I was thinking about the Goveror's town... before Rick got there, what was the worst that was happening? ####### with zombies, ####### with people who got on the wrong side of the "law"/governor by putting them in a zombie battle ground (or did I remember that from another one of these shows/movies?). Governor was obviously a psychopath, but for the hoi-poiloi- didn't they have a good thing going... until Rick and his gang ####ed their world up? Or am I forgetting more of the crazy ####.
In Rick's defense he was just rescuing people the Governor was holding hostage and torturing.
But we've been traveling down the road of just how good are Rick and his group really. That's been a huge theme of the show for awhile now. Last night Rick drove straight off the deep end.
The show keeps hammering that point home ("OMG Those people have done bad things!!!!"), but really Rick's group
is basically good all things considered. Relative to everybody else they've encountered, they haven't done anything particularly evil. The worst thing they've done is killing a few cannibals that they technically didn't absolutely have to kill.
Rick wanting to kill a wife-beating drunk isn't exactly a fall into a Hobbesian state of nature. He wants to kill an unlikeable character that everybody in the viewing audience is preconditioned to hate. That's not exactly bold storytelling if the writers are going for some kind of anti-hero angle.