I watched the first episode of season 2 last year and said fuck this show, I'm done.
For some reason, I decided to pick it back up this weekend, and did all of season 2 and 3 yesterday and this morning. I feel like this show tries to be a "realistic" zombie show, where the world is as real as possible but there are just zombies. But then you have shit like the season 2 finale where that old dude is just standing there shooting zombies for 20 minutes with a shotgun, getting headshots, and never once reloading (until it's convenient, as a zombie approaches from behind). As my wife and I were watching the beginning of season 3, I told my wife that I would just stab every corpse in the face. There's no reason not to. Of course, later in the episode a corpse pops up and bites someone. It's just fucking ridiculous.
I feel like it could be a decent show, but the crew making it just don't give a shit. My wife and I also agree that Carl would be about 3/4 less annoying if he'd get rid of that fucking hat.
And this episode, holy shit, could Merle be any more of a dickhat? I mean, any normal person would see that they're in a new social setting and probably just can't call everyone an asshole without them killing you. But maybe Merle is just a sociopath.
My biggest issue is the Governor. They never provide motivation for him. He sets up this community, but seems to pick who he's going to allow to join and who he will kill based on the flip of a coin. Someone said it's because he's afraid of groups who have the capability to defend themselves, but then he takes Andrea and the black chick in. It makes no sense. He's part humanitarian setting up the town, and part psychopath collecting heads and randomly killing people who could make his group stronger. It's like they just wanted a villain character because the zombies are boring, so they created a person with absolutely no human characteristics.