8.8 How It’s Gotta Be So the extended mid-season finale of The Walking Dead feels longer than it is, thanks in no small part to some very strange decisions to pad out the episode. Specifically, there’s a LOT of staring at nothing from pretty much everyone. The show opens and closes with montages of close-ups of people staring into middle distance at nothing. In the middle of the episode, just in case you haven’t gotten enough, there’s more staring at nothing. It’s all supposed to be moody and evocative, showing off the emotional turmoil of the group and its members, but it just ends up being a guessing-game, a who’s who of characters that may or may not be easily told apart. Of course, there are a lot of great things scattered in between the shots of staring, if you can see them well enough in the dark to make them out. When it works, as it does in Carl’s sneaking trip through an exploding, flaming Alexandria, it works very well, but it’s difficult to tell a story when it’s difficult to see just what is going on. Not helping the confusion is the fact that How It’s Gotta Be jumps between any one of two dozen characters at any point. You have the three savior groups restoring order, or trying to. You have Carl and his father discussing the future because of reasons. You have Maggie trying to run Hilltop. You have Ezekiel squaring off with the Saviors. You have Rosita and Michonne. You have Aaron and Enid trying and failing to reach out to the Oceanside community. Rick’s very quickly abandoned by the Junkyard Gang. That’s easy enough to do when it’s someone recognisable, like Simon or Negan himself, but for a lot of these characters, they just don’t look distinctive enough (or I simply don’t care enough) to keep track of them, and some of the choices made by Michael E. Satrazemis this week aren’t making that easy. Granted, the secret bite is a trope of the zombie genre, and it gives Carl a better reason to offer himself up to Negan as a sacrifice (a nice scene handled very well by Chandler Riggs and well-written by David Leslie Johnson and Angela Kang). Carl knows he’s already dead and this is an easy way out. However, from a show standpoint, a move like this is going to completely rearrange Rick Grimes as a character and scatter most of the comic book arc to the wind. Rick’s only reason to live has been Carl this whole time; Carl is very much still Rick’s driving force and I’m not sure Judith and Michonne are enough to keep Rick sane in this new world. Perhaps more crucially, Carl has been one of the driving forces behind this new civilisation. He’s got an entire plan to save Alexandria, and people respect him enough to listen to him and carry out his plan. Clearly, he’s become something for his people to rally behind in the absence of Rick, even if the only person who sees that potential and acts on it is Negan. Rick still sees Carl as a little boy. No doubt that colours the perception of Carl by his old friends, too. Only an outsider to the group can look past the bad hair and floppy hat and see that Carl is just as strong a leader as Simon or Rick, if not stronger. And now, that’s all for naught. Perhaps it’s just as well; I would never deny a person the opportunity to go to college or explore other career opportunities. While Carl has had two or three good episodes this season, for the most part, he’s been ignored or pushed aside in favor of other characters. The Walking Dead is a strangely crowded show for a show about the ravenous, faceless, hungry dead. Being bitten by a zombie is a pretty reasonable way for a character in this world to die, even if it’s treated like a cliffhanger than a legitimate character-altering moment. Carl won’t be gone after this; there’s a whole second half of a season out there, and Carl can still play an important part in it. He might be dead in weeks or hours; The Walking Dead has never bneen concerned with consistency, particularly where zombie bites are concerned. One thing’s for sure, if they clear this up with a dose of antibiotics only to have Carl meet the fates of Abraham and Glenn, I’m going to be absolutely livid. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Time For After, here.
