6x15 East

"East" is about cycle, about chain reactions, about the way decisions big and small come back to you in one way or another. Morgan says it himself -- it's all a circle. But whether that circle is good or bad, whether you get out of it what you put in, remains to be seen.

To Morgan's mind, it can be a force for good. He decides to spare The Wolf, and to Morgan, that decision not only leads to The Wolf himself helping to save Denise, but it leads his way of thinking to trickle down to Carol, and make Alexandria's most pragmatic warrior so uncomfortable with the act of killing that she absconds to where she need not risk hurting anyone. And yet Daryl faces the mirror image of that cycle. He chooses to spare Dwight, and to Daryl's mind, that makes him responsible both for Denise's death at Dwight's hands, and for the way that having to bury yet another innocent, drove his dear friend Carol away. Both men made the same kind of choice, but interpret the ensuing events very differently.

But there's another cycle in play in "East". Rick's crew attacked The Saviors, and brutalized everyone they came across. The episode repeatedly features folks in Alexandria worrying about the blowback. It seems inevitable that the remaining portion of Negan's followers will mount a counterassault, and try to return the favor. Maggie and Michonne predicted as such when they agreed to the plan. Rick started something, and the violence he dished out will no doubt come back to him as well.

In the early part of the episode, Michonne grabs an apple of the nightstand, takes a bite, and then offers one to Rick as well. It's a heavy-handed visual metaphor, and the implication is clear. Right now, Alexandria is paradise, a walled Eden where they can be well-fed, healthy, and safe from the tumult of the world. But paradise must fall, according to the demands of both biblical precedent and serialized television. So in each moment of bliss, of peace and pleasure, we wait for the other shoe to drop.

In that way, "East" feels a lot like filler. There's a storm coming; that much is clear. But in the meantime we have to shuffle the characters around the board so that they're in the right place when it hits. So Daryl bolts off, in attempt to clean up his unfinished business; Glenn, Michonne, and Rosita go after him in an attempt to keep him from doing something rash or reckless, and Rick and Morgan head out in search of Carol.

This being The Walking Dead, each of these events is cause for long-winded, not particularly subtle conversations about What The Right Thing Is in the midst of the fall of civilization. Season 6 has done well to examine the morality of the actions of the group to some degree, and putting conflicting philosophies at loggerheads, but "East" feels like a rehash that communicates these ideas by having people blather on about them in an inorganic fashion.

There's some juice to the exchanges between Morgan and Rick, who stand as the devil and angel on either shoulder of Carol for all intents and purposes. They have a history together, albeit one with large gaps. But those gaps allow each to see the way the other has changed in a way that isn't as clear when you're close up the whole time. Rick is pure, Shane-like pragmatism, willing to kill at a moment's notice whenever he feels threatened, and Morgan is pure, nigh-impossible pacifism, constantly trying to find another way. Sure, their views are caricatured to a strong degree, and the dialogue is painful at times, but there's at least a solid foundation for how those ideas clash, and the way Carol is being torn apart from the inside with both sides of the spectrum pulling at her.

The Daryl/Glenn/Michonne/Rosita contingent is less compelling in their part of the episode. Again, it feels largely like a repetition of themes and ideas that have been brought up and dramatized better in the past, without much beyond a slightly different setting to draw them out. And it again involves our supposedly capable heroes getting ambushed yet again (twice actually!) and setting up a pretty standard hostage situation and shooting fake out that will no doubt be a catalyst for the events of the finale.

Despite all of this, Carol is, once again, the highlight of the episode. Credit once again belongs to Melissa McBride who puts on another clinic in how to convey being tortured by both what you've done and what you have to do. Again, both McBride and Carol do a superb job of taking the character's genuine discomfort and distress at potentially having to take another life and mixing it with her attempts to play the timid mouse who's overwhelmed by the opposing threat of violence and thus underestimated by the people who are threatening her. It's one of the few elements in this episode that works at multiple levels, and it's far and away the most striking scene in "East".

The way that Carol trembles when confronted by the prey who think themselves predators, the way the episode opens with close up shots of the aftermath of this grisly scene that lets the audience know before a single shot's been fired that this doesn't end well, the way that she pleads with them that it doesn't have to be this way, add to the inherent tragedy of where Carol is right now.

The guns hidden in her sleeves is a neat trick--Carol is full of neat tricks that show the craftiness she's developed out in the wild--but they come with a cost, with the way she is devastated at having another set of names to add to her journal. Here is a woman who suffered mightily long before the world as we know it ended, and she faced even more hardships after that. But she responded with strength, with a commitment to doing what she had to do in order to survive and protect the people who couldn't protect themselves. And yet those actions have come back to her, the thoughts of the lives snuffed out by her hand haunt her still, and seem inescapable, even as she gives up what little stability she's managed to cobble together in an attempt to elude them.

So much of this episode is focused on when and how good can beget good, evil can beget evil, and violence can beget more violence. These are thoughts TWD has explored time and time again, with enough water-treading in terms of the plot that make the entire episode somewhat tedious. But Carol's part of it, the way that Rick's philosophy and Morgan's philosophy have crashed together within her and left her as the devastated, lethal woman on that road, show that pain can also beget pain. I can only hope that she finds a way forward.

The episode continues with the clumsiness of last week's episode. Now not only we get to see Carol's teenager mood-swing, we get to see Daryl's too. The usually calculating hunter now risk himself and his comrade's life a few days after Denise got murdered. Daryl wanting to finish Dwight once and for all, that is understandable. After all it's not only once Daryl seems to be reckless and going in his way. But him needing to wait a few days after Denise's demise just to fit in with Carol's disappearance seems kinda forced. Not to mention everyone seems to become so reckless by wanting to be involved in the search party. I mean they have a home to protect. Why every bits of them seems so motivated to get out of their home?

That said, this episode leaves us with an interesting cliff-hanger. We all know, especially comic book readers, that someone is going to die in the next episode. But who? Carol, Daryl, and Glenn are all out of there. There is also Michonne. The episode spent quite a time to give Maggie and Rick more screen time (which usually means someone close to them is going to die in the next eps), so it's kind of difficult to predict which of them is going to leave the show.