The Walking Dead - Midseason Premiere Recap: I Win
Recap video and review of The Walking Dead - Season 4 Episode 9 - After:
Every time The Walking Dead needs to reset its narrative following a major event or change of scenery, the show goes back to one of the things it does best: illustrating the grueling, exhausting minutiae of survival. These people have been at it for years, but while it might get a bit easier from a purely functional perspective (Carl is a better shot, and can tie a hell of a walker-stopping knot), it's never any less ravaging on one's psyche. And why would it be? This is a world that feels somehow less populated than the one we left in the fall, as there's not a soul to be found for miles and miles but walkers. "After" uses this empty environment to teach us more about these characters, how they react to their sudden solitude (in the case of Michonne), or how they react to being placed in close quarters with someone for whom respect and affection are withering (in the case of Carl). It's an incredibly minimalist episode that leaves a lot to be desired, but I appreciate that the show is attempting to take a different approach with its storytelling, one that is less focused on hard plot, and more focused on subtly developing character through action.
Credit: AMC
In the case of Carl (Chandler Riggs), his words indicate he's ready to start fending for himself, but his actions signify something else entirely. It's been, at most, a matter of days (if not just hours) since the fall of the prison, and Carl and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) are roaming about the land in search of supplies and safe harbor. In short, they collect supplies, kill walkers, and eke out a meager existence in an abandoned home over the course of one terrible day. Rick is still injured from the events at the prison, so he's not exactly in tip-top shape to be dealing with the demands of survival. Thus, Carl decides to step up, a decision that doesn't sit well with Rick, who feels Carl is overeager. He wastes a bullet on a walker after Rick told him not to, an act that draws a division between father and son. Although, in this case, Carl is somewhat justified in bailing Rick out, since he didn't really have the situation under control. Rick attempted to kill the walker with an ax, only for the ax to get stuck in the walker's head without killing it. Yet even though Carl was justified in shooting, it's a harbinger of things to come.
Carl's lack of preparedness for a life without Rick is represented in the bullets he wastes as the episode goes on. When Rick passes out from exhaustion while they're safely secluded in an abandoned house, Carl is forced to deal with the walkers that come a-knockin' all on his own. In trying to lure away two walkers, he ends up getting blindsided by a third, leading to a pileup in which Carl has to basically expend most of the bullets in his gun to save his own ass. After surviving, he declares, "I win" (in reference to the competitive game he had going with Rick earlier, in which they attempted to see who could scavenge the most food), and it says a lot about Carl's mindset when we see how little his close call affected him, particularly once he surveys the empty town around him and declares "Cool." It's this shortsightedness and fundamental lack of understanding about the severity of the world in which he lives that prompts Carl to go scavenging in another nearby house. While there, he's nearly killed by a walker that takes him off-guard. Carl wastes the last of his bullets trying to bring the walker down (despite there being any number of instruments on the floor beside him that would have gotten the job done, such as a pair of scissors), leaving him with no other choice but to lock the walker in a nearby room. It's the closest to death Carl has ever come, and the show builds a surprising amount of drama out of the possibility that Carl really will get bitten. But he's able to escape by pulling his foot out of his shoe. After he locks the walker in the room, he writes, "Walker got my shoe, but didn't get me" in chalk on the door, smiling triumphantly. But his surface demeanor belies his inner fear.
Credit: AMC
Earlier in the episode, Carl took out his frustrations on the unconscious Rick, tearing into him for his failure to protect everyone. As Carl recalls, everyone looked to Rick as a leader, and he ultimately let down each and every one of them: Hershel, Judith, Glenn, Maggie, Michonne, Daryl, all of them. He declares that he doesn't need Rick any more, and even goes as far as to state, "I'd be fine if you died." But it's a declaration that's turned on its head after Carl returns from his little sojourn and is awoken by Rick's heavy, walker-like breathing. Rick's injuries have had the dramatic function of making him look and sound like a walker, as he stumbles around and lets out pained, labored breaths. Thus, when Rick stirs back to life, Carl has no way of knowing that Rick isn't a walker. He reaches for his gun and prepares to deliver the killing shot, but Carl suddenly breaks down, completely reverting back to a childish demeanor. As he sobs, he declares, "I can't do it." He puts the gun down and leaves himself open to being devoured by walker Rick, asking his father to just get it over with -- except Rick hasn't turned. He's just injured and parched. The fakeout was an obvious one, dramatically, but it had the thematic function of forcing Carl to realize that maybe he's not ready for life without his father. Or, at the very least, he couldn't move forward without some measure of closure, such as he gets from Rick the next day, when Rick tells him "You're a man now." The father-son relationship still isn't perfect, but what father-son bond ever is, in a zombie apocalypse?
Credit: AMC
The other big story this week centers on Michonne (Danai Gurira) as she wanders the countryside with two new pet walkers she makes at the beginning of the episode (an opening that featured the dead body of The Governor and the decapitated, walker-fied head of Hershel, in a chilling, heartbreaking little moment). Michonne's storyline basically amounts to a lot of hacking and slashing, as she decapitates one walker after another while dealing with the unresolved issues of her past. A dream reveals to us that Michonne was once involved with a man named Mike, whom she loved deeply. Together, they had a young son named Peanut, and held off the walker invasion with the help of a mutual friend. But as Michonne's dream sours into a nightmare, with Mike and his friend becoming doppelgangers of Michonne's pet walkers, and Peanut disappearing altogether, we can pretty much infer what happened to them. It's a sequence that's a bit clumsy in exposition, and one that's incredibly jarring, as we're dropped into this seemingly random flashback fresh off of a commercial break. This would have made a much better cold open for the episode, all things considered.
I like Michonne as a character, and I like Danai Gurira as a performer, but something about this just didn't work for me. I mostly chalk it up to the script requiring her to overact in cloying fashion, as her dream sequence plays out like the opening strains of a horror movie. In fact, the script required a lot of scenery chewing from everyone this week, it seemed: Andrew Lincoln's heavy breathing and slurred speech fit where the story was headed, but was immensely distracting en route to that end point; and I'm not sure Chandler Riggs was entirely prepared to carry his own storyline just yet. At the very least, Gurira managed to convey a lot about her character's past through facial expressions and body language. And her big moment at the end is beautiful, as Michonne comes across the house and sees Rick and Carl through the window, and just breaks down in happiness and relief. Gurira is often better than her material, and I wish these scripts would give her the opportunity to play her part with greater subtlety.
Credit: AMC
"After" is a solid midseason premiere for what The Walking Dead is going for, developing character through action and illustrating how the events of the midseason finale have changed and shaped these characters. It's not perfect, but it's by no means a bad episode, and even though the direction for the rest of the season isn't immediately apparent, "After" does nothing to temper my confidence in the show.