8x14 Still Gotta Mean Something

[7.2/10] A letter. A hat. A pile of photographs. A barbed wire bat. A bloody stick. These are symbols of people who’ve been lost, who gave others a connection to this world, and a reason to continue to fight for it. Take the people behind those symbols away, especially the children, and the folks who once loved them become unmoored.

I’ve said before that I no longer care about the battle for Rick Grimes’s soul. He’s danced back and forth across that line so many times that it’s lost all meaning. And yet there is something different about the version of Rick we’ve seen in the aftermath of his son’s death. It is shocking, somehow, that he would make promises to the escaped Hilltop prisoners, tell them he’s going to give them a second chance, and then just as readily slaughter them when they seem ready to go back and rethink a split-second decision.

We’ve seen the Ricktatorship. We’ve seen the harsh version of Rick ready to blow away anyone associated with The Governor. We’ve seen the one who bit the neck of his captors to gain his freedom. But we’ve never seen the version who is so blasé in his deceit, so robotic in his taking of lives, so unyielding to people who took him at his word and tried to help him, so unflinchingly brutal and out for blood. This feels different, and in a disturbing sort of way.

The same goes for Morgan. We’ve seen less of his back and forths. We’ve seen the beleaguered but determined man protecting his son. We’ve seen the mentally unstable one who lost him. We saw the gentle warrior monk who’d managed to heal in his pacifism. And now we’ve seen him re-broken, unsteady and unwell, hallucinating the imagined dead and meting out his bloody justice to anyone with a hand in what shook him once more.

The Walking Dead, as it’s wont to do, signposts that too much. In the aftermath of a shocking but convenient encounter with both the Savior escapees and the dead, Rick asks Morgan why he saved him back at the beginning of the series. And after a bit of prodding, Morgan admits it was because of his son, with the implication that Duane gave him a connection to this world, a reason to try to be good and just and kind so as to set an example.

It’s heavily underlined in ways that make me roll my eyes, but the point is a sound one. Here are two men who lost their children, and with that, have lost their souls.

But it doesn't have to be that way. The counterpoint to Rick and Morgan is Carol, who joins Morgan on his quest to find Henry, or at least the people he holds responsible for whatever’s happened to Henry. Here too, the show goes overboard, with bare but florid colloquies between the two of them over what Henry symbolizes for the both of them. But again, the observation and the core of those scenes are strong -- both Carol and Morgan lost their children to this world as well, and both were severely and irrevocably changed by it.

Carol’s story is different though. From her grief, she emerged as a stronger, more capable person. She’s still someone who struggles, who is not and will never be rid of the pain of having lost Sophia. That’s why, for instance, Daryl silently takes out the parent and child zombie in an earlier episode. Despite how strong Carol has become, there are things that are too difficult for her to face.

That’s why she hesitates to go after Henry. She’s worried that if she does, she will find him having been eaten by walkers or killed by the Saviors, and she cannot bear the thought of seeing another child felled by the cruelties this world visits on everyone. But she does, to look after Morgan, and for her courage, the universe rewards her by giving her Henry, imperiled but alive, soon-to-be safe and returned to the relation protection of the camp.

It’s a story far better and better-done than the extended scenes we have between Jadis and Negan, in a bit that follows up the end-of-night tease from a couple of episodes ago. Jadis has tied Negan up in the dump, and means to torture him or kill him or just scare him with one of her zombie art project, not to mention burn Lucille in front of him. But Negan manages to roll away toward her suitcase and get a gun, a flare, and some of Jadis’s old pictures to try to make a trade for his (and Lucille’s) freedom, or at least be heard.

It’s a really strange set of scenes, not the least of which because it features both Jadis and Negan, two characters known for their unusual vocal rhythms, speaking at least somewhat plainly (which, feels like a defensible if somewhat jarring choice), but because the scenes are edited oddly, with Negan’s little scoots quickly turning into him having the implements to threaten Jadis without a sense for the passage of time. And it’s also unclear (maybe intentionally), how much time Jadis spends in her little wood-lined shipping container apartment before she puts her unclear plan into motion.

That’s all before we see a damn helicopter. It’s a pretty mystifying development (the fuel alone seems like helicoptering around would be prohibitive) but has the benefit of suggesting that maybe this Rick & Co. vs. Negan and the Saviors arc is coming to an end, because the show is dropping little hints and teases like Georgie or this helicopter that suggest there’s wilder, or at least different, things to come.

But more importantly for the moment, Negan and Jadis have one of the show’s trademark back-and-forths about what these symbols mean (which, in fairness, is more Negan talking than Jadis), and again, there’s the germ of a good idea there. We get the backstory for Lucille, and thankfully it’s not something silly like Negan believing that she bat contains his wife’s soul or something (no offense, Suicide Squad), but just that the bat represents his wife in that both were able to get through some hard times, and that it’s the last vestige of something special, the way he presumes Jadis’s photos are for her.

It’s not especially well done, and the fact that Jadis actually lets Negan go afterward is bonkers, but these scenes both move the plot a little, with Negan realizing that Simon blew the scavengers away, and it contributes to the theme, with the sense that even weirdos like Negan and Jadis had important people in their lives, and the loss of those people messed them up.

But that’s the real beauty of Carol’s speech at the end. The episode ends on an ominous note, with Rick and Morgan returning home, the former looking at the ex-Savior with a withering expression that confirms he refused to honor the guy’s wish not to kill his brethren, and the latter embracing Henry and telling him never to apologize. But before then, Carol confesses her grief, her hesitation, to Ezekiel, knowing the hardship of facing what might have lay out there, an echo of her own child lost along the riverside.

And yet, she also knows now that she emerged from it, and that if she could she should do it again, pull herself out of that muck and become, if not whole, then functional again.

The Walking Dead isn’t always great with long term arcs. Rick has jumped back and forth on the good/bad line so many times that he must think it’s hopscotch at this point. The show had the advantage of only briefly checking in with Morgan in its early going, having trouble sustaining the momentum of his change now despite Lennie James wonderfully haunted performance.

But Carol’s is a journey that’s had ups and downs, success and backslides, but always been compelling, and with it, she show gives a measure of hope -- that even from the most unimaginable losses, people can reemerge, still wounded, but also still strong, with their hearts and their heads intact. Let’s hope Rick and Morgan will be granted the same measure of grace.

STILL GOTTA MEAN SOMETHING
-113-

Jadis surviving the slaughter was cool.
But can you hold your eyes so long open?
And she got a clean room... who would have thought?

They really did it. They... they... Noooooo!
They changed the Arrow scene to Tara!
Nobody fucking cared about Tara!
I was like "Fuck yeah, finally!"
It is supposed to be "Oh fuck no!"
And Tara forgiving Dwight so quickly...
Yeah, I don't buy that. Lazy writing.

Rick asking Morgan why he did save him back in the day...
Got me chills.

Ricks mourning over Carl was so well done this time.
Rick simply seeing the hat. You can see him struggle.
And then att last, he reads the letter.

Negan has all sorts of suprises...
Do they have something to do with Lucille? ;)
But who did he take with him?
Is it Jadis? Someone else?
Maybe Maria Bello?
It was said she would show up this season...

And the hellicopter is back.
So now only Rick and Negan knows about it. (Excluding Jadis)
Wonder what Negan is going to do with that information...

And can we acknoledge that "What the Shit?" hasn't the same meaning or impact as "What the Fuck?".
Sounds so silly. I still whait for the release of the F-Takes!

And another big complain:
Where's the gore? The Walkers just fall without any blood.
Since the premiere of season 7 there wasn't any real gory-moments on this show...