Walking Dead: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
In Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead, Rick gets reacquainted with — and stabbed by! — a character we haven’t seen since Season 1. But that’s not the most shocking plot twist in “Clear.”
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ROAD TRIP | While on their run to pick up baby formula and firearms — you know, the standard post-zombpocalypse grocery list — Michonne, Rick and Carl leave behind a hitchhiker not once but twice. (Da-amn!) As if that isn’t cold enough, Rick assures Carl that Michonne is only being allowed to stick around “just for right now,” while they have “common interests.” (Brr!)
THIS USED TO BE MY PLAYGROUND | In the Grimes family’s old hometown, the trio ignore “AWAY WITH YOU” and “TURN AROUND AND LIVE” signs to enter a maze booby-trapped to dispatch walkers. Natch, before we can say, “Seriously? You’re going in there?” they’re engaged in a shootout with a masked attacker. After Carl drops the mystery man to save his dad, they discover that (a) he’s wearing body armor, and (b) holy crap! It’s Morgan from the series’ very first episode!
THE ODD COUPLE | While Rick waits for Morgan to come to, Carl sets off to pick up a crib for Judith — with Michonne along as the world’s most badass baby-sitter. After he tries (and fails) to get away from her, he admits that there’s an errand he wants to run — alone! — before crib-shopping. “No can do,” she (basically) says. So, together, they sneak into a diner full of walkers so that he can grab a framed photo of himself with his folks from off the wall. Then, after Michonne not only goes back in to retrieve the picture when he drops it during their escape but also grabs a ceramic (papier-mâché?) cat for the baby, Carl is forced to concede that she “might be one of us” after all.
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DEAD MAN TALKING | As soon as Morgan awakes, he starts ranting like a madman, stabs Rick in the chest and begs the sheriff to kill him. (Gee, nice to see you, too!) By the hardest, Rick is able to snap Morgan out of it and get him to remember that they know each other. However, this is only a marginal improvement. Morgan is bitter about the fact that he could never reach Rick on the walkie-talkie they were supposed to use to communicate, he’s bitter about the fact that, because he couldn’t put down his zombified wife, she was able to nosh on their son, and he’s bitter about the fact that both the good and the bad die, but “the weak, the people like me… we have inherited the earth.” Perhaps it won’t come as a surprise to you that Morgan does not go along with Rick when he, Michonne and Carl head back out of town.
ONE MORE THING | Besides winning over Carl, Michonne finally seems to make headway with Rick by putting him at ease over his visions. “I used to talk to my dead boyfriend,” she confesses. (It’s a really lovely, human moment, by the way.) Then, as if to underscore what a miracle it is that Michonne — heck, anyone! — is being accepted by Team Rick, on their way home to jail, the threesome drive by the remains of that poor hitchhiker. And steal his backpack. Cold, cold, cold.
Okay, your turn. What did you think of the episode? Were you sorry that Morgan didn’t join the group? And how cool was it, after all these weeks, to see this softer side of Michonne? Sound off below!
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