This week's 'Walking Dead' reminds us how good the show can be when it isn't torturing people
This recap contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 7, episode 2, titled "The Well." You can refresh your memory of where we left off with last week's recap.
After the relentless misery of the Season 7 premiere, executive producer Greg Nicotero told Mashable that this week's episode would provide an opportunity for viewers to "catch their breath," and "The Well" certainly offered ample time for reflection, reminding us how good this show can be when it focuses on humanity instead of cheap shocks.
The hour was heavy on character and light on violence, which is exactly the kind of emotional whiplash this series excels at, often swerving from horrific, action-packed installments to philosophical ruminations on the meaning of life in the midst of the zombie apocalypse.
If you loved last week's blood-soaked hour of torture porn, chances are "The Well" bored you to tears, but these kinds of episodes are the ones that I find most interesting, even if they often hew toward portentous dialogue and proselytizing just to prove how clever the writers are.
Carol has been one of the most consistently compelling characters on The Walking Dead for several seasons now, thanks in large part to Melissa McBride's nuanced performance, and she got a welcome chance to shine this week, proving that some of the most effective comedy is nonverbal.
After the gratuitous theatrics of the season premiere, watching Carol attempt to navigate the bizarre terrain of The Kingdom with a combination of incredulity and mistrust is both fascinating and unexpectedly hilarious — the look on her face when first confronted with "King Ezekiel" (Khary Payton) and his pet tiger Shiva is worth the price of admission alone.
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Ezekiel, we come to learn, is the self-made leader of The Kingdom, a fortified community not dissimilar to Hilltop or Alexandria, except that its protectors ride around in body armor, brandishing swords and axes, and its leader talks like he accidentally wandered in from a Game of Thrones audition.
Carol dismisses the "King" and his pretentious affectations as a fairytale, knowing all too well that blissful ignorance is no protection from the horrors of the world outside The Kingdom's walls. The residents of this utopia might feel safe in their bubble, with Ezekiel's platitudes about living life to the fullest painted on the walls like Bible verses, but Carol only sees lambs being bred for the slaughter.
She's also still struggling to reconcile her self-preservation instincts with her inability to kill, and we see just how deeply the violence has begun to affect her when she starts having visions of the walkers as their formerly human selves, looking positively horrified when Morgan and the warriors from The Kingdom begin mowing them down, as if they're killing living people.
It's still a little jarring to see this hardened warrior flinch away from violence, but trauma affects everyone differently, and it's deeply humanizing to see someone hesitate to destroy another person at this stage in the series, especially when Rick's group has arguably passed the point of no return when it comes to killing other humans as a means to an end. They may not take pleasure in it like Negan does, but they're also not losing sleep over dispatching Saviors, either.
Morgan's journey has been a little more frustrating than Carol's to date, because his pacifism has often come across as sanctimonious, but the character reached a turning point when he saved her from the Savior last season.
Seeing him struggle to maintain his morals while still being willing to make a hard choice when necessary is far more interesting, narratively, than watching a guy who's secure in his superiority, which is why one of the most effective moments in the episode comes when Morgan instinctively pulls out a gun to defend one of Ezekiel's men against the Saviors. You can see the subtle change in Lennie James' expression as Morgan realizes just how quickly he defaults to a lethal response, and how deeply that instinct troubles him.
"Is that why you wanted me here, because I could do it again if I had to?" he asks Ezekiel, already starting to doubt his own resolve.
"No, Morgan, quite the opposite, in fact," Ezekiel responds. Despite his flair for the dramatic, Ezekiel immediately proves to be a great judge of character, seeing the honor in both Morgan and Carol, who are both used to operating in the moral grey area that Ezekiel and his lieutenants occupy, even if none of them relish it.
Contrary to Carol's initial assessment that the people in The Kingdom are playing make believe because they can't handle the horror of the real world, Ezekiel doesn't infantilize his followers — he talks like King Arthur and keeps a pet tiger because history has proven that a symbol is an effective way to inspire trust and confidence, and he keeps his deal with Negan and the Saviors hidden from his subjects because he believes they would want to fight back, not cower, and would sustain heavy losses in the attempt. As he points out to Morgan, keeping secrets isn't a reward for leadership, it's a cost.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, and there's a subtle but palpable sense of relief in Ezekiel when he lets the act slip and talks to Carol in his real voice, revealing that he's just a zookeeper who had an interest in community theater before the apocalypse took everything away from him. In that moment, you can see that they recognize a kindred spirit in one another, since they've both become accustomed to using a facade as a means of self defense.
Sometimes those masks can get stuck after too much wear (as was probably the case with Negan, given his penchant for showboating), but it's clear that for all his eccentricities, Ezekiel truly wants to protect his people, not subjugate them. That's why it's particularly delicious that, although The Kingdom doesn't dare rise up against Negan (yet), they still offer a subtle form of rebellion by fattening the pigs they tithe to the Saviors with rotting walker flesh rather than fresh food. It's a fairly harmless "f*ck you," but it's still pretty clever.
You can see that Carol starts to like Ezekiel despite herself once he opens up to her ("you can't bullsh*t a bullsh*tter," after all), but she's also clearly still afraid to let anyone get close to her, lest she be put in a position where she needs to kill again to protect them.
"Where there's life, there's life; I hope that's not what you're walking away from," Ezekiel perceptively notes.
"So what if I am?" Carol challenges him, implying that a part of her wants to remove herself from the equation entirely. Instead, Ezekiel offers a compromise, a chance to "go and not go" at the same time, by setting Carol up in a house just outside The Kingdom's walls, so that she can be alone but still within reach of humanity. She doesn't understand why Ezekiel cares so much, but it's enough that she's prepared to let him try to help her rather than simply running away again.
The Walking Dead has always been fond of its symbolism (observe the use of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" as Carol prepares to leave), and as heavy-handed as it is to make the pomegranate Ezekiel's favored snack, it's an effective metaphor for Carol's predicament, both as "sweet fruit surrounded by bitter," and for its place in Greek mythology as the fruit associated with Persephone, who spent half the year in the Underworld and half the year among the living. As this week's episode throws into stark relief, Carol is seemingly stuck between the two worlds, at odds with her own instincts and unable to see a way out of the darkness.
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Whether Ezekiel can bring her back to life remains to be seen, but one of his final observations to her might as well be directed straight to the audience after last week's harrowing ordeal: "Out there it feels like it’s all bad, especially when you’re alone. The thing is though, it’s not all bad. It can’t be, it isn’t. Life isn’t. Where there’s life, there’s hope; heroism, grace and love."
That optimism feels a little disingenuous after the show was so gleeful in its destruction of life in the season premiere, but The Walking Dead has always wanted to have its cake and eat it, catering to its viewers' base instincts for blood and violence in one moment, but then appealing to our better angels the next.
You never quite know which mask the show will hide behind in any given episode, but at this point, I'm far more interested in Ezekiel's performance art than Negan's. We're long overdue for some hope.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
