The kingdom might have come. But Carol ain’t havin’ it.
Nor the Renaissance Faire version of King Ezekiel. Nor the “don’t bullshit a bullshitter” — and oh so much more palatable — version. And definitely not the pomegranates.
After last week’s exercise in bloodletting and nerve shredding, we get a relatively peaceful episode this go-round, Walking Dead fans. Unless you’re one of the pigs Ezekiel gifts the Saviors in exchange for another week of said peace. But that is another matter entirely and we’ll get to it soon.
We open with a conked-out Carol being ferried in a horse-drawn wagon by armor-wearing escorts. Morgan walks beside her. All is calm — for a moment, anyway. Then a crowd of walkers descends. As her rescuers fend off the herd with guns, and Morgan with his staff, Carol makes a staggering break for it, even though she clearly ain’t quite right. Are the walkers/people/walkers again real or imagined? Are the horse-borne walker-slayers real or imagined?
They’re real. And Morgan and Carol are safe. As they walk, Morgan leaves an X in a roadside mailbox on the way to wherever they’re going and lifts its red flag to “mark his way back.”
And so the duo arrives in — and we get our first look at — The Kingdom. Carol gets some medical attention and sleeps off the worst of it. Two days of the worst of it. When she comes to, it’s time for an audience with the King after Morgan assures her that he and his people know nothing more than the pair were separated, Carol found trouble and Morgan found Carol. While they helped you, I’ve helped them, he says, wheeling her along though a thriving community that’s not too far removed from Woodbury, for all its shiny, happy people and plentiful supplies.
But instead of a wack-job leader with a noggin-filled fish tank wall and a captive kid-walker, this place is ruled by what appears to be a wack-job cast off from a Christopher Guest-directed, community theater nightmare with a very real (OK, CGI created, but real enough for the sake of argument) tiger. Also an abundance of apples, pomegranates and nectarines. Gotta love a pomegranate, says King E. Tough and bitter on the outside. Sweet on the inside. That there, people, is metaphor. But for him or for her? Fruit time!
One look is all it takes for Carol to slap on the beaming cookie-mom persona she saves for folks she isn’t sure of. Or has no use for. Or plans to dupe. In this case, all three. But for all it tells us about these two cagey folks, the highlight of the scene is most certainly our introduction to Jerry, Ezekiel’s unapologetically hilarious, kimono-wearing sidekick.
The long and short of it: Carol wishes she had a hairbrush (what for meeting royalty and all) and some chocolate, declines to participate in fruit time (Jerry!), gives two thumbs up to replenishing as much of the well as she’s drunk from, and thanks King E for considering her a “friend of the realm.” She and Morgan are excused.
Sum up your visit for us, Carol.
Carol: “You’re shitting me, right?”
Good girl.
Morgan isn’t too surprised by the reaction. Nor by her declaration that, as soon as she is well enough and when no one is looking, she is soooo in the wind, replenished well be damned. Wasn’t his place to stop her the previous two times he tried and it sure as hell isn’t now.
Meanwhile, helpful Morgan is tapped for a mission — a secret hunting trip. He, Ezekiel and several others — including a man-boy named Ben and a Sean Bean-ish dude named Richard — head into the city where they herd a group of feral piggies into a building where a subdued walker dangles. As the oinkers feast, Morgan wonders about the wisdom of this feeding strategy. “I want their bellies full of rot,” says Richard. Note to self, Morgan. Skip the pork chops.
As the group fends off more walkers before reclaiming their livestock, we learn that Ben is a lousy fighter and King E feels bad about messing with the dead. As the group saddles up for home, he declares to the still-walking walkers, “We live on in your place — full, festive, faithful and free!”
“Only half free,” mutters Richard.
That would be because the pigs will be carefully butchered to hide the cause of their robustness and, ah!, traded to a bunch of none-the-wiser, ultra-smartass Saviors. Dang! It’s the first we’ve seen of the dead feeding the living and I have to believe — OK, I totally hope —we’re going to find out that that’s so not a good thing.
While King E and company are hashing this out, back in the kingdom, Carol is a busy girl. As the Kingdom’s choir earnestly practices an appropriately Renaissance-Faire-y version of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice” — gawd, so perfect! — she wheels around the place, helping herself to a nice knife here, a stack of clothes there … and yes, breakfast cobbler (that veritable explosion of flavors!) is a thing. Lunch cobbler gets a little dicey.
Back at the hog-tradin’, a longhaired, big-mouthed Savior is giving Richard some serious grief. Pally wants a smile. After all, they’re getting off easy.
“Sure you ain’t got that backward, kid?” says Richard.
FIGHT! TOTALLY UNFAIR FIGHT! DON’T KILL SEAN BEAN-DOM!
It’s over pretty quick, as Savior Gavin calls off the big mouth since the kingdom’s been good to them and all. But next week is produce week … so King E and company better produce. Otherwise Negan’s bat will come calling. For Sean Beandom.
Back at the kingdom, Morgan, Ben and Ben’s little brother Dutch (Dutch?!) are dining in the mess hall. As is the case with most of the other buildings, the walls are adorned with makeshift versions of what we ladies like to put on the walls in our dining room walls bearing cozy sayings about family or praying or laughing or drinking too much wine. Only these bear the wisdom of Ezekiel. This one in particular says “The Dead Are Alive, Lest Not The Alive Be Dead.” If you’d care to have that on your very own dining room wall — Wall Decal World!!!!
Dutch eats his last hunk of broccoli, then races off for a good seat at movie night while Morgan and Ben discuss the boys’ dad. He was a good fighter. Went out on a mission. Didn’t come back. Ezekiel’s gotten smarter since then (see also: rot-to-table dining).
Morgan tells Ben that King E has asked him to help the lad find his way, but he no longer believes that is possible. Ben has to find his own way. Morgan thought he had it figured out, but now he’s just “fumbling through.” Firing that gun to save Carol appears to have done a number on our Zen master.
Morg takes a tray to Carol, but seems to know her room will be empty when he gets there. Under cover of darkness, Carol makes a last grocery run in the orchard, but Ezekiel and Jerry bust her. E excuses Jerry (“always a holler away! Deuces!” God love ’im!). Then he takes one last stab at convincing her the Renaissance Faire is real. Nope. No. No “bullshitting a bullshitter.” For either one of these two.
Badass loner Carol meet plainspoken Ezekiel, former zookeeper turned de facto king. He tells her that Shiva is all he had left in the world — but when the people in the community saw him, all mighty dreads and tamed tiger, it took little more than the need for a hero and a game of telephone for him to become the mystical leader of their dreams. He tapped into his community theater background to appropriately gild the lily, did his best to live up to their faith and made a fine life for him and his people. Even if he has to engage in a little “Let’s Make a Deal” to keep it that way. With her fearlessness and savvy, she’d be a fine addition to the realm. Er, community. The choir members and cobbler-eaters.
It’s a fine moment, and a moving speech. Unless you’re Carol.
Carol? “I don’t care.”
He can keep his little fairy tale, his true believers, his “going overboard on the good to make up for all the bad.” She’s outtie 5,000.
How about outtie 2,500, instead? Ezekiel suggests she might try leaving without really leaving. He’ll even help. He cares. Makes him feel good. All you can really ask for in this effed up world. Live like you’re dying … living … because there’s still stuff to live for, so sayeth the E.
Come morning, Carol’s on the road. With Morgan for accompaniment,t and the best farewell scene ever (Her: “Ten more minutes and I would have started to regret all the times I tried to shoot and stab you.” Him: “I think you’re my favorite person I ever knocked out. Definitely top two or three”), she ends up outside the gates of the Kingdom, setting up a homestead in the little house with the gingerbread trim she staggered past at the start of the episode. Morgan lowers the mailbox flag. His way back may not lead to Alexandria, after all.
Carol barely gets the zombified previous dispatched owner buried and a fire in the fireplace, when there’s a knock at the door. Then a roar. Company! With a pomegranate in his hand.
So what say you, Walking Dead fans? Were you relieved when Ezekiel dropped the damned shtick? But is his truthful tale the whole truth and nothing but? Is the persona as much for the benefit of the Saviors as the people he’s determined to save? What do you make of Morgan’s melancholy — and his chance to maybe make amends for firing a gun by training a Ben? Is that why he really went back or does he align with ’zeke’s philosophy more than Rick’s with nothing left to lose? What of Carol’s homestead — and the flicker of a smile at her very first guest? And most of all, does one needs Tums or a head wound after dining on 100-percent organic zombie-fed porker?
New episodes of The Walking Dead premiere Sundays at 9/8CT on AMC.