S01.E04: What We

[Mr. Sparkle]

Airs Sunday, March 17th on AMC and AMC+

Rick and Michonne try to find the love they had.

[maystone]

I loved this episode. I suspect it's going to be divisive because it was mostly a 30-minute therapy session with occasional walker-killing thrown in, but the dialogue was purposeful and revealing and ultimately healing. The last scene with the two of them in the bright yellow hybrid stick shift was perfect and funny and I didn't realize how much I needed that return of the Richonne of old until I saw them laughing together again.

The call-back to Carl was beautifully done. The reason why Rick could never give a good description of Carl's face to the cell-phone-etching artist turned out to be heartbreaking; when Michonne handed Rick her portrait of Carl, I teared up.

I thought Danai did a masterful job of writing Rick in this ep. So many pieces were filled in and his survival mechanisms inexorably peeled away. I now get why he built those walls and why he couldn't let Michonne try to break them down, why he was indifferent to the news that he and Michonne had a son. I thought that AL did a fantastic acting job with everything that this script threw at him.

And Michonne! At last she talks about what leaving her children has done to her; her guilt and her fear. Her anger and despair and finally the self-realization that the scenes she had written in her head about her reunion with Rick were nothing like the reality she was now living.

OK, I have to admit that when she stormed out of the apartment, then stopped to see if Rick would follow her as the scene cut back to Rick hesitating to open the door? I was urgently whispering at my laptop screen, "Open it. Go after her. Go after her!" Heh.

So, yeah. This is by far my favorite episode of TOWL so far. I have no idea where the hell this is all going to end up after the next two episodes, but I am now fully invested in this story.

Congratulations to Danai on an excellent script. Also I knew she was a playwright, but I had no idea until now that she's also an Obie winner. I have to track down a copy of that play.

[maystone]

You know, based on the last episode "Bye", I thought the show was going to do a rehash of the time back in the OG when Michonne wanted to fight the Saviors and Rick wanted to appease them because that's what he believed would keep his people safe. It looked like they were setting us up for that with an added dollop of Rick's belief that he, on his own, could start to fundamentally change the CRM ethos now that Thorne has said she no longer believes in everything Okafor wanted them to do. I'm glad that at the end of this ep, they were both in Get the Hell outta Dodge mode.

On a purely shallow note, I hope going forward we get to see Rick in jeans again. I've missed those bow legs. And his boots. Michonne was still carrying those around with her, wasn't she? Does CRM have them, and if so why didn't it raise any questions about why she had them? Did Jadis take them? Does she have Michonne's katana? I can't wrap my head around the show ending this series without Michonne reuniting with her kitana, eh.

[OoohMaggie]

Maybe it's because I've never been much of a fan of Richonne, that my attention was drawn to the silliness of the episode rather than the meaningful interaction between the two.

From jumping out of a helicopter and surviving with no ill effects, to somehow finding an apartment fully powered, ready to live in and temperature controlled, without any explanation as to how they got there, to the fact that the helicopter they jumped from ended up embedded in a building right opposite to their apartment, which they somehow didn't notice until several hours after they let theirselves in, was just pure nonsense.

The whole building collapse scenario, coupled with the usual miraculous appearance of the "rent a mob" Walkers, the completely contrived instances of fear and danger, the chandelier scene being nonsense at its Walking Dead finest just left me despairing.

I hope that the next two episodes result in the pair killing Jadis, retrieving the evidence she claimed to have left, then seeing Richonne heading off to Alex knowing it will all have a happy ending.

Having seen what I have, I can fully understand why the movies were canned, this side of TWD needs to end with the finish of this series, give them a happy ending and be done with it, their story is over.

 

[Daltrey]

"What would Carl say if he were here?"

What happened to your balls, old man?!, probably. 😏

I'm kinda with @OoohMaggie on this one. The acting was fairly superb and Danai's script was great -never knew she was a writer til now- but Rick's excuse seemed hollow and stupid. I can't help but think she was Gimpled by the Gimpleness of it all. How the guy responsible for the worst seasons of the mothership got to be overlord of the entire universe is one of life's great mysteries that I can't foresee ever being solved.

🤔... To be clear, I didn't hate it, I rather enjoyed it, for the most part; there were just a lot of eyeroll worthy moments of stupidity.

[Mr. Sparkle]

Yeah, this was just ok for me. Could've been any WD bottle episode. DG is a better actor than AL, and it was noticeable here. It's worth noting that when Rick was sobbing about Carl, I felt absolutely nothing. Then when they cut to Carl, I got a little choked up. 

It's kind of obvious where they're going with this, the only question is if we get a happy ending or a bittersweet ending. 

[MrPissyPuppy]

A bit of a homage to Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" there with the apartment and apartment building, I think! 

[nodorothyparker]

While I generally liked this episode and thought it was a conversation that needed to happen instead of the endless tropes of not talking to each other and pushing the one you love away to "save" them, at times it also felt overlong and self-indulgent for such a short season. It also made me think that while Danai Gurira is obviously a talented thoughtful writer, this a great example of how giving one person this much control over the words literally coming out of these characters' mouths can lead to a point of fluffing her character as the ultimate savior of this piece while Rick Grimes, one of the greatest if sometimes wildly uneven protagonists on TV for a good decade, weeps about how he's nothing without her.

I did like it. But I was also struck by how the building was dangerously on the verge of collapse except when they paused to rehash the same argument over and over or needed a well appointed place for a sex scene and then conveniently waited for them to be done before starting to collapse again. And how nice it was of the doomed off the gridders to leave the yellow hybrid of contrivance with enough fuel to get home! (From where? The Cascades? That's more than a bit of a drive back to Alexandria or even the Commonwealth they don't know about where their kids probably are in the current timeline.) parked right out front ready to go where they couldn't miss it.

Michonne mentioning that RJ is almost 8 puts this roughly 9ish years after the bridge and the big time jump. So probably not an exact matchup but in the same general ballpark timeline as the other current spinoffs or Morgan from the FTWD timeline in what was obviously a setup for a possible crossover from his exit of that show.

Both actors deserve full marks for going beyond selling this. I've always though the actors and performances in this franchise as a whole were a lot stronger than they were ever given credit for even as I get that they generally don't hand out acting awards for zombie genre shows. I do buy that Rick, who has always derived so much of his strength from being a protector and bearing the responsibility for the people he loved, could be broken and worn down by years of isolation away from that and repeated failures to escape his own personal Groundhog's Day as just another cog with walkers. Given where we first met him, you have to think waking up in another hospital where everything he knew excepting Jadis of all people was again gone had to have done a terrible number on his head. Which almost certainly didn't help. That doesn't make his dogged insistence on the same silly argument any less tedious though.

[iMonrey]

5 hours ago, Daltrey said:

The acting was fairly superb and Danai's script was great -never knew she was a writer til now- but Rick's excuse seemed hollow and stupid.

Yeah that's pretty much where I land, I didn't really get Rick's excuse either. The quick glimpses of Carl were sort of an emotional cheat. Great for sentimentality but a stark reminder of how good this show used to be. 

I have a feeling Rick and Michonne are going to wind up dying by the end of this. I doubt very much if either actor is interested in doing multiple seasons of this. From what I can gather they only agreed to return to these roles to give their characters closure. Which cannot be accomplished if we just leave them up in the air or even back at Alexandria.

50 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

But I was also struck by how the building was dangerously on the verge of collapse except when they paused to rehash the same argument over and over or needed a well appointed place for a sex scene and then conveniently waited for them to be done before starting to collapse again.

Rick's sudden urgency that they leave prompted me to say "you weren't in such a hurry a minute ago when you were sexing it up with Michonne." 

[Boofish]

18 hours ago, maystone said:

I loved this episode. I suspect it's going to be divisive because it was mostly a 30-minute therapy session with occasional walker-killing thrown in, but the dialogue was purposeful and revealing and ultimately healing. The last scene with the two of them in the bright yellow hybrid stick shift was perfect and funny and I didn't realize how much I needed that return of the Richonne of old until I saw them laughing together again.

The call-back to Carl was beautifully done. The reason why Rick could never give a good description of Carl's face to the cell-phone-etching artist turned out to be heartbreaking; when Michonne handed Rick her portrait of Carl, I teared up.

I thought Danai did a masterful job of writing Rick in this ep. So many pieces were filled in and his survival mechanisms inexorably peeled away. I now get why he built those walls and why he couldn't let Michonne try to break them down, why he was indifferent to the news that he and Michonne had a son. I thought that AL did a fantastic acting job with everything that this script threw at him.

And Michonne! At last she talks about what leaving her children has done to her; her guilt and her fear. Her anger and despair and finally the self-realization that the scenes she had written in her head about her reunion with Rick were nothing like the reality she was now living.

OK, I have to admit that when she stormed out of the apartment, then stopped to see if Rick would follow her as the scene cut back to Rick hesitating to open the door? I was urgently whispering at my laptop screen, "Open it. Go after her. Go after her!" Heh.

So, yeah. This is by far my favorite episode of TOWL so far. I have no idea where the hell this is all going to end up after the next two episodes, but I am now fully invested in this story.

Congratulations to Danai on an excellent script. Also I knew she was a playwright, but I had no idea until now that she's also an Obie winner. I have to track down a copy of that play.

Well there is no point in me writing a post since you got in my head and did such a beautiful job conveying my thoughts :) .. this episode was everything. It was nice to see Rick humanized again. The hopeful Rick that pulled up to the CDC. The hopeful Rick that tried to convince Hershel to let them stay at the farm. The Rick that saw the prison at the end of Season 2. I missed that Rick. 

[Crashcourse]

Too much Michonne babbling on and on and on and on....................😒

[cdnalor]

40 minutes ago, Crashcourse said:

Too much Michonne babbling on and on and on and on....................😒

When I saw where this episode was going, I just skipped over the scenes of talking heads.  How many variations of the "I did it to protect you/I don't need protecting" argument does one need to hear in one hour?

[Krugger]

Question I have is where is the Commonwealth? If Omaha was taken out as a threat and the gassing of any traveling groups why is there isn't any mention? Especially the interactions Rick was having with that General and Senior leadership. 

[Mr. Sparkle]

24 minutes ago, Krugger said:

Question I have is where is the Commonwealth? If Omaha was taken out as a threat and the gassing of any traveling groups why is there isn't any mention? Especially the interactions Rick was having with that General and Senior leadership. 

I think it's in Ohio. Which makes you wonder if the CR and the Commonwealth are aware of each other, since they're not that far apart. 

[seacliffsal]

My favorite moment was the final scene of the Rumba still trying to clean up the zombie apocalyse (RIP).

Just a lot of non-ending nonsense.  I have always been a Rick fan and an on and off Michonne fan.  I liked Richonne on the original show, but here it just felt...blah to me.  Okay, I did like that they found a working car (and justified it still working as it's electric/hybrid but I never bought that the apartment complex would still have everything up and working) and drove off.

Oh, and I was glad that Michonne finally told Rick he had a son and that she mentioned that Daryl kept looking for him.  Actually, the meet-up I really want is Rick and Daryl as they were more like brothers than many actual brothers are.

[catrox14]

I absolutely loved this episode.  It showed to me, how truly damaged Rick was after being in captivity so long. It showed me that Michonne was taking different tacks to get through to Rick.

 

Andy and Danai are always so good together.

For me, this was one of the best episodes in the entirety of TWD. 

[iMonrey]

It's strange because I prefer when the show moves away from the tedious Evil Empire trope it keeps going back to, and I even enjoyed the smaller, quieter episodes back in Season 4 when the group was split up and they focused on a few characters at a time. But . . .

5 hours ago, cdnalor said:

How many variations of the "I did it to protect you/I don't need protecting" argument does one need to hear in one hour?

This. It kept going around in circles. I was even more frustrated with Rick than Michonne was. 

3 hours ago, Krugger said:

Question I have is where is the Commonwealth? If Omaha was taken out as a threat and the gassing of any traveling groups why is there isn't any mention? Especially the interactions Rick was having with that General and Senior leadership. 

Then there's this. The CRM doesn't make a lot of sense to me. How do they expect to keep themselves a big secret if their choppers are flying around all over the place gassing people? They literally flew clear across the country in the last episode, there's got to be survivors somewhere down below who noticed. It's like they want to rule the world but they also want to kill everyone else in it at the same time, without anyone finding out about them. 

[heisenberg]

Well I agree with most of the people.  I liked it but it was turning in circles without making much sense after a while.  This episode could have been cut in half with Rick's Stockholm syndrome put out of the way.

[millennium]

6 hours ago, seacliffsal said:

Actually, the meet-up I really want is Rick and Daryl as they were more like brothers than many actual brothers are.

Throughout this episode I was mentally replacing Michonne with Daryl (well, not the sex scene) and wondering how he would have handled Rick being institutionalized, which is what I think they were getting at by Michonne saying "when they open the door to the prison you don't go back, you leave."

Danai's been wasting her talents on The Walking Dead.

I don't know what it says about me that the only emotional response I had was to feel bad for the Rumba in that last shot.

Edited March 19 by millennium

[iMonrey]

45 minutes ago, millennium said:

Danai's been wasting her talents on The Walking Dead.

I'm glad she got the chance to write for her own character. Especially since she addressed the guilt she felt leaving her children behind. That never sat right with me. Who does she think is even taking care of them? Eugene? Carol and Daryl are both gone now. 

[nodorothyparker]

8 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Who does she think is even taking care of them? Eugene? Carol and Daryl are both gone now. 

She wouldn't know that though. More than one article I've read places the time of this episode probably around the same time as the mothershow finale before Daryl left or Carol would have eventually followed. Michonne wandered off in the middle of the Whisperer war. So she has no idea how that turned out. She has no idea about Daryl's sometime girlfriend's reaper group or the Commonwealth. For all she knows, happy fun time Uncle Negan is now raising Rick's kids. You notice she didn't mention that possibility to him. 

[Krugger]

Michonne became a lawyer in the Commonwealth and found her brother so she was fully aware of Commonwealth but no one knew about the ACR. While Rick was in captivity for nearly 8 years the ACR and Commonwealth should have ran into each other at some point.

[Starchild]

That wasn't Michonne.

[BasilSeal]

On 3/19/2024 at 2:15 AM, iMonrey said:

I'm glad she got the chance to write for her own character. Especially since she addressed the guilt she felt leaving her children behind. That never sat right with me. Who does she think is even taking care of them? Eugene? Carol and Daryl are both gone now. 

i thought on a discourse level the writing was very good and  i agree that it was good to see the specific issues of Michonne  leaving her kids behind being addressed. i assume Danai is writing the dialogue but working to the show runners' designated plot points, so maybe i'll let her off some of the plot holes and overly convenient happenstance that  mar this episode. Other's have mentioned the collapsing building that conveniently stops collapsing so sexy times can take place. then there's the conveniently placed car fueled up, just ready to go. how long ago did this high tech community collapse? because if it was more than six months ago, how  come the car's battery still has charge to fire it straight up?

the high tech enclave itself is an example of an oft used TWD trope, the untold story.  we see evidence of events that have happened off screen, other lives, other stories that are only shown in  the periphery, (for example the painted mural Daryl finds in the  subway in the last season of TWD original).

Now i guess the purpose of these  details are to imply there is a wider world beyond what we see, but i wonder what we're supposed to infer from the high tech enclave shown here? what's the message? it's no good having a robot vacuum cleaner and then forgetting to grow food? Are we supposed to think that technology is bad and not the answer? or does it mean nothing beyond the show runners thinking it was some cool but ultimately throw away idea for background to facilitate the action?

there is supposedly  only two more episodes of this and still we know nothing of how the CRM works, how it came into being, or why we should care if it all goes to shit.

I'm assuming that this will be the end of the story one way or another for rick and Michonne mainly because Andrew Lincoln probably has better things to do, and Danai certainly does, and this is about giving closure to the characters, (though not so much closure for Judith and RJ if their parents both disappear and they never find out what happened to them)

Never mind only two weeks at most until we find out what the CRM's big secret is, the one that will make you get onboard with the whole genocidal fascist thing once you know what it is. I'm sure it won't be a big let down that doesn't make sense and hasn't been properly thought through, i mean, they wouldn't do that to us? right?

[Daltrey]

On 3/18/2024 at 6:28 PM, millennium said:

Throughout this episode I was mentally replacing Michonne with Daryl (well, not the sex scene)

Same, but you know, dollars to donuts...👀😒...those folks are out there, somewhere...perhaps even here, lurking in secret, on this very board...😏😜

 

13 hours ago, BasilSeal said:

i assume Danai is writing the dialogue but working to the show runners' designated plot points

Yeah, this is what I meant by her being Gimpled by the Gimpleness of it all. The dialogue was great, very poignant and passionate for both characters and as much as I complain and poke fun at Rick losing his "balls", it does make sense that he'd have a bit of Stockholm syndrome by now. In real life I'm sure that's not easy or quick to break but in reel life it seemed to take forever. Just reuniting with Michonne felt like it should've been enough to start to snap him out of it. Learning about RJ should've been enough to fully break him...or unbreak him, as it were. The overarching plot was just more Scott Gimple Swiss cheese.

Not plot related but one inconsistency I noticed that nobody has mentioned...correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it established that one of the greatest walker attractants is noise? If so, shouldn't the zombies have been drawn towards the building across the way when the CRM showed up in a second helicopter and blew up the evidence of the crashed helicopter? I mean, you know, instead of waiting for the shockwave reverberations to knock out the glass doors so they could conveniently attack our plucky heroes?

Fuckin' Gimple.🙄

😆😜

Edited March 22 by Daltrey

[iMonrey]

7 hours ago, Daltrey said:

Not plot related but one inconsistency I noticed that nobody has mentioned...correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it established that one of the greatest walker attractants is noise? If so, shouldn't the zombies have been drawn towards the building across the way when the CRM showed up in a second helicopter and blew up the evidence of the crashed helicopter? I mean, you know, instead of waiting for the shockwave reverberations to knock out the glass doors so they could conveniently attack our plucky heroes?

My bigger issue is the excuse Rick gave for the second chopper showing up to blast the one lodged in the side of the building. "Secrecy above all else" he said. Nothing says "let's not draw attention to ourselves" more than sending an Apache helicopter cross country to blast another one with missiles. Way to be stealth. Go CRM!

[Daltrey]

@iMonrey, my initial thought was to to give you an "applause" but ultimately I had to go with the laugh. Both are deserved.

🤣🤣🤣👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

[gutbuster]

It was a cute moment, but is that right? That after all this time, Rick, who now is able to fly a helicopter, can't drive a stick? I would have thought that a person living in a rural southern town would have acquired that knowledge at some point. Especially with all the outdated technology that we saw in the early seasons of the show.

 

[Sailorgirl26]

1 hour ago, gutbuster said:

It was a cute moment, but is that right? That after all this time, Rick, who now is able to fly a helicopter, can't drive a stick? I would have thought that a person living in a rural southern town would have acquired that knowledge at some point. Especially with all the outdated technology that we saw in the early seasons of the show.

 

Remember, he now only has one hand, so I assume the logic is that he can't steer or shift with a stump and do the other with the good hand. 

[gutbuster]

Just now, Sailorgirl26 said:

Remember, he now only has one hand, so I assume the logic is that he can't steer or shift with a stump and do the other with the good hand. 

Oh right! Forgot about that.

[mmecorday]

The real MVP of this episode was that hard-working Roomba.