Four Seasons in One Day.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
After seven seasons, I can't fault The Walking Dead for trying something different. A show like this, that deals with a lot of "sameness," almost has to. But the change up, here in Season 8, comes via structure not themes or story. Stretching out this one meticulous assault over several episodes (what are we thinking here, four? Five? All the way to the midseason finale?) offers viewers a new way to process things, but it doesn't mean we're not retreading over well-worn territory. There's still a stillness, an inertness, to the the story right now and changing the format and visuals isn't going to fix it.
Starting things off here though on a more positive note: I really dug the Morales twist right at the end. In fact, some of the best elements of "The Damned" involved how much it actually strayed from the comics. Last week's opening shot across the bow more or less synced up pretty well with the "All Out War" arc from the comics (and the Sasha twist from Season 7's finale is kind of from that story too). The return of Morales is "all show," and it fits in nicely with this season's running tribute to first episodes.
Plus, Morales, and his family (who we can assume...is dead now?), were fun anomalies. They left the series back in Season 1's "Wildfire," but not because they were killed. They took off on their own, deciding not to go with Rick and the rest to the CDC. Morales' fate has been a long-running mystery of sorts. Sure, it would be easy to just imagine that he and his family died out there in the zombie wasteland, but the fact that we didn't get closure on them, being original cast members, has always been strange. Considering that the show brought back Robin Lord Taylor's Sam for that one brief moment just so he could get murdered in Terminus, because he was a lingering character, means that, creatively, this show has a very precise memory.
Rick discovering that Morales was not only still alive, but a thriving member of the Saviors, was a cool way to close the episode. I could have done without the close ups of the characters' faces in the midst of their specific turmoils and side quests, which bookended the episode, but this Morales deal was a good thing. Has he known for a while that the "Rick" waging war on his boss was the Rick he knew all those years ago? Did he lose his wife and kids, become a lost soul, and then join Negan's dark side out of despair? Whatever we wind up learning about Morales, who used to be a decent "hero" type back in the first stages of the show, this is still the most interesting mini-arc going on right now among these four stories.
Rick and Daryl were searching a mansion for guns, Aaron led a shoot-'em-up squad to a Savior station with hopes of pinning them all down until they got eaten by their own undead, Carol and Ezekiel (and Shiva!) had to hunt down that runaway lookout (while her "No F***s" vibe clashed with his "Fake Til You Make It, Baby" exterior - and she smiled!), and the ragtag crew of Jesus, Tara, and Morgan led a huge attack that started quiet and became very loud. And bloody.
It's in the Tara/Jesus assault that the most complicated story arose. Firstly, Morgan being borderline crazy Morgan is awesome. Ever since the world went to hell, he's been like this baby A.I. that's being taught different things and is now malfunctioning. He should kill, he should kill everyone, he should kill absolutely no one, he should only kill when necessary - it's odd to think of Morgan like a child but that's how he's acting - his parents' (Rick, Eastman) conflicting words are echoing in his head and making him got nuts. You kind of just want him to make a decision on his own about how to live his life, but he seems incapable.
Besides, if he could somehow get a handle on his life then we wouldn't have psycho Terminator Morgan carving his way through the Saviors' ranks. That was an awesome moment. Particularly because it was happening at the same time that Jesus was trying to spare the lives of a dozen bad guys out front. I really really wanted Morgan to have gunned down all the Saviors who surrendered, right in front of Jesus' smug face. It almost happened, but Jesus, another conflicting voice in Morgan's ear, said that that's not what they do.
Okay, how did Jesus' charity and mercy wind up slipping through the cracks in all this? In all this planning, all this meticulous plotting out of everything, how does he think it's okay to spare lives like this? Does everyone have this order? It sure doesn't seem like it. It feels like he's the only one trying to make this happen and it's an absolute bore. The worst part of episode was the conflict between Tara and Jesus. I understand, given the name of the premiere, that this half-season is probably leading up to a big critical choice for Rick, so why volley this issue back and forth right now? Why, in this midst of this can't-lose assault, this crucial battle that they have to win, is Jesus puling this s***? It's extremely risky and dangerous.
And guess what? He was dead wrong too. The guy he wanted to save was a total a-hole liar. Jesus almost got both Tara and himself killed because of this "totally not the place or time for it" idea - that he still insisted upon following after he was wrong! Was he unaware that he was directly teamed up with people who want to just kill everyone in sight? Especially Morgan and Tara? This was a really clumsy and wrongly conceived mini-story. You could argue that Jesus is in the wrong here, which I am, but you can also argue that the show's wrong for dropping this tired conflict, that feels fairly idiotic given the larger circumstances, in the middle of this ongoing war.
"The Damned" felt more fully formed than "Mercy," but these segments, these partial takes/drop ins on the big assault, still give everything an empty and unfinished quality. The twist right at the end, with Morales, helped put a better exclamation point on this chapter, but Jesus' issues with killing during a critical attack served as a reminder that The Walking Dead still has, basically, one drum to beat and they pound on it too often for it to carry much weight anymore.
The Verdict
With some cool John Carpenter-style music (was Walking Dead trying to compete with Stranger Things this weekend?), some chaotic action, and a nice deep cut twist at the end, "The Damned" was a better overall episode than the season premiere. But the decision to break this battle up into chapters has diluted the drama and Jesus' choice to put everyone life in danger by sparing lives in the heat of conflict is the exact same mercy cycle we went through two seasons ago with Morgan and the Wolves.
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