The second episode of the eighth season of The Walking Dead is called “The Damned,” (taken from the Ezekiel line, “The damned are upon us!”) but it may as well have been called, “Bullets,” or “Shoots A Lot,” because the majority of the episode involves gunfights. It is the kind of episode I fear the most about the All Out War season: Character and story are abandoned in favor of shootouts. For the most part, it’s the kind of episode that could have been reduced to a three-minute montage. Instead, we end up spending an hour with characters who exchange gunfire, who clear halls and gun down redshirts, who engage in the occasional fistfight, and who — in the case of Ezekiel’s group — walk through the woods for most of the episode before Shiva dispatches with their lone target.
But the episode did, at least, provide two brief but exciting moments involving Morgan and, later, the return of a mostly forgotten character.
Before we get to that, however, can we briefly address the montage of faces that bookended the episode? The Walking Dead occasionally likes to get “artistic,” but it does not suit the show. The montage of close-up faces and dissolves is a bad choice from veteran television director Rosemary Rodriguez. It’s cheesy and ham-fisted, like something out of a Cinemax series created by Stephen J. Cannell in the late 1980s. The best that can be said for it is that, if DVRs cut off the first or last 90 seconds of the episode, viewers won’t miss anything.
Once the montage is dispatched with, the “action” picks up, and by “action” I mean “gunfire.” So much gunfire. Aaron and Eric have a group of Saviors we’ve never seen before pinned against a building, and they spend the length of the episode spraying bullets at them. Their only goal is to keep them pinned down until their casualties reanimate as zombies and take care of the rest. It’s an effective (but boring) strategy. Unfortunately, the good guys lose several of their own, including Carol’s old flame Tobin and several redshirts. Aaron’s boyfriend Eric is also shot, which is telegraphed in their opening scene when Aaron can’t stop glancing fearfully over at Eric, as though Eric can’t take care of himself (turns out, he can’t). The episode ends with Aaron carrying Eric off, but Eric has a bullet hole in his stomach and he’s not likely to survive through the next episode. Aside from losing a few Alexandrians and checking another Savior outpost off of Rick’s list, nothing is otherwise accomplished in this storyline.
Ezekiel and Carol’s storyline doesn’t amount to much, either. Last week, a Savior threw a grenade near them and kicked up a lot of dust. When the dust clears, The Kingdommers have to contend with several zombies, which proves to be unchallenging (God bless Ezekiel, who never breaks character even when walkers are bearing down upon him). In the chaos, the Savior gets away, and the Kingdommers set out on foot to track him down before he can alert other Saviors. Ezekiel spends most of the episode puffing out his chest (“fake it til you make it, baby” he tells Carol) before Shiva locates their target and mauls him to death. It’s too late, however; before being attacked by Shiva, The Savior had already alerted rest of his crew, so The Kingdommers can expect to engage in their own gunfight in the next episode.
It’s slightly more interesting in the group headed up by Morgan, Tara, and Jesus. As they descend upon another Savior outpost, Morgan says that he’s unkillable, and he spends the episode illustrating as much. He somehow survives a shootout at practically point blank range (though the men to the left and right of him are killed). When he wakes up after being knocked unconscious by a spray of bullets, Morgan’s long-dormant bloodlust resurfaces. He fearlessly walks through the outpost gunning down Saviors without any concern that he may get shot himself. It’s the most bad ass sequence in the episode.
Meanwhile, Jesus has gone the other way, because when characters on The Walking Dead tilt toward one side of the killing spectrum, there’s never any subtlety to it. Jesus refuses to kill a Savior who surrenders, even after that Savior holds Jesus at gunpoint and threatens to kill him and Tara. It creates some friction with Tara, whose only interest is in shooting first and asking questions never. “We’re not here for revenge. It’s not about that,” Jesus ultimately says to both Morgan and Tara. But for Tara, it is about revenge, and for Morgan? It’s to slake a bloodthirst. (I love this version of Morgan.)
Finally, Rick and Daryl also invade another Savior outpost, one that apparently holds heavy artillery. Other than Daryl coming upon the cell Negan used to torture him, very little happens in this subplot until the very end when Rick comes upon an old friend. “Your name is Morales,” Rick says to the man holding a gun to his face. “You were in Atlanta.” It is not a happy reunion, however. Morales is now a Savior. “That was a long time ago,” Morales says. “It’s over Rick. I called the Saviors back, and they’re coming,” he adds before cocking his gun.
But don’t worry: Daryl is still in the building, and we have already seen future Rick, so we know he survives. I suspect that Morales won’t last long, however. He probably should have gone to Birmingham with his family, as he suggested to Rick that he would eight seasons ago.
The episode itself is probably more noteworthy for what we didn’t see than for what we did. We didn’t see Michonne or Rosita (as predicted), nor did we see Negan (also predicted). Jadis and the Junkyard Gang have not made an appearance this season, either. We also didn’t see Maggie, Gregory, or the new character, Siddiq. For a show about the zombie apocalypse, we also saw surprisingly few zombies. Moreover, there were no time jumps or dream sequences, so we are no closer than we were last week to understanding the various timelines.
Additional Notes
— Blink and you would have missed it, but when Jesus confronted Morgan, there was a character behind them taking a Polaroid photo of the surrendering Saviors. The picture will no doubt be added to the Polaroid Rick took last week of a pinned in Negan. Rick is clearly cooking up a collection of photos to match the array of Polaroids Negan had collected of victims.
— It’s been eight seasons, and hundreds of people have been killed, so I do find it a little annoying that the series keeps returning to the same thematic well: Kill or show mercy? The baby that Rick happened upon is just The Walking Dead‘s way of using a jackhammer to drive that theme home when a sledgehammer would have worked just fine.
— Come on now, Jesus! Couldn’t you have at least allowed Morgan to kill Jared before asking him to put his gun down? Jared is the Savior who killed the kid, Benjamin, last season. That was the needless death that basically inspired Ezekiel and Morgan to join Alexandria in the All Out War. There was no reason to keep that guy alive, even if Jesus did insist on sparing everyone else.
