“My name is Michonne. I lost someone. Years ago. But I just found out that he might… I just found out that he’s alive.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
As expected, after last week’s focus on Rick, this second instalment of The Ones Who Live was a Michonne-centric episode, catching us up on how the other half of TWD’s power couple found herself confronting her long lost beloved in the aftermath of shooting down his CRM helicopter.
Just as last time, this was a typically tricksy Walking Dead non-linear narrative, its timeframe leaping from present to future to past to showcase its lead character. Danai Gurira, having drawn short shrift last week as ‘Dream-Michonne’ returned properly here, and, as with Andrew Lincoln, stepped back into the role as though she’d never been away (and found considerable success elsewhere).
After a showy cold open of the exploding “gasman” taken from somewhere near the middle of the ep, this week’s title card showed us that, for Michonne at this point, it’s “six years after the bridge”, putting the storyline contemporaneous with where we left off last week. A couple of closeup interviews with the character nicely bookended her story – in the first, she was introducing herself (with perfect honesty) to yet another group of survivors, while in the second, she was lying through her teeth to a CRM panel deciding whether or not to admit her to the Republic. As an aside, I found it interesting to note that, after more than twelve years acquaintance with the character, we still don’t know Michonne’s surname (though logically I suppose it’s ‘Grimes’ these days).
The imaginative script by Nana Nkweti and Channing Powell was full of callbacks to the original series. It was nice continuity to see the return of Breeda Wool and Andrew Bachelor as Aiden and Bailey, the survivors rescued by Michonne way back in her final regular episode of TWD (season 10, ep 13), while her guest appearance facing a huge horde of Walkers in the TWD series finale was here explained and resolved.
That horde was one of several interesting concepts in the ep, directed with some flair by strangely named duo (I assume) Bert and Bertie. So Walkers migrate now? We’ve seen enormous Walker herds before, but this had to be just about the biggest – so much so that it looked like the Charge of the Light Brigade when Michonne, having lost her horse, prepared to take them on with just her trusty katana. It could have seemed like a deus ex machina when the mass of corpses parted like the Red Sea (an intentional reference to Michonne being like Moses?), but actually it made perfect sense – they were distracted in two directions simultaneously by some handy purple phosphor explosions, courtesy of Michonne’s resourceful new friend Nat.
Nat (a terrific performance from Matthew August Jeffers) was one of Michonne’s three new friends (along with Aiden and Bailey), and the only one whose usefulness to the plot lasted almost to the end of the ep. It’s a little unfair to say that these well-realised, three-dimensional characters were essentially just plot devices, but… well, that’s just what they were, there to give Michonne additional motivation alongside her quest. Nothing entirely wrong with that, of course, that’s how good drama often works. But I would have liked Nat, at least, to have had some involvement in the plot that’s to come.
Their desertion of their ever-moving colony (shown in a nice reveal as Michonne stepped out of the truck where she was being interviewed) was an indicator of her inspiring capabilities as leader. But more than that, it showed how her own sense of morality has developed over the years. The caravan’s policy of never stopping to pick up stragglers clearly disgusted her – and yet there were many times, along the way, that both she and Rick refused to risk stepping in to help others. It was one of the ongoing themes of the original Walking Dead, and I’m glad to see it carried on here.
Aiden and Bailey bit the dust fairly early, in another indicator of just how nasty the CRM can be. Michonne may not have heard of them before, but she’s plainly seen enough genre TV to know that heavily-armed black helicopters never bode well for anyone. Unfortunately her order to scatter didn’t really help against a full-on gas attack with chlorine; another callback to the tactic that dedicated viewers already know they used against Omaha, as detailed in World Beyond.
I hadn’t really expected to see much of the CRM this week, thinking the ep would end at the same point as the previous one, with Rick and Michonne meeting in the aftermath of the helicopter crash. But actually, this surprised me by reaching that point about 40 minutes in, leaving the remaining third to show us what happened next. Danai Gurira might have felt a bit short-changed not to have had a whole episode to herself like Andrew Lincoln did, but fair’s fair – what the fans really wanted was to see their reunion.
And it wasn’t disappointing. After all those years of working together, Gurira and Lincoln still have an easy chemistry that made their heartfelt hug and kiss truly affecting. But clearly, Michonne was unprepared for this new, more furtive Rick; a man clearly now more accustomed to stealth than his previous bull-in-a-china-shop approach to everything. She might be aware that he’s not a committed servant of the CRM shock troops and their Fuhrer, but his more resigned attitude in the face of overwhelming numbers will surely be the basis of some character conflicts to come.
Some things never change, though – Rick’s plans are as ill-thought through as ever. Yes, on the face of it, having Michonne claim to be ‘Dana’ a lone survivor who’d never met him, was a sensible idea. But how in the name of sanity did he forget that Jadis, the woman who brought him to the Republic, the woman who’s now a high-ranking member of the CRM, knows exactly who Michonne is?
It was no surprise to see Pollyanna MacIntosh back, after her leading antagonist role in World Beyond – I’m only surprised that we haven’t seen more returning characters from that show. MacIntosh’s short scene with Rick was electric, freighted with unspoken threat. Apparently she has an ‘arrangement’ with Rick – what could that be, I wonder? But for now, she’s going along with him, for reasons as yet unknown, in not blowing Michonne’s cover. Jadis has always been unpredictable though, and in the original Walking Dead, switched sides several times between the Saviors and Rick’s Rabble. That way lies trouble, I think.
Another good – if not actually brilliant – episode, then, not quite up to the best of the original TWD, but miles better than plenty of its later ones. Most of what we’ve had so far has been scene-setting, but now the show has to get on with an actual plot – presumably (and implausibly) showing how just two people can manage to bring down an entire totalitarian state. That’s a tall order even for the likes of Rick and Michonne (though I wouldn’t put it past Carol to do it singlehandedly). More pertinently though, they’ve only got another four episodes to do it in. While I certainly wouldn’t want a repeat of the nearly forty eps it took to topple the Saviors, I do wonder whether a story that vast can be accommodated in such a short runtime. Let’s see what the next four weeks bring.
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