9x02 The Bridge

[7.1/10] You don’t get much truth and reconciliation on television. The current form is setup for conflicts to end with an exclamation point and then move onto the next thing, even with serialized storytelling. Maybe you’ll get half an episode or so to reflect on where you’ve been, let things settle, but rarely do T.V. shows undertake the hard work of showing how people come back from those big conflicts, how life is able to get back to normal without the aid of a time jump or quick line of exposition or a blind return to the status quo.

Kudos, then, to The Walking Dead for not just sweeping everything under the rug after The Saviors have been defeated. The war with Negan was arguably the biggest arc that the show had even undertaken, and the fact that the fallout isn’t swift, that relations are not miraculously hunky dory, and that our heroes are having to figure out how to forgive and move forward after all of that is laudable.

That’s the major theme of “The Bridge,” which asks what’s the path by which people make things right, which lets societies move on, after a transgression. The most personal of these is Maggie’s who keeps the man who tried to kill her locked up after the events of the last episode. The show tugs at your heart strings a bit, showing his wife cajolling and begging Jesus to let her see him. When he tells her that he can’t under Maggie’s orders, she says that Maggie can’t take away her rights.

It’s an interesting choice of phrase, especially in an episode where Maggie goes back and forth with Michonne over whether there can be some set of common laws for their little collective of communities. Thus far in The Walking Dead, there hasn’t been much talk of laws. There hasn’t really been the time or security for it. Sure, we’ve had councils and the equivalent of verbal war treaties, and dibs-based groups, but the world of the show has been one of expediency, where decisions are made by those whom the people will lead on a case-by-case basis.

That’s no way to run a society though. Societies need more predictability. Societies need more protection. And societies need ways for people to pay their debts and earn second chances. “The Bridge” doesn't pretend that these things come easy, but it shows a penitent blacksmith, who takes the blame for his actions, and who wants a path to forgiveness, to become a full citizen again, with no system in place to decide whether or not he deserves one.

That’s complicated by the fact that he has a skill The Hilltop badly needs. He can fix the plow, which could let them grow their crops and increase their yield, which could let them help feed The Sanctuary, which could strengthen their workers to help rebuild the bridge, and so forth and so forth. That’s what adds a new wrinkle to the considerations of what it takes to recover here: what do you do when someone has done wrong, but you need them?

That’s the issue that Rick, Daryl, Carol, and others debate with regard to The Saviors as a whole, exemplified by one Shane-resembling brute. The former Saviors do not necessarily blend easily into the larger group. The brute is rough with Henry, gets into scraps with Daryl (that Daryl is far from blameless for), and mouths off to Rick. As a group, plenty of them are going AWOL, even if the show implies that there’s a more sinister cause than desertion. The integration of Negan’s subjects into this society has been a rocky one.

But they also outnumber the rest of the survivors. The brute is strong, and his work is good. If Rick is going to make good on his much ballyhoo’d promise of a better tomorrow, he needs to bring them into the fold, and that means looking the other way when they cause trouble, when the transition isn’t as smooth as everyone would like.

That path is just as fraught though. There’s a sense of optimism but also Pollyanna-ism to Rick about this. He’s too focused on the idea of the immediate goal -- build the bridge, feed the people -- that he might be missing the cracks in the foundation. He may send the brute away, but he brushes off when one former Savior warns him about what’s going on with his countrymen. He and Daryl can’t seem to talk about how hard it is for Daryl to accept these new people, to believe that they could be a part of that better tomorrow. Even Negan, in a fairly cheesy pronouncement, declares that all Rick’s doing is building a monument to the end of the world.

That’s the thing about “The Bridge”. As much as I’m intrigued by the ideas that The Walking Dead plays with here, there’s a lot of the show falling back into its old habits. Every notion in the episode is conveyed by a pair of characters having some heavy-handed one-on-one conversation. Negan and Rick in particular have the same basic type of exchange they’ve had ten times over already. And we end up with another fairly contrived zombie attack, because amid the doldrums of the usual colloquies, you have to show people being eaten to keep the action quotient up.

Granted, while contrived as all hell, the “logrolling for walkers” routine skates by on sheer coolness. The special effects team deserves credit for finding creative ways to crush zombies after all these years. And the sequence delivers the most intense and tension-filled moments in the episode, when Enid (who’s been apprenticing with Siddiq) has to amputate Aaron’s arm and cauterize the wound. It ends up being more fuel for the fire of Daryl’s enmity for the brute and the Saviors in general, but it feels earned in a way much of the rest of the episode doesn't.

That said, the show does earn its change of heart from Maggie. Sure, when she goes to talk to the blacksmith, it results in a long, writerly monologue about why he drinks and the grief of his situation. But the whole time I was watching I thought to myself, “Hershel drank! There was a whole episode about it!” And the show remembered it! It used that fact (a little bluntly) to justify Maggie finding a way to grant some clemency, to understand someone. That is, for once, the show using continuity to motivate and justify character decisions, and it really strengthens an otherwise somewhat stock story.

It also points a way forward for the show. Reconciliation is not going to come easy. In addition to whatever is lurking in the woods and nabbing people, in addition the hordes of man-eating monsters that lurk around each corner, there is the danger that comes from one’s fellow man, from scarcity, from need, that threaten to cause divisions and hatred among the faithful.

And yet there’s also joy and comfort and peace. At some point, it starts to feel like the show is going overboard in trying to pair everyone off (a malady affecting plenty of long-running shows). But it gives us those moments of happiness. Every main character has been through the worst the world can throw at them, and managed to find something worth hanging onto on the other side. That’s not a panacea to the problems that arise when you’re building a new society out of a civil war, but it’s something to hang onto, a way to understand when others falter, and still hope that there can be something better on the other side.