There are times where I have to pinch myself, but I still can’t quite get my head around the fact that The Walking Dead has managed to Claw and drag itself out of the muddy sludge of mediocrity to somewhere approaching where the show was during its glory days. I should probably just accept it and just get on with it, but I can’t help marvelling each and every week that the show’s split into separate entities has resulted in some of the best episodes in years.
This bloody streak continues with What We, an episode that finally pulls back on the reins and gives it’s two, passionate lovers a chance to reconcile and dig deep into the issues that exist between them, but what equally remarkable about the installment is that Danai Gurira – herself an accomplished playwright – wrote the episode herself, blurring the lines between the actors and the characters they play to an impressive degree.
After Michonne’s extreme, last ditch effort to save Rick and herself from returning to the CRM, they swim to shore after their frantic tumble from a chopper and take refuge in a deserted community called Greenwood. It seems Greenwood was home to a group of innovators that managed to not only keep the lights on during the whole zombie apocalypse, but each room is equipped with automatic thermostats and little roombas that pop up at regular intervals to clean the floors. However, for all their mod cons, it seems like the people of Greenwood couldn’t save themselves from starvation and many sections of the main building seem to be crawling with Walkers.
This doesn’t seem to bother Rick and Michonne much who both seem to be caught up in a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. Rick is terrified that once their disappearance is discovered, the CRM and Jadis will stop at nothing to hurt the ones they love to keep the colony at Philadelphia a secret; on the other side of the argument, Michonne cannot understand what could have possibly happened to make the man she loves so unwilling to return to the ones he loves.
However, the morning reveals that the chopper they kept from had an unfortunate meeting with the building they’re in, essentially leaving them free and clear and technically dead. Stunningly, Rick is still reluctant to leave the CRM, such is his trauma and no matter what truth bombs Michonne throws his way, he is adamant that he return to keep them all safe.
The two seem to be at an impasse, but helping their decisions along is the fact that the CRM arrive and blow up the crashed chopper in order to keep their existence a continued secret, meaning that the Walker infested building they’re in is rendered more unstable than a Gary Busey interview.
Can Michonne get to the meat of Rick’s fears before they’re entombed alive with dozens of flesh eating corpses?
It just goes to show how well The Ones Who Live has set up its central moral conundrum thus far when the show is free to pull off a two hander only four episodes in, but considering that we’ve been building to this exact moment for years, maybe the timing is perfect. While The Walking Dead has never been afraid to wear its rotting heart on its mildewy sleeve, the show always had a tendency to be way too ernest with its human drama, often straying deep into mawkish dialogue, annoying navel gazing and watery eyed speeches when less would often be more. However, while What We does indeed veer into some of The Walking Dead’s more theatrical habits that strain belief a little too much, but there’s too much emotion here to get distracted by the little things.
Yes, our main couple have the fortuitous fortune to just so happen to stumble upon a settlement that not only has clean made beds, fuled hybrid cars in the garage and clear vantage point of the crashed helicopter they fell from, but as convenient ascall this is, it also frees the script up to have these arguing lovers emotionally strip each other to the bone in order to get inside each others heads and it’s here that Danai Gurira’s script delivers the goods.
Simply put, that battle of wills we saw between Rick and Michonne in the last episode reaches its apex as all the confusion, frustration, hurt and lust that’s been unleashed has the two lurching back and forth between released passion and bitter resentment like a pair of bipolar pinballs. Its site of like watching an emotional chess game as the couple trying to block and counter each other’s arguments in order to convince the other to bow to their argument.
Rick, hopelessly unsure of himself after years of failed escapes, self mutilation and serving the military machine still clings to the fact that there is no escape from the CRM and even the fact that they’re presumed dead is no guarantee that they won’t unleash hell on Alexandria is they even suspect there’s a chance that they’re alive. In the other corner, Michonne attempts to reason with him with a succession of emotional low blows, revealing the existence of Rick Jr., her uncertainty whether both he and Judith are even safe and the obvious fact that running around and saluting like a fricking stormtrooper simply isn’t Rick.
When the breakthrough happens, it’s satisfying, hard earned and – thanks to a name drop of the long dead Carl Grimes – genuinely moving as the whole root of Rick’s fear is that he’s already given up on the dream of seeing his family once (he describes it as “living dead”) and can’t face the danger of losing them for real. It may seem to be a little simplistic (didn’t Mr. Incredible say something similar in The Incredibles?), but Andrew Lincoln sells the living shit out out of it, delivering his arguments and fears in a state of near hysteria. In comparison, Danai Gurira meets him just as fiercely as she strives to see if any of him that old spark still remains between them. Gurira has always excelled by portraying strength through compassion and the fact that she wrote this just goes to show that not only does she get these characters fully, but the notion of The Walking Dead as a love story is utterly realised.
However, most importantly, the episode realises that a Walking Dead romance is nothing without some walking dead people and the fact that the duo have the ticking clock thanks to a horde of zombies and a crumbling building stops the episode getting too deep into it’s own head. Balancing histrionic drama with the splattering of the brains of the living dead is what the show excelled at back in the day and thanks to yet another corker of an episode, those glory days are continuing to rise from the grave.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 