9x06 Who Are You Now?

[6.3/10] If you had told me a few seasons ago that The Walking Dead would do a soft reboot that basically turned over the show to Michonne, Carol, and Daryl, I would have cheered. Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, and Norman Reedus are three of the show’s best performers, and each of the characters has enough depth and complications in their pasts and motivations to more than fuel this series for a while longer.

But I am tired of time jumps. I am tired of the painful dialogue. And I am tired of this show having the same moral debates over and over and over again.

And lord knows we don’t need another moppet. That’s no indictment of young Cailey Fleming, who does okay under the circumstances as a slightly older Judith Grimes. But man, talented adult performers have trouble making The Walking Dead’s tortured dialogue sound plausible as something a human being might actually say, let alone convincing or moving. Foisting that responsibility onto a child is practically cruel. Nevermind the fact that Carl was, for a long time, a pretty useless accessory to Rick, and it wasn’t until he and Chandler Riggs became older that the became a useful character on the show in his own right. Restarting the clock on that with Judith is a challenging idea for a show already trying to find itself again in a new era.

That new era is roughly six years since the previous episode, with Michonne having become the protective and suspicious head of security for Alexandria, Carol turning into a seemingly softer “Queen” at the Kingdom, and Daryl becoming a hermit who trawls the woods by his lonesome.

Make no mistake, this is The Walking Dead, re-piloting, and it’s more than a little awkward. Part of the inherent tension of this show came from the idea that everything our heroes did was very fraught, because you never knew whether this latest attempt at survival, at finding a home, at building something more permanent, would work. Now, we know that it did work, at least well enough that pretty much all the major characters who haven’t been shuffled off for a three-picture deal are still around, and Alexandria, The Kingdom, and The Hilltop are all still functioning.

That’s the problem with this sort of time jump on a survival show. You need things to have changed or else the passage of time is totally pointless, so we see a harder Michonne, a softer Carol, a lonelier Daryl, and a romantically entangled Gabriel, Rosita, and Eugene. But things can’t have changed too much or there’s too much explaining to do, and the characters aren’t recognizable as themselves anymore. The timeline on this show has always been a little fuzzy, but think how much these people and their situation has changed over just the last few seasons. Stretch that out to six more years, and it feels like by the time we meet our heroes again, both too much and too little has happened.

“Who Are You Now?” at least has the decency to focus on character. It contrasts Michonne and Carol as two people who have both lost and gained families, and are in different places in their reactions to that. Losing Rick, and being chiefly (if not solely) responsible for protecting Judith and her young son (where Rick is presumably the father) has made her defensive, and untrusting. She talks to Rick and Carl. She sees the worst in outsiders and is more interested in protecting their group. She is once again haunted by what happened to the people she loved and in the years since Rick’s “death” she has become closer to the warrior than to the stateswoman she was becoming when we saw her last.

That’s a worthy tack to take. Gurira has always been one of the better actors on the show in terms of giving a layered performance, so while it feels like a waste to have her chatting with ghosts or delivering overblown faux-poetic monologues in voiceover to kick things off, in the episode’s better moments she’s able to communicate the combination of affection, concern, and anger going on beneath the surface.

The problem is that Michonne’s change in character is explored through a really tired device that The Walking Dead has turned to so many times before -- whether or not to let a new group of people into your community. Aside from the usual structural problems like weak dialogue and shoehorned-in zombie scares, this is what brings the episode down. The quintet of people that Judith finds and insists on rescuing is such a transparent effort to restock the show’s roster after some notable departures. And the council meeting scene is an equally hamfisted move to introduce all of the members while basically announcing their personalities and character traits rather than letting them emerge naturally.

Contrast that with what the show does with Carol, Henry, and what’s left of The Saviors. Sure, there’s some on-the-nose dialogue there too, with Carol and Ezekiel have an exposition-filled conversation about the two of them as parents to Henry and being hesitant to let go and letting him be a dreamer. But at the same time, the episode mainly shows you how Carol has changed rather than tells you.

Sure, Henry draws attention to the fact that Carol’s survive-however-you-must attitude has shifted with a line here or there, but for the most part, you just see her as someone who seems happier, more ready to let the idealists have their dreams, and ready to surrender rather than fight if it means safety. The show implies that having a family again has made Carol kinder and gentler, willing to give up plenty and take on a different demeanor if it means keeping her adopted son and her new, happy life safe and secure.

But, of course, Carol is still Carol, and while she’s not willing to risk Henry’s safety in any confrontation, she’s still willing to do whatever it takes -- including burning her enemies alive -- to keep the people she loves safe. It’s jarring, a little badass, and a little scary, but shows that just because Carol has a new family now, doesn't mean she’s left behind who she was when we last saw her. She’s just more selective about when she lets the beast out of the cage.

And that makes her an interesting parallel for Michonne here, who has the opposite trajectory. She seems harsher and crueler, but ultimately bends toward mercy in the way that Rick (at least some of the time) would have wanted her to, and which Judith, who is made to share Rick’s nobility-driven worldview to a painful extent, definitely wants her to now. She’s not willing to let Magna’s crew stay, but she’s willing to take them to Hilltop, to honor Rick’s memory, and the part of him that lives on, in their children and in her heart.

“Who Are You Now?” emphasizes that with pounding visual symbolism: a flower growing out of the asphalt, a mother bird claiming worms from a walker to feed to her chicks, a little cowboy figure. You’d have to be blind to miss the obvious metaphors The Walking Dead wants to call to mind with this imagery, and it hits the cowboy figure especially hard, but it all at least manages to communicate what the show wants it to: there is light in the darkness and the spectre of Rick lingers with the people who came together through him.

That doesn't excuse the tired and/or weird stuff in this episode. I am not on board with a Gabriel Rosita/Eugene love triangle or the usual zombie attack du jour without any real verve or wrinkle to it. I am not on board with walkers seemingly able to speak English all of a sudden. And while the scene between Negan and Judith brought out the best in both characters (and once again underlined the themes of the episode a little too hard), it’s especially odd having this (presumably) reformed butcher giving the daughter of his onetime mortal enemy algebra and/or life advice.

But it ties into the message of the episode -- that everyone in Alexandria and beyond has done things, lost people, and still managed to find second chances. It’s a weak reckoning with Rick’s absence, and the time jump is shaky at best, but it’s something, I suppose. The problem is that it’s a topic The Walking Dead has tackled -- whether or not to accept more survivors and what that says about the people making the decisions -- so many times that it’s become rote.

A soft reboot is a chance to take the show in new directions, to move on from the dead-ends the series often found itself mired in in recent years. Instead, The Walking Dead resets the stage, but gives us much of the same old song at dance, even as it tries to add a few new players.

Michonne pays her respects in the spot where she last saw Rick six years ago. The Kingdom is beginning to suffer from old infrastructure, Carol and Ezekiel are married and Henry is all grown up. Judith brings the group of strangers she found back to Alexandria and Michonne is hesitant on adding them to the community. Carol and Henry go out together but are ambushed by an old group of Saviors that spare their lives. Later that night, Carol finds them and sets them on fire killing them. Eugene and Rosita go out for a bit and upon the arrival of a walker herd, Eugene injuries himself but they escape. Judith spends some time talking with Negan who's still held captive after all these years. Carol and Henry stumble upon Daryl whose been out on his own for some time now. Michonne changes her mind and decides to keep the new group but she wants to send them to Hilltop. Eugene and Rosita find a ditch to hide in and cover themselves in mud. The walkers pass by them and hear of whispers from the herd. (Not going to lie, I'm super excited to see the Whisperers coming into the show.)

The noticeable absence of Rick, Maggie and the Hilltop was definitely felt in this episode, especially given the great time gap that we are constantly reminding ourselves of. Revealing that Michonne had a son with Rick, RJ, hurt a little too. The little toy that resembles Rick was a nice addition to this episode but thinks will never be the same without him.