8x09 Honor

[7.4/10] The opening few minutes of “Honor” are The Walking Dead at its best. If you want me to give your television show a little slack, to feel a little extra emotional resonance in an important sequence, then you’re hard pressed to do better than employing a little music penned by Conor Oberst (or, as TWD has also done, John Darnielle). “At the Bottom of Everything”, the opening track from Oberst’s seminal album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, is the perfect accompaniment to the images “Honor” presents. It’s a story and an anthem about the absurdities we face and the joys we wring in the face of oblivion.

And that’s perfect for an episode devoted to Carl’s death, a death that is surprisingly satisfying given it’s shock value vibe in the mid-season finale, and the sense that this was an opportunity to do an overwrought departure from this mortal coil for the show. Instead, we see Carl emboldened, maybe even happy, despite the knowledge of his impending demise.

He makes plans to help people. He says goodbye to his little sister. He writes letters for the people he cares about. He enjoys the fresh air and the sunshine one last time. As befits the song these events are set to, Carl finds a freedom and a joy in knowing what’s to come, in the ideas of what really matters and what decidedly doesn’t emerging in the crucible of a known end.

The death of a child -- one who has often been the show’s chief symbol for the idea of innocence and the risk of it being corrupted in this new world -- could easily have been an opportunity to wallow, and instead the show uses it as an opportunity to vindicate why the things Carl believes in, the idea of a better tomorrow, are worth living for, and worth being happy about, even in the face of death.

That isn’t to say that that “Honor” is a bright, chipper episode filled with warm fuzzies in the death of a major character. The episode channels most of the grief through Rick and Michonne, which is the right choice given their familial connection. The Walking Dead plays to its strengths, showing stark images like the two of them sitting on a desolate porch having had to bury a son, or letting the actors convey the magnitude of the moment with the looks on their faces as they look upon Carl dying, or a bit of both as the episode’s director opts to shoot from below, as Rick and Michonne dig Carl’s grave with the sun behind them, only putting Michonne’s devastated expression into focus when a shadow strikes the right place.

As much as I give it guff at times, The Walking Dead has always been a strong show in terms of its visuals, and has plenty of outstanding performers like Danai Gurira, and it uses both to great effect here.

And as much as myself and others have ragged on the show for a sense of unremitting bleakness, “Honor” manages to spin this horrible event into an embrace of hope. Carl dies, but he dies trying to save someone he didn’t have to save, without regret or complaint. He dies surrounded by people who love him having taken steps to help protect them. He dies believing that though his life is brief, it is and was worth it to do those things, even in the crater or civilization, because of the world he envisions bringing about through those actions. Carl grew up surrounded by all of this violence, all of this horror, all of the worst of humanity on display, and still became someone who thought there was more to this life than that. It is, in its own way, a happy ending for the little boy who wandered around in his dad’s hat in the series’s opening episodes.

That’s contrasted by Morgan, who makes for a strong counterpoint to Carl’s portion of the episode as a man who lost his own son, and then a surrogate son, and felt that sense of nihilism and brutality creeping over him as the only option left. He and Carol maraude their way through The Kingdom in an effort to rescue Ezekiel, and Morgan unleashes that brutality on each of the Saviors he comes across.

Here too, the show’s visual panache and strong performances come out to play. The way that Morgan tears through his opponents, in some instances literally, is visceral and disturbing. Interspersed with scenes of Carl preaching the idea of something better than this endless war emerging, of saying “yes” to mercy and kindness, Morgan can only say no. He kills without hesitation. He rips a man’s viscera out in a tense moment, his hands covered with blood. This is someone who has lost everything and resorts to the most cruel, determined, atavistic parts of himself to cope.

He stalks Gavin like the monster in a slasher flick. The episode zooms in on his staff dragging on the ground, creating a sense of tension and horrible anticipation. Lennie James once again cuts the figure of someone who has lost the most human parts of himself and struggles to find them again when implored to by those on the other end of his weapon.

For every bit of light in the darkness from Carl’s part of the story in “Honor” there is a corresponding bit of hopelessness and descent in Morgan’s actions, and for a little while, you believe that The Walking Dead might just nail the landing on this one, that it might give you a heartening story of a young man perishing, contrasted with a good man falling in the face of tragedy, and tie those two conflicting ideas together in a compelling fashion.

But “Honor” falters where The Walking Dead always falters, when it tries to do too much, to overdo the dialogue that’s supposed to convey overtly what its images and performances already accomplish, and to make everything too over the top, too heavily underlined, and too obvious to pass muster.

Of course, the strong work of framing Morgan as an increasingly heartless killer and of Ezekiel as willing to sacrifice his life for his people is undercut by Gavin, a unique secondary antagonist, giving overly didactic monologues that put too fine a point on the whole situation. Of course, the episode overexplains the fantasy sequences that were cut into the season premiere, showing them to be Carl’s vision of the future, with the baffling choice of him envisioning Negan himself as a part of this paradise. It’s likely intended as the purest indicator that through it all, Carl has retained his optimism, but it comes off as comical, as the kind of convoluted faux-spiritual nonsense that the show does better to nod at rather than outline.

And, of course, the otherwise heartstring-pulling goodbyes between Carl and those closest to him turn into equally blunt statements about What It All Means. This is, as the show has indulged in a lot recently, an extra-long episode, and boy could it do without the excess girth. Just when it feels like the show hits its marks in sending Carl off, just when it feels like the show is being a bit grandiose, but passably so in the moments where Carl bids farewell to his father, the scenes going on for another ten minutes hitting the same notes over and over again. The same excruciatingly-written colloquies that have sunk this show time and time again come back in full force, sucking all the air and emotion out of what had, until that point, been a surprisingly effective exit for Carl.

It’s another instance of The Walking Dead being unable to get out of its own way. There is so much good here. There is visual style out the wazoo, with close attention paid to lighting and blocking and composition. There is great work done by the show’s actors, with Danai Gurira and Lennie James turning in their usual strong work, and even Chandler Riggs giving one of his best performances in the entire show. There’s a noteworthy thematic contrast between Carl and Morgan, with conflicting perspectives emerging from opposite sides of the parent-losing-child equation.

But then “Honor” beats you over the head with its themes, and has its characters make grand declarations so far removed from natural speech that they make these moments feel more abstract and real, and scenes stretch on forever, robbing them of any pace or force. As is The Walking Dead’s eternal struggle, its continuing pathologies hobble the show’s strengths, leaving the viewer with a sense of frustration and exhaustion that overwhelms the otherwise outstanding work in an episode where we say goodbye to Carl once and for all.

If only the close of this episode could be as strong as the way it opened, but no amount of musical splendor, either from Mr. Oberst or the great Bear McCreary, can fix its problems.