So I guess we will have to wait another week to find out what happened to Glenn…which is kind of funny because one of the points of this episode was ‘redirecting’! See what I did there? I almost think that this may have been a meta-joke from the writers but that just might be a slight healthy dose of paranoia. That sort of thing is important for watching The Walking Dead, right?
Truth be told, I feel like most of us probably started watching this 4th Episode wanting to know what happened last episode only to get served a big ol’ heaping pile of flashback. I was apprehensive at first, but to the actor playing Morgan’s credit he hits all the right marks. The first part of the episode I felt was kind of a slow, degenerate look into Morgan’s state of mind after his second run-in with Rick. You might remember the episode…the one where Rick decided to mosey on into Morgan’s town-turned-zombie-mousetrap? Yeah? Rick kind of left Morgan in a haze and I rather like that cinematic trick of blurred vision to really illustrate how fuzzy(and when I say fuzzy, I mean absolutely bat#&*^ insane) Morgan was. I definitely won’t be sprinting through the woods anytime soon. I HAVE TO CLEAR! At least I have something new to yell at people in video games.
Luckily for Morgan, he than ran into a man named Eastman, a goat named Tabitha, and his well-stocked cabin. Eastman’s cabin…not the goat’s. Eastman was a former psychologist turned Jedi Master who attempts to subdue our dear chap Morgan and save him from his blackhole of insanity. I’m thinking that Eastman was probably a big Cthulu fan and was able to recognize the madness but I’m reading into that one. Morgan pleads with Eastman to kill him at least three times while trapped inside of a makeshift prison within the cabin. Flash forward a bit and Eastman is finally ready to allow Morgan to make a choice; to stay or go. Morgan’s choice? Kill…and when that doesn’t work, pouting back in the prison cell. That kind of struck me as Morgan being a petulant little child, but hey, he spent a lot of time building a lethal box fort. Side effects!
Skipping right past the 1980s training montage, Morgan channels his very best inner Star Wars kid and learns from his zen-master the ways of Akido and the absolute preservation of life. I feel like this is probably going to come back around and bite somebody in the ass(or lower back) at some point in the series but we’ll see. As great as Morgan was in this episode, the actor playing Eastman also shined. His constant patience, his calm collected looks…he made me wanna pick up that book and a staff that’s for sure. Of course you couldn’t have all of that goodness without a shadowed past and they really gave him one, didn’t they? As much as I liked that character, when he explained what he did…I wasn’t all that surprised. Not like that was a bad thing, I just think it speaks a great deal to the depth of Eastman. All in all, I thought it was a good episode even though the question of whether or not G-Man is dead or alive was kicked down the road. Next week, right? RIGHT?
