8x11 Dead or Alive Or

[7.2/10] I like The Walking Dead when it’s trying to do a series of vignettes more than one continuous story. That’s a big part of why I consider Season 4 to be the high point of the show. Rather than weaving and unraveling these different characters for episode after episode, the show took time to let them have their own stories, and for those stories to breathe. It allowed the audience to get to know them better, to come to appreciate their individual struggles and perspectives better, rather than letting them get rolled up in the morass of plot and dinge that can otherwise lurch its way from episode to episode.

So my favorite part of “Dead or Alive Or” is the story of Father Gabriel and Dr. Carson. It feels a bit like a throwback to those semi-standalone adventures, one that doesn't move the plot forward all that much, but works better as a short story in the midst of the larger narrative machinations of the Negan arc.

It’s not exactly subtle in that regard. You’d have to be half-asleep during the episode not to catch the tension between Gabriel’s “the Lord will provide” mentality and Dr. Carson’s “He helps those who help themselves” point of view. But the story feels so much smaller and more intimate -- just two guys trying to scratch their way home -- then the intricate series of fraying alliances and escalating conflicts that the series is embroiled in right now.

It centers on the same general dichotomy that permeates the whole of the episode -- whether you should have faith (in individuals, in groups, in larger forces guiding you), or whether you should take the harder, more pragmatic mode. It is, admittedly, a mere variation on the same sort of “trust or defect” binary The Walking Dead was essentially founded on, but it works here, or at least works well enough to pass muster.

For Maggie, that comes down to a moral choice on how to value the lives of her Savior captives (plus Gregory) versus her own people. Their rations at the Hilltop are dwindling; it’s taking all her manpower to preserve and defend the place, and yet the prisoners are going hungry and asking for a little exercise time for good behavior. Initially, Maggie is unsympathetic, treating them curtly as usual.

The same goes for Tara with regard to Dwight. Tara is, understandably, still miffed at the fact that the guy who killed the woman she loved is still walking and breathing. The episode hammers that point home a little too heavily and obviously, but it’s a natural conflict. Daryl and Rosita try to hold her back, but as they get wrapped up in special-effects filled zombie skirmish in the swamp, she gets her chance to take out Dwight.

The resulting scenes are a bit much. “Dead or Alive Or” can’t quite hold the tension as Tara repeatedly holds Dwight at gunpoint, though doesn't actually kill him despite having the means and, seemingly, the desire, to the point that it strains willing suspension of disbelief. She’s seen first hand what sort of cruelty he’s capable of, and so doesn't buy that he’s on their side, that he won’t turn on them again and see more people that they care about killed.

Until, in a fairly contrived coincidence, the two of them nearly stumble into a pack of Saviors who’ve been tracking them. Dwight bursts into their notice, plays the part of the Savior loyalist, and directs them away from Daryl, Rosita, and Tara’s band of Alexandrian refugees.

The lesson, however hamfistedly it’s delivered, is that Tara was wrong and people who have done terrible things are also capable of doing good things. Give the people you hate a little dignity, a little forgiveness, a little faith, and they might just earn your trust. Tara’s been the biggest Savior skeptic this season, but by the end, she’s changed her tune, at least about Dwight, and is at least a little more open to treating their enemies as potential allies and not just bodies in the way.

And ultimately, Maggie makes that same choice. Thanks to Dwight’s help, the Alexandrian refugees make it to the Hilltop. There’s a slow motion, mostly unaffecting attempt to show the Hilltoppers reacting to Carl’s death, but more important that the emotional reaction the show tries to gin up in that moment is the moral effect his death has.

Carl died trying to save someone, not knowing where it would lead, not thinking it was pragmatic, not trying to gain anything from it beyond the goodness of saving a life. But because of his actions, Siddiq makes it to the Hilltop, grateful for Maggie’s help and generosity, and suddenly there is someone with medical training there to help.

Which is a good thing, because Dr. Carson doesn't exactly make it out of his little vignette alive. Again, his back and forth with Gabriel is admittedly a bit rote. Gabriel is going blind from an infection, but is optimistic that God will show him the path. Carson can only see that they’re lost, without transportation, and basically hopeless.

But time and again, they stumble into good fortune. The cabin they inadvertently run into just so happens to have the kind of antibiotics that can help Gabriel. When it seems like they’re out of options, a piggy bank happens to contain keys and a map, giving them both a direction and a means to follow it. And when it looks like their luck has run out, with Carson getting his foot caught in a bear trap as the walkers start to swarm, a lucky shot from the half-blind Father Gabriel manages to hit the zombie but not the good doctor and save their bacon. However much, Dr. Carson disbelieves Father Gabriel’s polyannaism, it’s working for the two of them in these moments.

Then, the Saviors show up right when it looks like Carson and Gabriel are on the right path. And to cap it all off, Carson’s attempt to escape the situation by nabbing a revolver from one of them goes horribly wrong, with Carson taking a bullet for his troubles and Gabriel weeping at the realization of what his hopes and trust and effort to find his purpose has turned into. (And it should be said, Seth Gilliam does a tremendous job in this one.) All the good fortune they’d enjoyed, all the faith they showed, ended with one of them dead and the other captured by the bad guys and still losing his sight.

It’s hard to know what message The Walking Dead wants to send with this. At face value, it feels like the gnawing bleakness that the show’s harshest critics accuse it of. If you believe, if you trust that there’s a plan, then everything goes to ruin.

But that contradicts everything else in the episode. Gabriel may not succeed in getting a doctor to Maggie, but Carl unexpectedly manages to do this, and it emerges from his act of kindness. Bad fortune strikes Tara when she runs into the Saviors, but Dwight proves himself worthy of trust when he draws them away. Morgan seems given away to nihilism, to letting the harshness of this world wash over the next generation, when Carl’s death and Carol’s encouragement gives him the impulse to relieve his would-be young ward of his mortal grudge.

Hell, even Eugene, in his black-hatted guise, gets a reprieve in the form of the captive Gabriel telling Negan that Carson let him escape, a story that aligns well enough with Eugene to get him off the hook. Sure, it results in a mostly pointless tease of Negan receiving the inspiration to try a little biological warfare with walker guts, but it’s also another character taking a chance and having the universe reward them.

So maybe the point is that Gabriel was right, that there’s a plan here and all these moving parts are building somewhere. I’ve watched The Walking Dead long enough to be wary of the notion that all these disparate threads will be tied together in a satisfying fashion, But this episode toys with the idea that even when terrible things happen like bear traps snapping and benevolent physicians perishing, the kindesses of risking your life to save another, of showing some basic decency to people you hate, people who’ve wronged you, can come back in your favor in unexpected ways.

Or maybe “Dead or Alive Or” stands for the idea that good luck rains down on the evil and righteous alike. Maggie finds medical help, Tara’s band is safe for the moment, and Gabriel has his medicine, but the Saviors stumble on the people they’re hunting before they can get away, Eugene lives to make bullets for his master, and Negan himself is given a terrible bolt of inspiration.

Maybe this is part of something bigger, some sort of plan. Or maybe like the show itself, it’s a collection of stories, where folks like me try to find some larger theme or direction, when it may amount to no more than a bundle of misaligned tales that only sporadically become more than the sum of their parts. In the world of The Walking Dead, the gods might be crazy, or maybe we are, for watching and expecting anything else.