Sometimes, for better or worse, our favorite shows take a departure from their ongoing storylines to delve deeper into a character's back story.
We saw it in season three of “Breaking Bad” with “Fly,” a self-contained episode of another beloved AMC show made cheap due to budgetary restrictions, and we saw it again in episode four of "The Walking Dead’s" sixth season, “Here’s Not Here.”
And for an episode beefed up to 90 minutes and billed as a “Mega Sunday Episode,” this was a severe disappointment.
Minutes before the start of this week’s episode, I did what I always do. I opened a Google Doc, labeled it as notes and wrote questions remaining from recent weeks I was hoping would get answered tonight.
They were: Morgan, Rick, Glenn, Wolves, Enid. I wondered about Enid’s purported connection to the Wolves, whether we were finished with them; I wondered about the fate of Glenn and Rick from last week; and I wondered about Morgan in the aftermath of the Battle at Alexandria. None of my questions were answered.
Instead, AMC’s most popular show of all time spent its prime-time hour on a post-apocalyptic "Odd Couple" story, with flavors of "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Kill Bill Vol. 2."
Despite Morgan being one of our more enigmatic characters, I found his journey from murderous lunatic to aikido master very lackluster -- the kind of story we could have had told in 15-20 minutes.
It was hard to tell the amount of time Morgan spent at Eastman’s house, but it was at least long enough to adopt a new mantra and become a bowstaff master. I’m going to guess a few weeks to a couple of months.
We get to know Eastman (whose profession, by the way, was too much of a neat fit for my taste; of course a forensic psychiatrist would help this transition) and get to know how he arrived at “All life is precious.” It took avenging the gruesome murder of his family.
Morgan is unable to avenge the deaths of his wife and son because he holds himself responsible for them. If he had shot his zombified wife Jenny when he had her in his crosshairs in the series pilot, she would not have killed their son, Dwayne. This inner turmoil is why he’s so focused on “clearing,” and why he asks both Rick and Eastman to kill him.
But the experience with Eastman is what Morgan needed to clear himself and literally come back from the brink of insanity. Death highlights the sanctity of life. You can clear without killing.
Perhaps that’s what Morgan hopes to impart on the Wolves, who seem intent on killing above all other things. When faced with this wolf, he sees his former self in the wolf and assumes the role of Eastman. And so he can’t kill the wolf, even if it eventually means the wolf will kill him.
What he learned from Eastman is that it’s more important to spend your last breath trying to impart the wisdom of aikido than to take another life. Even if it’s the life of a goat.
Rating: 1 out of 4 katanas. Too long, too little plot. I think "The Walking Dead" did this episode because AMC ordered a certain number of episodes and they don’t have enough plot to stretch through the first half of this season. Hopefully we can get some substance next week.
Afterthoughts:
- style="font-weight: 400;">The fire zombie in the cold open was the best part of this episode.
- style="font-weight: 400;">Eastman labeled Morgan’s condition as PTSD, which I guess is what every character in the show deals with pretty much all the time.
- style="font-weight: 400;">Best kill was the throat staff shot from Morgan on the guy following him in the woods
- style="font-weight: 400;">I still can’t believe they spent 90 minutes on this episode that did absolutely nothing to advance the story.
- style="font-weight: 400;">Nice Terminus sign throwback.
- style="font-weight: 400;">How could anyone survive for 47 days in a cell? That seems superhuman to me.
Quotables:
- style="font-weight: 400;">“You shot at me, I fed you. Please don’t hurt her.”
- style="font-weight: 400;">“That was aikido -- that’s how I kicked your ass earlier.”
- style="font-weight: 400;">“That’s the thing, Morgan. Here’s not here.”
- style="font-weight: 400;">“Everything is about people. Everything in this life that’s worth a damn.”
Lingering questions (pretty much the same as last week):
- style="font-weight: 400;">Is Glenn dead?
- style="font-weight: 400;">How will Rick escape the trailer?
- style="font-weight: 400;">Will anything in the Eastman/Morgan story become more impactful later on? I can’t see it happening, but that might make it slightly more worth our time.
