Well this episode starts off with Rick being an asshole. Whose surprised? No one? Yeah. When we left everyone last episode the Governor had pretty much fucked up our heroes’ shit. They had no food, no guns, no ammo. Pretty much, they were screwed. So Rick takes Carl and Michonne and they go back to the Grimes’ hometown to the police station we visited in the first season. Apparently to get guns and ammo but c’mon. That’s like the first place anyone would look.
How was Rick an asshole though? Some survivor on the side of the road with a backpack was calling for help. He just wanted help. Didn’t even stop to tell him to screw off. They just ignored him. Sad times. But whatever.
Rick’s hometown? Freakin’ creepy man. They get there and the whole street was all kinds of barracaded with spokes and traps bottlenecking and potential zombie hoard into one street. Which seems like there could be people there right? Except there’s all these signs saying “TURN AROUND AND LIVE” and “JUST LISTEN” all creepy like. So you have to wonder. Of course then some guy in body armor shows up shooting at them so. At least it’s just humans and not some like creepy mutant tank-like zombie or something.
He keeps shooting and eventually Carl has to shoot him to make him stop. Rick is all “I TOLD YOU TO STAY IN THE HOUSE” but of course he didn’t. Which is a good thing because otherwise the guy totally would have shot Rick. So Carl’s just like “What?” And I agree with him because at this point the kid is already screwed up beyond repair. He had to shoot his own mom after helping to deliver his sister. Shooting a guy to save his only surviving parent? He can at least take pride in that.
Besides, the guy was wearing body armor and he’s not even dead. He’s just unconsc- OMG IT’S MORGAN.
… Who apparently went bat shit crazy.
Not only is the town boobey trapped but so is the building he has been living in. They just don’t want to leave him uncosncious on the street so they try to take him inside but man. Morgan’s gotten super paranoid and super survivalist. He and Duane were apparently clearing the houses and gathering supplies and things. Morgan wrote all kinds of things on the walls including the status of Rick’s house. He’s also taken like every gun, grenade, and anything else that he could find in houses and I assume took from the abandoned military caravans that got overrun by zombies.
Rick refuses to leave Morgan before he wakes up. But the guy is so fucked up that when he does wake up he attacks Rick. He actually stabs Rick because he’s so far gone. At first he doesn’t seem to make sense. Keeps shouting things about ‘everyone turns’ and ‘clear.’ Stuff like that. But eventually he remembers who Rick is and apparently he kept turning on the radio. Even after Duane died.
Yeah, his son died. But none of us are really surprised about that are we?
If you read the comics you knew that was coming. They have taken a LOT of liberties in the television series but this is one I felt pretty confident that they would keep if we ever met Morgan again. I actually wasn’t all that certain that we would ever seen Morgan again considering Tyreese was coming into the picture. It’s just super sad that neither of them could shoot Morgan’s wife and in the end it was Morgan’s wife that wound up biting and turning Duane. Seriously sucks. But yeah. Morgan really ought to have just shot her… At least he didn’t keep his zombified son around like he did in the comics. The less of that we have the better.
Anyway while Rick and Morgan are having a heart to heart Carl and Michonne are checking out the town. Carl claims he wants to get some baby stuff for Judith but in truth he’s looking for something else. Rick’s house has been burned down entirely according to Morgan’s chalk map adn notes. So instead they go looking for a picture of Rick, Lori, and Carl that’s hanging up in a downtown diner so he can show Judith what her mom looked like someday. But of course it’s full of zombies and in attempting to get it Carl drops it. But Michonne in a touching moment (because Carl had been an asshole the whole time about needing to do shit on his own and blah blah blah) goes and gets the picture for him.
It’s a cute, touching series of scenes.
… and then we’re back to angsty, doom-saying, angry, depressed Morgan telling Rick how everything is useless and they are going to die. Rick keeps trying to get him to come back to the prison with them. But Morgan doesn’t give a shit. He’s tired of watching people die and he’s tired of fighting other people.
Rick lets him go back to his lonely, meaningless life. Carl and Michonne come back with some baby stuff and Carl tells his dad that Michonne is definitely one of them. Which apparently is all it takes because Rick is totally cool with Michonne now and they sort of share a heart-to-heart where Michonne admits to seeing her own dead boyfriend. And they all drive off into the sunset together. But not before stopping along the way to pick up the backpacker’s pack after he’s been eaten by zombies trying to follow them.
Assholes.
I mean, I feel for that guy. A lonely backpacker who had survived that long? He deserved more. He deserved a lot more. Seeing Rick and them driving by? That was probably the first time he had seen people in a long time. At the very least they could have stopped. Talked to him. Driven him some place. Or, if he had been bitten or tried to hurt them they could have shot him. That would have solved his problems, too.
I don’t know why I’m so angry about that. Rick isn’t as much of a ‘good guy’ as Morgan thinks.
Will Morgan come back?
I don’t know. I tried looking up information to see if he had been cast or said anything about a lengthy return. Right now it seems he’s working on a film called Low Winter Sun for AMC so he’s in the AMC family right now. Depending the schedule of the series and the movie it’s possible that he might return. In the comics Morgan did return to the group and even sort of had a thing with Michonne for a while way down the road.
It seems almost unlikely, though, that they will bring him back. Tyreese has been introduced and I assume that at some point Tyreese and his crew will come back to Rick’s group. It was just, you know, bad timing what with Rick going crazy and all. And if Tyreese is going to become a more promenent character then Morgan obviously cannot come back until Tyreese dies.
There can’t be more than one black guy.
Next week: back to your regularly scheduled turf battle! (Which is good because I went through some serious Daryl withdrawal this episode.)
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