"Embrace the Contradiction" Tristan Mayer reviews The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 2 'The Well'
Last week on The Walking Dead, Negan made a smashing entrance, knocking sense and loyalty into the group and sparking intense debate and conversation in the fandom. While some praised the envelope-pushing violence and intense performances, many wondered if the show had gone too far or fallen deeply into unrealistic pessimism. The episode destroyed in ratings and generated passionate discussion. Could the second episode live up to the impact of the first? Or would it sizzle out the excitement the show has regenerated?
King of the Jungle
We open with Carol and Morgan on the road with the
mysterious horse-riding saviors of last season’s finale. While on the road and dealing with a zombie
encounter, Carol’s blood loss sends her on a crazy fever dream, imagining that
the zombies are people calling for her.
This terrifying vision is cut short when more strangers ride up to save
the crew and take them back to the first new setting of the season: The Kingdom.
And for every Kingdom, there’s a king.
Carol is wheeled in to meet King Ezekiel. Perhaps even more shocking than a royal
monarchy in the middle of a zombie apocalypse is his pet: Shiva a giant,
chained tiger. Ezekiel introduces
himself (and his tiger) to Carol, who quickly switches gears into bewildered grandma
mode, playing up to Ezekiel and his offers of fruit and choirs. While Ezekiel is proclaiming the Kingdom to be
a fantastic place, Carol does not seem convinced. She plans to run off when she is alone, saying that the place is a joke that is bound to fail. Morgan says he cannot let her but also cannot stop her if he is gone.
An Approaching Curve
As Carol returns home to plan her escape, Morgan is taken on a run with Ezekiel and his warriors. Morgan falls quickly
in stride with the Kingdom, fighting alongside to heard in pigs and talking about his past with the King. We see Ezekiel in full King form here, talking mightily to his men and spewing strange royalty talk to the zombies. Morgan clearly realizes that this is strange, but after finally finding a place among others he holds in his criticism and agrees to train one of the up and comers in his unique combat approach.
I mostly enjoyed the juxtaposition of
these two characters here. Morgan has
become the optimist of the group, cautious but entirely willing to buy into the
promise of what the Kingdom could be. He
falls quickly into the pace of it and finds a role within a community for
perhaps the first time in his span on the show.
In Alexandria, he was much more of an outside on the edge, but here he
is taken directly into the inner circle.
It does feel strange that Ezekiel has taken Morgan in so closely so
soon, but it makes sense from a storytelling standpoint to give us a familiar
character to POV us into the new characters.
Meanwhile, Carol has become the hardened-to-a-fault pessimistic,
unwilling to grasp for hope after having it ripped from her so many times
before. Through their experiences, they
are both equally justified in their outlooks. While both characters can be annoyingly extreme and begin to feel repetitively full of themselves, this episode gave me hope that they can both fall into happy mediums.
A Reason to Fight
After connecting with the warrior
he is training over literature, Morgan is taken along to a meeting between
Ezekiel and a group of outsiders, which he is warned could get violent.
Quickly we realize that these outsiders are Saviors, members of the group working for Negan, playing the same squeeze
routine on the Kingdom that they have played on the Hilltop and now Rick. The Kingdom trades them the pigs shown earlier
in exchange for their peaceful protection.
A small fight between two of the men breaks out. Morgan attempts to raise a gun, but is unable to get himself to do it. Luckily, the fight is shut down by Ezekiel, saying this is not their
way.
Morgan relates to this peaceful philosophy, but also seems to wonder what he would have done had the confrontation gone the other direction. Later, he meets with the
warrior he trained and tells him about his past philosophy of peace and how, while others can point you in the
right direction, it is up to you to carve a path for yourself. Morgan is clearly conflicted personally in this episode. His 'no killing' outlook is being
challenged as he begins to see that violence is sometimes inevitable. But he also knows that there is a difference between
accepting violence as a last effort possibility and embracing it as the only
option.
As Morgan reflects on this and the Kingdom sleeps, Carol is sneaking away. However her escape is interrupted as Ezekiel
catches her in the act. Carol tries to
keep up her played role, but Ezekiel sees through it. Ezekiel sheds his own persona and requests that Carol do the same. He tells her that he knows she has had to fight through a lot, but that the fighting is not worth it if she continues to walk away from the reward every time.
Merely Players
When she questions why he pulls the Medieval Times act, he confesses that it was not his idea. He was a simple zookeeper, but when folklore began to rise about him as the man with the tiger, he embraced the role. He argues that sometimes people need an illusion or fantasy, especially in the darkest times.
They want to find a leader who can make them feel safe and purposeful, give
them a reason to keep fighting.
The religious elements have been prevalent this whole season, and this episode continues it slightly by examining the question of faith in a hopeless situation. Ezekiel gives the argument that believing in the impossible is natural for people, especially people in desperate situations. In the end, he believes, the reality matters less than a person's belief and if believing in something seemingly beyond reality is what someone needs to keep themselves alive, what is the point in crushing that faith?
In the end, Carol does choose to
leave, but this time she leaves openly, with Morgan at her side. She stops at the house seen in the opening of
the episode and settles in before a knock hits on the door. Ezekiel stands on the porch, tiger in one hand and fruit
in the other. It is clear that, while
Carol is living on the outside, she has not entirely given up on hope for the
Kingdom. Perhaps, if Ezekiel can play
his role correctly, he can bring Carol into the fold and provide her, along
with the fanbase, some hope that we can finally grab hold of. A glimmer that there is more than death and destruction in the future and that maybe, with a bit of luck, good can prevail against the odds.
What I Loved:
Cards on the Table: We saw three characters who had been playing distinctly
different roles to the world. Carol is
internally the hopeless and broken woman, unable to trust and connect with people. However, she hides this behind the persona of a house mom who walked into her son’s Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
These roles conflict as she begins to question herself and what is truly
worth fighting for. Meanwhile Morgan has
been playing the role of the uber-pacifist, unwilling to kill under any circumstances. His experience with the Saviors and Wolves has
questioned that role as his combat prowess begins to become a necessity. These roles begin to merge as well as Morgan faces an identity crisis of his own over the role of violence in his
world. The biggest roleplayer of the
episode, however, is obviously King Ezekiel.
He portrays the part of the royal leader, standing over the people, staff
in hand. However, he reveals that
this is a façade and that he plays up this part to give the people a hope to
cling to. These roles also merge however
as Ezekiel enjoys keeping up the King role because it makes him and others feel good but
seems to wish he could show more people his true self. This theme of conflicting personal identity and the roles that characters play for their own good or the good of
others was the best part of this episode and it will be interesting to
see where each of these characters end on of the scale of the
personalities.
What I Liked:
In The Darkest of Places: Over the
last week, many people have criticized The Walking Dead for being too dark and hopeless
with no brightness in the future. This
episode seems to be a purposeful answer to that call. The writers are showing us a larger,
connected world and are making sure that this world is varied. While there is evil like Negan, there is good
like Ezekiel. These parallels are
something the show desperately needed as viewers and characters began to lose
hope to the point where there would be no reason for the audience to watch – or
the characters live – knowing there is nothing good out there. While some of the attempts at humor did not
land for me and felt very out of place, The Walking Dead attempting to widen
its emotional spectrum is important and welcome.
Embrace the Contradiction: Ezekiel was a fun
character and I am very excited for where he can go in the future of this show. Seeing him playing the role of the king and
shedding that role was a cool juxtaposition and I was happy we spent so much
time with him to get to know him. I
think that some of his scenes came off as very strange and cheesy in live
action and I will not be surprised to see some people give up on the episode half
way through thinking the show has jumped the tiger, but I think that those who
were open and stuck around realized the truth of Ezekiel and are in for something
truly interesting.
What I Disliked:
Circles in the Sand: While the contradiction of roles is interesting,
I am starting to get tired of the arcs that Morgan and Carol are on. It seems as if Carol has been walking back
and forth on the same line for a while and is starting to go away from the
badass realist into an annoying pessimist. Morgan's "no killing" outlook is starting to feel increasingly unreasonable and his clinging to that has been old for a few episodes now. Both of them are now feeling like self-centered and egotistical, believing that their woe-is-me reality is the most important thing in the world and that others are just too stupid to understand them. This episode hopefully implies that these arcs are nearing completion,
but I am nervous that they will not be gone for good. The one defining flaw that has run through this series
for years has been circular, repetitive character arcs and this season could
threaten to keep that flaw alive.
What I Hated:
Separate Is Not Equal: After such a devastating premier, separating us
from Rick and Negan was helpful in calming us back down and bringing us back
in. But I don’t know if an entire
episode away from Rick and the group this soon was the right call. The first half or so could have been Kingdom,
but a couple scenes of Rick back at Alexandria or Maggie at the Hilltop could
have helped bring this episode to a higher point and not feel so stand
alone. Perhaps a way to get around this
would have been to bring Negan in as the one there to collect the pigs, which could
have at least given us more of Negan’s character. It
also feels manipulative and misleading to show so much of Negan, Rick and Alexandria
in the preview shown last week only to have them not in here at all. Walking Dead has always separated characters
to make seasons last a little longer, but I do not think that bottling such an
early episode was the best decision.
Leave But Don't Leave
Next week we seemingly won't be getting back to Rick's core group, but we will be getting a deeper look into Negan's world through the eyes of fangirl favorite Daryl Dixon. At the end of the premier, Daryl was kidnapped as leverage and this teaser makes it seem like Negan is going to be playing the mind games on Daryl this week, belittling him and hoping to break him into submission. Maybe he will attempt to bring Daryl into the saviors? He does seem like he could be ripe for the picking without an real ties to the group he is in and an enormous level of guilt.
Obviously we probably won't be leaving Daryl behind to the Saviors, but I am excited to get a look into the workings of the Saviors and Negan on the daily. What does Negan do to keep his own men in check? What is life like under Negan's rule? While it will be rough to be separated from our main group for another episode, this shows the potential to give us the dive into a villain's life that we have been desperate for since the Governor.
Thanks for reading my review of The Walking Dead! My name is Tristan Mayer from The Film Fan Awakens and you can follow me on my work here on Blogspot or on Facebook at The Film Fan Awakens. Be sure to check back next week for my continued reviews of the series and have a great Halloween!
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