7x12 Say Yes

[8.6/10] The running line on The Walking Dead has been that the show is too bleak and too steeped in misery. The open-ended nature of the show, and thus the demand for more adventures means our heroes can never truly “win” and the abject state of the world has to continue. That means that, for the plot to have any bite, people we care about to keep dying; equilibrium can’t be established; more problems and losses and hurdles have to pile up.

I understand how that prospect wears on people. Maybe I’m just jaded from years of post-apocalyptic and gritty works that allow me to take this sort of thing in stride. But I get it – the notion that this is simply the ongoing march of The Walking Dead, never to cease, with characters we like continually picked off, could be too much for a number of viewers.

But what I like about the show, what keeps me coming back, and what is always underemphasized when this debate arises again and again, is that The Walking Dead is also a show about what motivates people to go on in these circumstances, about the connections that give them something to fight for when there’s no institutions or expectations or anything else to make them do it. It is a world of outrageous choice, one where there is still joy and comfort and sacrifice and love, regardless of whether the environment is hospitable to it.

What elevates “Say Yes” is how Rick and Michonne acknowledge that struggle, how they recognize what the current state of the world means for them, but find the happiness in it anyway. There is a strength that comes from the bond with another person, a buoying connection that can emerge even in the harshest of circumstances. It’s laced with the sad reality that such things, like all things, are only temporary, but it’s there.

So when Rick and Michonne go out searching for guns to placate the Junkyardigans, and stumble across an unexpected supply near a walker-filled carnival campground, we see the two of them enjoying the closest thing there is to a honeymoon The Walking Dead has to offer.

And it’s fun! They are playful with one another. They are loving with one another. They embark on this quest, nominally a functional one to obtain the fodder to put up a fight against The Saviors, but it’s also an escape, a chance to be together just the two of them. There is banter, honest to god banter between the two of them, and it is unexpectedly adorable.

To be frank, this is the most I’ve cared about Rick in years. While Michonne has been one TWD’s most compelling presences for a while now, Rick has just been sort of there, doing much of the same “heavy is the head that wears the crown” material he’s done for a while. There’s some of that here too, but pairing him up with Michonne, having them fight together, laugh together, getting a little peace together humanizes him. It turns him from the ever-conflicted leader of men into just another person enjoying time with someone he loves.

Of course, this being a show set in the zombie apocalypse, that time is a little unorthodox relative to what we might consider normal. The carnival is a great setting, because it leads to all sorts of little ways for Rick and Michonne to do their job while adding a little whimsy to it. Small touches like Michonne winning a midway game using a real sniper rifle, or the pair falling through the roof and chuckling about it, or tucking into some ready-to-eat rations livens the episode in a way that belies the show’s bleak reputation.

It also makes for some entertaining zombie set pieces. There is a cockiness to Rick and Michonne when they gear up for the big zombie fight in the carnival itself. They’ve done this for a while. They’re confident in their strategy and abilities. That gives the plan, even when it goes awry, a certain fun vibe. You can’t do this sort of thing every week, because it would take away the scariness of the show’s most persistent villains, but it makes the walker attack less about whether our heroes will survive, and more about the great dynamic between them while they’re doing it.

“Say Yes” does have one good scare. Perhaps it was naïve to think, even for a half-second, that The Walking Dead would kill off Rick in an unheralded mid-season episode, but when Michonne witnesses a crowd of walkers chowing down in the spot where we just saw Rick, I at least wondered if the series would have the stones to go through with it. I attribute much of that to Danai Gurira’s superior acting skills, to where she can convey Michonne’s shock and distress at this seeming death, and her relief and gratitude when Rick, of course, emerges from some implausible enough safe hiding spot. The call back to the deer, and the cleverness of it, does a nice job at papering over some of the cheesiness of the fake out.

But that tense moment also serves to puncture that rarified air that Michonne and Rick have been breathing. It’s a reminder that no matter how on top of things they feel, this is a world of threats and that, as Maggie learned, your happiness can be shattered in an instant. That sense of fun starts to dissipate. The excitement over the motherlode is dampened. The playful back and forth gives way to ruminations on death and sacrifice.

It’s not just Rick and Michonne who ruminate on such things, to the episode’s detriment. In a clunkily-written scene, Tara talks to Judith about whether to tell Rick and the gang about Oceanside, worrying about the potential lives lost in the balance. By the same token, Rosita grouses at Father Gabriel, goes on her own gun-hunt, and eventually meets up with Sasha. They agree on a suicide mission to take out Negan, each feeling bereft of those reasons to hang on, committed to avenging their lost loved ones and other innocents even at the expense of their own lives.

“Say Yes” contrasts them with Rick, who accepts the same outlook but on different terms. He keeps trying to push off their return, trying to extend this little vacation, just a couple of days more, because he knows the choices they’re coming back to. On the one hand, it’s just returning to responsibility, to potentially having to be the person in charge of everything once Negan is toppled. Rick demurs on that point, saying that he wants to do whatever there is to do in tandem with Michonne, but there’s a definite sense that he’s enjoying the freedom from having to be the leader, from having to be the guy who makes all these big decisions and tries to hold it all together.

But on the other, it’s also a sign that he’s internalized Aaron’s lesson from “Hearts Still Beating.” Rick seems to have made some peace with the fact that there’s a good chance they don’t make it out of this, that the upcoming war will lead to casualties of people they care about, because that’s what always seems to happen.

And yet, he also realizes that they have something to live for and something to die for. They are fighting for the future, for the possibilities of the world to come. Rick wants to cherish the time he and Michonne get to share together, because he realizes it might be slipping away, that soon, he might not be able to experience that sort of joy. That is bleak, the sort of rough reality that bums viewers out. But it’s also hopeful and perhaps even joyful in a different way. It acknowledges that even in the harshest of places, there is something to fight for, something worth putting your life on the line, and something to be happy about.