous as I think the episode wanted it to, but there was a level of fun and energy in their interactions that is rare on the show, and which I really enjoyed watching.  In addition to learning more about Merle (even if it didn’t really all make sense), we continued to get more and more of a bead on Michonne, and what kind of person she might have been before the Zombie Apocalypse.

And all that remains is the battle.  After all of this build-up, there’s a lot of pressure to pull this one off, but I have faith.  As I mentioned before, The Walking Dead has always excelled at action sequences; it’s the ‘people talking to each other’ bit that it has trouble with.

THREE STARS