The differences are so vast, it's getting tiresome reading these comparisons when plenty of posts have been made debunking it in detail.

I don't see how you forget details like a torture chair, heads in the fish tanks and mercilessly killing anybody hostile or not for supplies. Not ever taking counsel or showing a reasonable negotiation tactic and mowing down your entire unit for wanting out of the plan....

Rick gave the invasion of the Saviors up for democratic vote, the group democratically took it and it was after brokering a supply/peace deal with another community. The Governor would have just slaughtered HillTop and taken what they had without a second consideration.

The Governor would have put Jesus in the torture chair and slowly and brutally killed him, if it even got past him capping him on the spot. Rick allowed him to live after seeing good in him and that set up the current story line and Jesus was robbing them for ****s sake!

Come on people... use your deductive reasoning...

Yeah, Rick's a savage and Rick's gotten way more ruthless, but understand context, motivation and the intricate details of the story progression before making black/white comparisons due to Rick's group finally partaking in an offensive act against another.

 

The Governor stabbed his closest friend so he'd turn and eat his recent girlfriend strapped to his torture chair because both didn't want any part of his murderous psychotic plans.

The Governor hit his old friend and current ally Martinez over the head with a golf club and fed him live to pit Walkers because Martinez said something that triggered his psychotic rage.

The Governor would have rather blown the Prison in hell just to get revenge even if it meant the deaths of his new group.

The Governor killed many innocent people, many on his side. No remorse.

..............................

Enough with the comparisons to Rick just because Rick has killed a lot of bad pieces of shit and one moronic Grady Cop who was given multiple chances to cease his fleeing. The Governor would have killed all of the cops and every other living person inside the Grady Hospital, would not have attempted a peaceful exchange.

The Governor doesn't give chances, if you're on the Governor's bad side you're dead.

Rick gives many chances, they don't take risks with raving lunatics in their area anymore but I think they have experienced enough raving lunatics to know the memo on raving lunatics by now. In a lawless uncivilized world where supplies are running scare - you go and remove any and all threats to you and your compatriots or they'll get you.

 

Rick would have been to far gone had he said : well we are short of food and need to kill these evil people so we might as well bring their remains back afterwards so Carol can make some saviory stew with acorn stuffing.

 

Yeah, I agree completely!

 

Well... one of us has the timeline confused. Didn't Rick put it up to a "democratic vote" AFTER he agreed to fight for them AND took their food as payment? If so, that means the vote was just for show - he had decided their course already before asking them. OTOH, If I'm misremembering, then you're right.

Hmm... the more I think about it, maybe they did go back to get the food after the vote. Can't remember.

 

Right, that would show he wasn't thinking as the bodies would become zombified. He should take back prisoners then cut off pieces of them first. Come to think of it, when Rick et. al. were prisoners and the Terminites slit the guy's throat, why didn't he turn? Wouldn't it have made more sense for them to cut off a limb at a time?

 

I agree. U can't really compare the governor and Rick unless you're reaching for little things similar. Like him using a line the governor used "kill them all" but that doesn't make them the same. The better comparison is Rick and Shane which is more accurate. But Rick is nothing like the bad guys they've come across. He's just willing to match them in brutality.

 

But with that being said I do think the bad guys, atleast the governor and Gareth, have had more tragedy in their lives than Rick has had. So while Rick hasn't ever gone to that dark side that they went to you have to kind of understand how messed up their lives were and that's why they did those things. I don't want to see it but I wonder what Rick would be like had Carl been raped or Judith actually been dead or they been kidnapped and tortured. Maybe Rick could lose it and just become evil because he has nothing to live for. But for now he still has a lot of his family so he's not at that point

 

OK, I think I have come up with a middle-ground, conditional approach to the situation.

1. Cut off the head of a walker that looks like Gregory.
2. Have one of the Hilltoppers show up at the compound with said head.
3. Observe the response of the guards.
....a. If the guard says, "Wow, we were just kidding about the the guy's head!" -- Do not attack
....b. If the guard says, "Great, let me get your friend who we've been holding hostage" -- Attack

 

They sent the guy's brother back to kill Gregory, I doubt they were kidding.

Without the hostage, for example, if the Saviors weren't as bad and said, "look, we want to have a relationship between our towns, but we just can't reason with that guy Gregory, if you got a new leader, we won't ask questions about what happened to the old leader," I think it would be worth talking to them. They don't seem to be the reasonable sort though.

OTOH, now might be a good time to "reason" with Negan. Take all 20 heads from this place along with the burnt up heads of his motorcycle guys, drop them on his doorstep and ask to parley, saying that you'll kill off everyone else he has if he doesn't. Meet him on your terms and YOU set the tone of the conversation before he can set up the meeting on his terms.

 

They took the food and agreed to it but they still put it up for everyone to decide. If the group for some reason didn't want to go along with it and they couldn't put together a team, I doubt Rick would have forced them Governor style, or worse.

 

The Governor ambushed and killed an entire National Guard unit to steal their stuff, right after he kidnapped/saved Michonne and Andrea. When Michonne insisted on leaving, he sent Merle to kill her. When Merle kidnapped Glen and Maggie, he let his men, starting with Merle beat Glenn half to death, made Maggie take her shirt and threatened to rape her, then to cut off Glenn's hand to find out where their camp was. When Maggie told, he ordered everyone at the prison to be killed and return the prison to the walkers. He was feeding what looked like a human brain to his daughter and one of the heads in his fish tanks was the Lt that he had "saved". His walker-daughter didn't get re-killed (by Michonne) until the rescue mission for Maggie and Glenn. He was a good leader, but a very bad man.

I don't like the way way Rick seems to be headed -- he keeps making remarks that make him sound little different from the Negan crowd --- at the Hilltop visit, he said, "well we came all this way for food and we're not leaving without it" . At the beginning of the assault on the Negan outpost, he said, "this is the way we eat." Before all this, he threatened and planned to take ASZ away from the Alexandrians if they couldn't defend themselves. I have no problem with Rick's "kill or be killed" pre-emptive strike on these really bad guys. But remarks Rick makes that make him sound just like them trouble me.

I also wondered what Rick would do if they found children sleeping inside the outpost.

 

I doubt he would have killed them, but this is just another soft ball thrown by the show. How powerful of a scene would it have been to have the show happen basically like it did but at the end show a bunch of sleepy kids standing around crying looking at Rick's group, and Rick having to decide whether to take them home and feed them, or leave them to die on their own?

 

He showed up and said the deal is done, we have to do this. What would the point of objecting be?

His group was basically his followers and almost no one else. Do you think if Rick told the Alexandrians at the meeting - not all of them were at the meeting, unless their population has become VERY low - "OK, here's how it goes, we're going to give each of you a knife, and your job is going to be to stab a bunch of people to death in their sleep" that there wouldn't have been more people than Morgan objecting? Heath is one of their explorer/tough guys, and he couldn't even do it. Could Joe/Jane red shirt who has never killed anyone before make their first taking of a human life murdering someone in their sleep?

 

Uhh, Rick did say at the Hilltop when they were trying to get food.. "WE came all this way, were gonna get it..." implying theyd do whatever it takes to leave there with food....