The Walking Dead never
seems to reach that level that the best television dramas achieve. Everything about
the series merely seems to be a pretext for zombies and zombie kills and this
has been at the expense of everything else, particularly the characters. Even
occasionally uneven series such as Lost
and Homeland have such great
characters that the actors cover for a lot of the plotting’s sins. The Walking Dead, on the other hand, has
the complete opposite problem; its plot often covers for the lack of nuance in
its characters. The best portion of the series thus far had been the first half
of this season, which ramped up the pace, killed off several characters, and
spearheaded its way through a surprising amount of plot. The weaker episodes
have been its more low-key episodes that often find characters running in
circles and bickering. The three episodes after the return from the mid-season
hiatus have been the most disappointing of the third season. With the pace tuned
down, it was easy to be reminded why the second season was frequently
frustrating. These characters aren’t well-developed enough to care about them
and their problems. When last week Andrea stood over the Governor, switchblade
drawn, I felt nothing. There wasn’t anything to be felt; Andrea is practically
a non-entity who’s schizophrenic in her decision making.
So if you told me a character focused episode would be
arguably the best episode the series has produced this season, I’d probably
just have laughed really hard. And yet “Clear” shows a lot of daring I wish the
show would take more often. Cutting out all but three of the main characters
and telling a story that focuses on just Rick, Carl, and Michonne, along with
the welcome return of Morgan (played excellently by Lennie James). It sounds
like a recipe for disaster, but rather unexpectedly it uses its more tightly honed
story to zero in on these three characters and explore them.
After complaining for so long about Michonne being underdeveloped,
we finally see glimpses (no matter how small) that Michonne is not just a
badass with a sword but a talking, walking, breathing human being. When she
reassures Rick that him seeing visions of dead people is fine, noting how she used to talk to her dead
boyfriend, it’s a moment that's just enough to give Michonne a more
well-roundedness she has been oh-so lacking. We also spend some more time with Carl, a
character who has also felt pointless beyond being Rick’s son. He’s kind of
disturbingly become efficient with a gun, but he’s also a boy who misses his
mom and who’s scared for his sister; a kid forced to grow up too fast. The
unlikely pairing between them brings out some interesting sides to their
characters and it’s a much needed exposition upon these two even as it manages
to find ways to integrate horror, zombies, and blood galore.
Rick has the heft of the story and the most gripping of the
two plots as he returns to his home town
where he last left a man, Morgan, and his son behind with a radio. He told them
to contact him on the radio he provided them. But of
course Rick lost track of the radio once he found Laurie and Carl (not to
mention nutjob Shane). When Rick finds the radio lying amongst the crate of guns
only to then see sprawled in graffiti, “Duane has turned”, tell me your heart didn’t
give out just a little bit. It’s these little details that I wish the show
placed in more often to form atmosphere and create emotion. This detail carries
out all over the episode, from the bookended scenes of a would-be hitchhiker (or
eventually of what remains of a hitchhiker) to the burned pile of victims and the
Mad Max-like barricades to trap walkers, the show establishes with these
background details nicely observed elements that make the world feel lived in and
also remind us just how far into the zombie apocalypse we are by this point.
Much of the episode demonstrates just how far Rick, Carl and Michonne have
come. They’re almost automated. The walkers don’t phase them; sure they fear
them but they’re not surprised by them; it’s business as usual.
Morgan’s son has since died (at the hands of his zombie
mother no less), and in the aftermath, Morgan has, not surprisingly, gone a
little crazy. After making him realize who he is, Rick tries to convince him to
join Rick’s merry band, but Morgan’s no fool. He immediately notes Rick
stockpiling guns and calls him on the fact that someone must want the prison. “Yea,
but we’ll win though,” Rick says with feverish enthusiasm that borders on
obsession. Morgan has already lost too much to get sucked into this disaster in
the making. May be Morgan has got it figured out. Rick has lost plenty and his
craziness has descended him into a maddening conflict with an almost equally fanatical
man, the Governor.
But what’s best of all about this episode is that it feels
like a short story. The episode doesn’t feel like anything lacks purpose or is
just there to kill time, and this is all the more impressive and surprising for
the fact that much of the episode is heavy on taking its time, as if it’s a “breather
episode”. Much like the Game of Thrones’
episode “Blackwater”, I kept asking myself, “Okay, when are they going to cut
back to the prison?”, and then it became increasingly apparent that that wasn’t
going to happen. That made me incredibly happy and I was quickly on the
bandwagon. This is the type of storytelling I’d like to see from the series
more. “Home” had some slower character driven plot in it but it failed to be as
engaging an episode because firstly it was a hodgepodge of elements, secondly
because the action sequences were often completely out of place and didn’t fit
with the direction of the plot, and finally because it failed to be honest in its
observation of its characters. It was an episode asking us to follow it as it
explored these characters without ever actually exploring them; rather just
skimming the surface and pretending the pond scum was the mud at the bottom of
the lake. Instead, “Clear” by honing in is able to do some nice, believable character
work without sacrificing action or plot. It even finds a way to advance a
bigger story arc by having Rick, vicariously through Carl, accept Michonne as a
member of the group.
The confidence to set aside characters for an episode and to
tell a story about just a handful of characters and still pull off the show’s
great horror setpieces (without it being at the expense of the story) make “Clear”
a standout episode in a flawed but mostly entertaining season of television.
Grade: A
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