S08.E04: King County

[Mr. Sparkle]

Morgan's return to King County gets complicated when PADRE comes to collect.

Streaming early on AMC+ and premiering on AMC June 4, 9:00 PM EDT.

Proceed at your own risk for spoilers before the AMC airdate.

[Daltrey]

These writers are running a masterclass on character assassination. None of these people would've ended up back in a group like PADRE for so long, least of all Sherry and Dwight. It's even more ridiculous when you consider the "leader" hides behind a distorted microphone and two way glass, never once showing his face. No one ever questioned that? "Oh, we're not allowed to be together or raise our kids but at least they're safe, der.🥴"  Fuck off show, none of them would just roll over and figuratively die like that🙄. That said, I'm enjoying it more than last season's nuclear radiation BS...🤔 Maybe it's because no one's talking through gas masks half the time to remind us in case we forgot and I don't have to rewind and turn on subtitles. Anyway, Grace reveals her radiation sickness is back and she hasn't got long to live, probably, shortly before (in)conveniently getting bit while saving Mo from a walker who finally decided to attack after five minutes of conversation 3 feet from where he was playing possum. Must've been one of those smarter than the average dead we met at the end of the mother ship. So, now they have to get her to June and her cure before it's too late except June's cure involves radiation therapy and Grace was exposed to radiation over a decade ago or whatever so maybe it's not too late at all and never was because she had the cure inside her all along and aren't we all going to be one big happy family because it's the final season and there really aren't any stakes left at all.🤣😜 I WAS scared for a moment that they were actually going to have the balls to take out Morgan but I should've known better, lol. Can't see him not making it to the finale...and if he survives that, he'll probably at least guest on one of the spinoffs.

Edited June 3, 2023 by Daltrey

[Starchild]

Wait, so PADRE is close to where this all started? Didn't Morgan walk across the country?

Edited June 5, 2023 by Starchild

[Daltrey]

25 minutes ago, Starchild said:

Wait, so PADRE is close to where this all started? Didn't Morgan walk across the country?

Oh, yeah. Also...this☝️🤣

I think it was only actually Georgia to Texas, but still...sure seemed a hell of a lot further, lol!

[Brown44]

Fitting conclusion for a Morgan storyline all the back from the 1st episode of TWD.

[Mr. Sparkle]

None of the storyline makes sense if you think about it, everything Daltrey said is true. Shrike is ok as a lieutenant, but not as a main baddie, since we saw her as a sniveling teen 2 weeks ago. 

I watched last season due to lack of nothing else to do and it was awful. This season started out a bit better, but it's already lost track and I'm watching it as a chore again. 

Only 8 more to go! 

[nodorothyparker]

8 hours ago, Starchild said:

Wait, so PADRE is close to where this all started? Didn't Morgan walk across the country?

Morgan has done quite a bit of walking. King County where he was living and first met Rick is I think supposed to be in northern Georgia. He eventually trailed Rick up to Alexandria, a fictional version of the same city in Virginia. And then after the interminable Negan story that even he had enough of to leave the mother show for this one, he met up with this show's crew more or less in east Texas. We know that last season's Walking Dead: Fallout edition took place roughly on the Texas coast because that's where the submarine with the warheads was beached. So silly me when they kept mentioning Padre Padre Padre last season thought they meant Padre Island, which is off the south Texas coast. But then I could have sworn that things that had been said in the last couple of episode that led me to believe they were somewhere on the south Louisiana coast, which apparently a number of reviewers also thought as that at least makes some logistical sense. The WD Wiki, though, places PADRE off the Georgia coast, which makes less than no sense whatsoever what with Florida being between those two coasts and thus the whole raft story of how Dwight and Sherry got there even more implausibly ridiculous. So who the hell knows at this point? Like a lot of things in this universe, we're seemingly not supposed to think very hard about any of it and just go with it.

I wanted to like this episode even in understanding that it was cashing in heavily on nostalgia for one of the mother show's best stand alone episodes when it still had the power to really gut punch you. But Morgan has gone to the well of crazy/not crazy so many times in the intervening years that nothing felt like it carried any real weight. It had such a sense of tired inevitability to it that in the middle of the latest crisis Morgan would decide NOW was the time to go deal with this. And that's before you get to all the ridiculousness of the current storyline that has you asking, wait, they were going to kill Morgan anyway. So why the hell do these PADRE nutters care if he wanders off to some far-flung place out of their immediate orbit?

It at least makes some degree of sense that Dwight and Sherry would be pissed enough at Morgan to be where they are at the beginning of the episode, but just as the original recipe show sat behind a chain link fence for nine days while the world went to shit they're skipping over all the interesting bits of their story. Namely that the kid who was stolen from them that they've had only limited access to up until now and last we saw they thought was being left to turn is now just fine and dandy with his new instafamily and oh yeah, that they've apparently found the cure to zombie bites but just off screen. I did laugh that the same woman who previously mistook pregnancy for radiation poisoning has diagnosed herself with it once again and that Morgan is now rushing the same woman who believes she's dying from radiation off to be saved via June's magical more radiation cure.

[Mr. Sparkle]

1 minute ago, nodorothyparker said:

and oh yeah, that they've apparently found the cure to zombie bites but just off screen.

I love how casual this is. "Oh, that thing that destroyed civilization? Yeah, we took care of it, didn't anyone tell you?" 

[nodorothyparker]

Right? If it's legit, that's a much much bigger deal than Morgan goes crazy for the 417th time or yet another baddie to war against, this time a couple of hapless idiot adult children with daddy issues.

[Starchild]

1 hour ago, nodorothyparker said:

Morgan goes crazy for the 417th time

And this is the guy Madison wants to lead them to victory. In her defense, though, she doesn't know about his multiple breaks from reality.

[Crashcourse]

I'm just not feeling that kid Mo, so I don't care what happens.   

[iMonrey]

I won't rehash the logistics issue, but I could have sworn they were in Texas last season and now Sherry and Dwight are a mere horse ride away from Atlanta and yet within walkie talkie distance of Padre. WTF.

And what's going on at Padre anyway? Didn't last episode end with Shrike and her brother releasing all the Walkers from the shipping containers and leaving the island? Also, I know the Padre people are calling Walkers "Carrion" but every time they say it I hear "Carry-on."

I guess it was kind of cool they used some footage (of Morgan's wife) from TWD pilot episode but this really felt like a filler episode. I just haven't seen any point to this season yet, it's like they were contractually obligated to do one more season and everyone is just phoning it in.

Grace has been dying of radiation poisoning since the day we met her, now she's been bitten, so they're going to cure her with . . . radiation? Will the radiation treatment cure her radiation sickness? In what universe does this make any sense whatsoever?

And apparently June managed to perfect this treatment since the last episode so Finch is just fine now? What about the gnarly bite on his shoulder, is that all healed up nice and neat too? No infection or anything? How much time has passed since last episode?

11 minutes ago, Crashcourse said:

I'm just not feeling that kid Mo, so I don't care what happens.   

I really want someone to grab a scissors and cut off that one errant braid hanging in her face.

[Mr. Sparkle]

24 minutes ago, Crashcourse said:

I'm just not feeling that kid Mo, so I don't care what happens.   

Of course, after living in some weird parent-less commune for her entire life, she takes to Morgan and Grace as her parents after spending about 1.5 hours with them. My own, actual kids don't listen to me like that! 

[heisenberg]

10 hours ago, Starchild said:

And this is the guy Madison wants to lead them to victory. In her defense, though, she doesn't know about his multiple breaks from reality.

Madison is pretty crazy herself if we can remember.  A lot of people died from it.🙂

[heisenberg]

I would not be surprised if in the last episode Morgan walks with his stick for a few hours and finds himself in front of the Eiffel Tower.😐

[Starchild]

1 hour ago, heisenberg said:

Madison is pretty crazy herself if we can remember.  A lot of people died from it.🙂

So you're saying game should recognize game? ;)

[One4Sorrow2TooBad]

Show has literally jumped the shark so many times now, so sick of Morgan drama crap we've seen a hundred times over the years.  Time to end this series.

[iMonrey]

Did we already know the circumstances of Duane's death? I have a vague recollection of hearing about his mother biting him.

[Mr. Sparkle]

They mentioned in on TWD in the Morgan episode, but I vaguely remember it was his mother who bit him. I think that's what set Morgan off, IIRC. 

[nodorothyparker]

Morgan tells the story to Rick in Clear in his sole season 3 appearance. He's pretty emphatic that his own dithering over his zombified wife is responsible for what happened, and we find out later in the interminable cheesemaker episode after he shows up at Alexandria that while already pretty much not okay from that, he broke completely shortly after seeing Rick and meeting the then still alive Carl. It's been presented as a consistent trait with him that he basically has to be goaded into finishing the job instead of hemming and hawing and not wanting to take the hard shot. That was apparently supposed to be our big takeaway from this episode that when push came to shove this time he took the shot instead of endlessly dithering until he let Mo get eaten. You know, until next time he's supposed to make the big kill to save the day and we have to do this again.

It's telling to me how much detail I remember from the first several seasons of both shows and only the broader strokes after that without assistance from the wiki.

[Dodginblue]

On 6/5/2023 at 7:59 PM, heisenberg said:

I would not be surprised if in the last episode Morgan walks with his stick for a few hours and finds himself in front of the Eiffel Tower.😐

The one in Las Vegas anyway.

[maystone]

I don't think we'll be seeing the "kill everyone/all life is sacred" Morgan after this. I think TPTB wanted to wrap that up so the show could move on to the Great War or whatever the hell it is that is going to take up the last half of the season. I think it's why the unintentionally funny dithering of D & Honey over whether to kill Morgan was put to rest and the near miraculous reunion of the two with the miraculously cured Finch happened. And why Daniel's memory is miraculously fully restored. I suspect that the story is going to go in a whole new direction pretty soon. I haven't looked for any spoilers (are there even spoilers for this show?), but I'm guessing this is all going to end up being connected somehow with CRM and the Rick/Michonne movies.

I'm also going to go out on a limb and predict that Morgan dies. After so many seasons of him saying, "I don't die. I get to watch everyone else die," you just know they have to pull that trigger.

And where the hell is Strand?!

[nodorothyparker]

What use would a cult of child snatchers have for a campy failed dictator? Wasn't that one of Daniel's "complaints," that they had no use for him so he just had no choice but to hook up with the parent resistance instead? The whole "oh I don't know where all the raft people ended up" explanation they offered earlier in the season covers a lot.

In reality, I believe Coleman Domingo was busy filming The Color Purple remake. Hopefully Strand will manage to at least cross paths with Madison at some point in this final season so she can go all frowny faced disappointed in him at least once before the show limps to the finish.

[Iguessnot]

No better way to ruin an episode than to focus on Morgan's angst. I don't even feel sorry for him. With all the death and chaos he has dealt with, I find it insulting he's chasing his son's corpse after a decade or so and hallucinating about his wife again and again in critical situations. Complete lack of character growth. I'm almost embarrassed watching James perform this role.

[BasilSeal]

bit late to the party on this one but i've watched as far as this episode so far and though the first two episodes of this season were relatively strong, episode three dropped the ball big time and this one hasn't really improved things much.

They started off building some tension in the first two and there was actually some stuff we wanted answers to but as per usual the  answers we wanted were a huge letdown.

 

PADRE is just a couple of kids hiding behind a mirror? I just can't believe that these pair of idiots manage to command the respect of the adults that are staffing their colony, they're just not really leadership material, maybe they could fool the 8 year olds, but there are grown up people who were presumably adults of at least older teens when the apocalypse happened, and no one says 'hang on a minute, this is bollocks'

The back story is just another lame TWD origins hand waive where The Bad Thing That Happened in the Past is making this season's big bad guy or gal do batshit crazy psycho stuff in the present, er, for some reason.

And the cherry on the top, you know that whole get bit and you die thing? well they just cured that in their spare time while no one was looking, seriously?

(that said, i'm not convinced by the whole cure thing, surely it can't be that simple, and if we've found the cure, why does Daryl need to go to France if not to find info on a potential cure which they appeared to be setting up in TWD world beyond? Also, if the cure really worked then they wouldn't have had to rescue Madison from being bitten as a test subject)

Where this seems to be going is towards setting up a chance for the walking dead second eleven to rebuild new communities using the PADRE resources, which are designed to do just that. Thing is this appears to be What Shrike wants as well, so why are they all fighting each other again? Obviously they have a slight difference of opinion over Shrike's whole Lord of the Flies secret island business which required Madison to go off and play at being the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for 8 years, but hey, she could just sort out her daddy issues and realise that rebuilding civilisation is what pa would have wanted.  That would be a whole lot easier for everyone, including us.