The Walking Dead: Bury Me Here (7x13)

I want to care about Morgan. I do. I want to be emotionally affected by what's going on with his character. Sincerely. I'm not sure if it's the show's failing or my own that's making that difficult...

Cons:

In short, this week we see the breaking point between the Saviors and the Kingdom. Richard is insistent on making a stand, so he orchestrates a showdown by hiding one of the melons that the Kingdom is supposed to be delivering to the Saviors. The Saviors, in retaliation, shoot Benjamin, the teenager that Morgan has started to bond with. He dies. Later, when the group comes back to deliver the missing melon, Morgan snaps, strangling Richard and killing him. He does this in part to affirm the Kingdom's loyalty to the Saviors. But he also does it in revenge for Benjamin's death. Morgan tells Carol what really went down with Negan, and Carol decides to stop hiding. She comes back to the Kingdom and tells Ezekiel that they need to get ready to fight. He agrees.

This is a plot that would, could, and should work. It's just that this show is stretched so thin. And the twist of Morgan snapping and killing Richard would work a lot better if I had spent more time getting to know Richard as a character. Same thing with Benjamin. His death should have been a weighty tragedy, but at most it was an expected shocker to propel us into the third act of the episode. This is difficult to articulate, but it almost feels as if Morgan snapping and becoming violent is something the writers decided needed to happen, rather than something that organically grew out of the character.

Pros:

All that being said, I think this was largely a successful episode, in the sense that it got our characters where they needed to be in order for them to make the next step. I rather liked Richard as a character, even if I knew that he was never going to be anything more than a plot device to get Ezekiel to join the war. His death was sudden and brutal, and I enjoyed the fact that it took a realistically long time for Morgan to strangle him. The scene managed to hold its tension for the duration, which was impressive.

I also like that Carol is getting off her ass and getting back into the fight. In some ways I feel like I shouldn't praise this, because Carol's whole detour was a bit of a drag in the first place. But now that we're ending said detour, I'm getting excited again to see what Carol might be able to accomplish.

Morgan's breakdown scene where he imagines his son, and all of these images of his former madness flash through his mind, was really effective. As I stated earlier, Morgan has never been a favorite of mine, but I think that's my own hangup. What tends to happen when I watch shows is that I get fiercely protective of a few key characters, and other characters have a hard time breaking into the pack. In the case of The Walking Dead, I'd pretty much sell my soul for Michonne, Carol, and Daryl, but very few other characters hold a big draw for me. In any case, I think the stuff with Morgan is rife with great potential.

Even though the garden imagery is just a little too strong, I still enjoyed it - basically, as Carol comes back to join with the Kingdom, she sees Ezekiel and a young boy helping to replant the royal gardens, which had to be burned down because of pests. There's all sorts of symbolism here about rebirth and hope and all that, which might be liable to make me roll my eyes, but it ended up working out okay for whatever reason.

I think that's all I'm going to say for this one. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I want to know what happens next, but I don't feel that invested. Another so-so installment in a so-so season of The Walking Dead.

7.5/10