Andrew Lincoln (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
The Walking Dead has always been a show set firmly in the present tense. Planning for the future consisted of shoring up the fences to stave off the latest hoards of zombies. Remembering the past consisted of burying the dead.
In "After," this week's stunning mid-season premiere, all that has changed, and the result is one of the series' most compelling-and disturbing-episodes ever. (Spoilers for The Walking Dead up to Episode 408) Other hours have provided more action and shocked us with unexpected plot twists, but few have told us more about what the characters are thinking and feeling.
This episode picks up right where the mid-season finale left off, only minutes after the end of the costly battle between The Governor's band of invaders and Team Rick. It begins with a God's eye view of the carnage, and we see Michonne, already picking through what's left. Within minutes she's got two more armless, toothless pet zombies on a leash, just like she did when we first met her at the end of season two. It's like her time at the prison was all just a bad dream.
Until she comes upon Hershel's decapitated head, trying to reanimate itself. She drives her katana through his brain, then pats him gently. That's what passes for life now.
"Slow down!" We come back to a bloody and battered Rick shouting at Carl who's sauntering ahead angrily.
"Hey, we're gonna be...."
Rick's about to launch into another platitude but Carl silences him with a typically withering stare. Anyone who's been a teenager-or has a teenager-recognizes the dynamic, a young buck bucking the Ricktatorship. Except that the stakes are all out of whack. It's not about curfew or car keys. This is about life and death, and the corpses of Carl's friends are still warm.
Father and son happen upon a house on a nice street, a little nicer than a sheriff can probably afford. Carl ambles upstairs. A room. A bed. A flat screen TV. DVDs. Video games. Carl spends a moment contemplating some totally sweet alternate future. Hanging out with his friends, maybe even a girlfriend. Then back to the present as he has to use the cable from the flat screen to tie the door closed. Such is teenage angst in the post-Apocalypse.
A little later it's Michonne's turn. A kitchen, granite countertops, talk about an art exhibit that's, well, played, and even as she slips her katana into the knife block, and picks up her kid, she asks who'll open the wine. It was real enough, once, we'll find out later, Mike and the child gone because of a couple of bad decisions in a world with no margin for error. In an instant, that past disappears and Michonne wakes up in the present in the front seat of an old American car. And even killing 50 walkers like an outtake from Kill Bill can't drive the past out of her present.
Then comes Carl's big moment. After a typical teenager adventure, he goes off to explore, teases a clutch of zombies, and is lucky to escape with his life. When he returns, his father is unconscious on the couch. It's an opportunity for him to escape this zombie-filled present, and come to grips with a sorrow-filled past, and a hopeless future. Carl's Deputy Hat soliloquy goes something like this:
"I killed three walkers. They were going to get in. But I lured them away. I killed them. I saved you. I saved you. I didn't forget while you had us playing farmer. I still know how to survive. Lucky for us. I don't need you anymore. I can take care of myself. You couldn't protect Judith. Or Hershel or Glenn or Maggie, Michonne, Daryl. Or Mom. You just wanted to plant vegetables. You just wanted to hide. He knew where we were and you didn't care. You just wanted to pretend. You just hid behind those fences and waited. They're all gone because of you. They counted on you. You were their leader," Then a long pause. "But now, you're nothing."
And by the way, "I'd be fine if you died."
It's strong stuff, made all the more so because, aside from Carl's fibbing about the walkers, there's not an ounce of exaggeration here. It's an accounting, and Rick Grimes comes up woefully short. It's about all the ways that parents disappoint their kids but this time there's a body count. And make no mistake, Carl is ranting about loss, and that's as much about the future as the past.
Another near miss and a 112-ounce can of pudding later, Carl wakes up from what was no doubt a fitful dream. Something is stirring on the couch in the dark. It could be the walker that used to be his father. Or it could just be the Dad who's done nothing but disappoint him. Either way, Carl picks up Rick's Smith and Wesson, ready to do to his father what he did to his Mom.
He draws. He aims. But the Itchy Fingered, Pudding-Eating Oedipus of the Post Apocalypse can't pull the trigger.
It's a moment of reckoning that's been coming since the moment Rick came back into camp. And it's an equally important moment for Chandler Riggs, the young actor that some Walking Dead fans love, and others love to hate.
Having pushed things to a breaking point and beyond, Rick and Carl reach a place where they can look back at the past with sadness, but not blame. And where they can look to the future with at least a glimmer of hope. There are no more fences, no more waiting for The Governor. The Walking Dead is now a road movie, with the past and the future both fair game, and that alone is something to celebrate.
And then Michonne comes knocking at the door, katana over her her own baggage in tow. And with that the Grimes family had found some kind of a new normal. It may not be much of a life for a 15-year-old kid, but it's a promising fresh start for a four-year-old television show.
What's your take on Carl's big moment? On the new direction for The Walking Dead? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Allen St. John is the author of Newton's Football: The Science Behind America's Game, published by Ballantine Books.Follow me on Twitter (@avincent52) or follow me on Forbes.Original Post by: http://ift.tt/1iOPwf5
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