Walking Dead: Season 3, Episode 12 “Clear”
Last episode focused primarily on Andrea – the worst character on the show. This episode of The Walking Dead can only be an improvement. While this episode didn’t do much to advance the season’s plot, it did play to the show’s strengths. It wasn’t great, but it was as good as The Walking Dead gets.
The episode follows Rick, Carl and Michonne on an away mission. During the road trip, they pass a hitchhiker who begs them to save him. They don’t even slow down to consider picking the guy up. This mirrors Rick’s current trust issues which will be a focus of the episode.
When the car gets stuck in the mud, Rick and Carl have a chat about Michonne. Rick makes it clear that his acceptance of the silent loner is temporary and borne of convenience. He says all of this in earshot of Michonne once again displaying Rick’s brand of inept leadership.
Just in case we forgot about the hitchhiker, he shows up just as they get the car unstuck. Once again, they don’t hesitate to peel out and leave the poor guy to fend for himself.
At the end of the episode, the hitchhiker’s fate is revealed. But really, he had a fighting chance. There were several cars on the road. Rick and company had just cleared the area. Odds are pretty good he could have started one of those cars and taken off on his own.
Rick takes the group back to his police station looking for guns. Most of them aren’t there. So Rick decides to hit a few locations where he knows permits were filed. It’s a bit odd that he didn’t mention checking in on Morgan seeing as how he showed Morgan the weapons locker a year ago and promised to check back on him.
The group finds warnings to turn back as well as low tech booby traps. When they ignore the warnings, a lone gunman takes them on. A gun fight breaks out and Carl takes him down. It would have been a fatal shot if not for Morgan’s body armor.
Rick takes Morgan back into his booby-trapped home. The traps and spray-painted messages make it clear that Morgan has lost it. He also has ALL of the guns. Not just the ones from the weapons locker. All of the guns in town and probably some he picked off other survivors who stumbled into his block. As Rick says, “He’s been busy.”
Rick feels an obligation to wait around until Morgan comes to. Morgan saved his life approximately a year ago (as always, the time line is fuzzy at best). Plus, Morgan could make a good ally against the Governor.
While Rick waits, Carl wants to go find a crib for his sister. Rick allows it on the condition that Michonne accompany him – which is a bit odd given Rick’s mistrust of her. No real reason is given for Rick’s mistrust or for his softening.
Of course Carl doesn’t go to the baby store like he claimed. Instead, he goes to a bar where a picture of his family hangs on the wall. From the outside, the place is clearly a deathtrap. But with Michonne’s help, Carl retrieves the picture. Hey, maybe Michonne would be useful, ya think?
Meanshile, Morgan wakes up and tries to kill Rick. Wouldn’t you have restrained Morgan while he was out cold given that he’s clearly crazy and already tried to shoot you? Not Rick. It’s a wonder this guy is still alive.
Rick and Morgan catch up. Morgan tells Rick how Duane died at the hands of his mother. He confesses that his son died because he couldn’t kill his zombified wife when he had the chance. Since then, he has been clearing out zombies to atone for his weakness.
The scene works largely because Lennie James just kills it. It’s a shame he rejects Rick’s offer to join the group. But then again, James is too good for the show.
I have to wonder why Rick didn’t opt to move his group outside of the prison. Morgan seems to have a pretty good set-up. They could relocate there or somewhere similar without much fuss and leave their troubles with Woodbury behind them.
Oh well. Morgan stays behind. Carl tells Rick that Michonne is “one of them”. Too bad no one said the same thing about Tyreese. Or maybe suggest that they should give that hitchhiker a chance. Because on the trip back, they find a bloody smear and his backpack on the side of the road.
Posted on March 3, 2013, in TV, Walking Dead and tagged AMC, horror, TV, Walking Dead, zombies. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments.
Rick did in fact restrain Morgan with cable ties prior to his awakening. When Morgan silently came to, he was within reach of a knife he had hidden under his cot. As Rick has his back turned to Morgan, you hear something drop on the floor as if someone was moving. Rick turns his back again, then turns around to discover Morgan got loose and is wielding a knife— the knife under the bed which also is the weapon used to stab Rick. It seems that however mediocre you claim this show to be, it still manages to create deceptive plot lines too complicated for you to analyze.
You would think a cop would have done a better job restraining a dangerous man. And maybe, given all the booby traps, looked under the bed.
I take this as another example of The Walking Dead’s shoddy execution. It wasn’t some subtely that I missed out on. It was an important plot point that was not presented clearly.
the reason rick let michonne go with him is earlier she surprised him by giving him a bullet (which ending up being the last one he had) and accepting his judgement..he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt as carl was going to do whatever regardless…
and i disagree- this was a great episode..it sounds as if you don’t much like the show – why review it then?
Michonne handing over a single bullet and saying “whatever you say” seems like a pretty small gesture for such a large reversal. Then again, Rick’s initial mistrust of Michonne was misguided. Heck, Rick’s mistrust of everyone is misguided and is going to cost the group before the season is over. I don’t have a problem with Rick letting Michonne accompany Carl. But given how he was going to kick her out of the group just a little while ago, it seems like quite a big reversal.
It’s a “great” episode for the show. But it’s not great compared to what the show could be. If every episode was as good as this one, I’d be reasonably content. This is really what I consider to be baseline for what a zombie show should deliver.
I have fun watching the show, writing about it and discussing it with friends. Doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore its numerous flaws.
As good as TWD gets–a good summation. This was a good episode, almost a great one. Lots of filler in it, and, of course, it’s basically a filler episode, in that it’s self-contained and has absolutely nothing to do with this season’s storyline. It did, however, manage to give a glimpse of TWD’s potential. TWD could be this good and better every week in competent hands. I’d like to be hopeful about the fact that the ep was written by Scott Gimple, who has been chosen the new showrunner for next season, but looking over his (honestly) dreadful filmography, it seems to be the first thing he’s ever done (including multiple previous TWD eps) that was any good. I fear the ep will remain an anomaly.
Something you missed (and that everyone was supposed to miss) is that Rick cleaned out that weapons locker back in the pilot. He took it all, and when he met the group outside Atlanta, told them so. So his returning there was an idiotic–and typically TWD–contrivance.
I wondered if my memory was playing tricks on me (with regards to the weapons locker). Been a while since I watched Season 1, but I saw you covered that in your article.
I read an interview with Kirkman in which he said Gimple was their “details” guy and that he came up with the cool “Erin” bit. That’s exactly what this show needs. Attention to detail! In the same interview, Kirkman sheepishly played off any questions about time or geography like he should have any idea how long a drive it is from the prison to Rick’s house.
The setting requires specificity. We should know how far away things are, how time is passing, how scarce supplies are and how many the survivors have left. But the show-runners clearly aren’t keeping track of that stuff right now. Maybe this Gimple guy will change that. If so, I will be thrilled.
I agree that this episode represented what the show could and should be. The writers seem to deal better with self-contained episodes like this than they do with long arcs. I would rather see them tell smaller, self-contained stories. That seems to be about what they can handle.
With all its flaws, last night’s episode was “clearly” one of the best we’ve seen in a long time…maybe since they opened the doors to Herschel’s barn.
There are just so many little bits of unbelievable writing. Like Carl just standing there holding the door closed on the cafe zombies. You know, the ones who aren’t capable of breaking a pane of glass to grab him.
At this point, I’m starting to expect that the series finale will involve Rick waking up from his coma in the hospital to find Shane trying to convince a pregnant Lori to pull the plug.
Ha! I had the same reaction to Carl just hanging out by the door. He was in terrible danger. But since he had read the script neither he nor Michonne gave a damn.
Even with that kind of silliness, it was the best episode of the season by far.
Numpties! This isn’t a filler. Fillers are ‘flashback’ or ‘locked in a single room’ episodes. Right now, Walking Dead doesn’t need to produce budget restraining filler episodes anyway. Self contained episodes like this one are carefully crafted specifically for awards nominations and voting so that judges don’t have to be followers of the series to gain value from a single showing.
It was a cracking mini-movie episode. A real classic. More writing and direction like this please.
I disagree. You can have a flashback that is not a filler episode. If it moves the story forward, it’s not filler. This episode didn’t move the story forward at all. It was good filler, but it was filler all the same.