Hey Trash bags! Thanks for coming. Did you like this episode? I could have lived without it. Don’t get me wrong, the acting was amazeballs but I just do not think we needed a 90 minute backstory on Morgan. We all pretty much assumed that he had met some Jedi master that taught him pacifism and aikido. He isn’t fucking Batman. We don’t need his origin story. Also, I’m not sure if the showrunners felt that this narrative needed to be completely filled in for the audience because we are too dumb to connect the dots ourselves or if they just wanted to create a filler episode to prolong the cliffhanger of Glenn’s ambiguous death. Either way, I just found this episode kind of meh. I’m sure some people liked it, but I was bored. And now I get to write a billion words about it. Yay! So thank you all for reading this. You give my life meaning. Let’s get to it.
We open with a title card reading “Now”. These title cards are completely unnecessary, by the way. Close up of Morgan, talking to someone. He repeats the person’s words to them. The person said they liked talking and that they wanted everything Morgan had. You may remember these words being spoken by the Wolf in last year’s finale opener, when we were reintroduced to Morgan. You know, the one with baked bean teeth. Apparently, Morgan has taken this dude prisoner and is now going to torture him (and us) with his long ass story. Next, a new title card -“Then”. No, we’re not going to watch the coming of age tale of 4 young girls. The show is just going back in time. You guys following? Just checking. I know we would all be lost without those helpful title cards.
Pictured: A slightly less terrible way to spend 90 minutes
We are now in Morgan’s house from the “Clear” episode. He is being insane and talking to someone who is not there. The house is on fire, but Morgan just keeps on with his nonsensical ramblings. Basically, the show is saying “Remember when Morgan was crazy that one time for like 5 minutes?”. We cut to Morgan, creeping through the woods with a rifle. You can tell he’s crazy because the screen is blurry and pulsing.
Either he’s crazy or I’ve accidentally huffed gas again
He kills a bunch of zombies and then makes a little funeral pyre for them. He is in the throes of his “Clear” obsession. There is a little montage of him killing a bunch of zombies. Later, he hears a couple of guys approaching so he hides and then pops out and kills them. He gives one of the guys a tracheotomy with a tree branch and chokes the other dude with his bare hands.
I MISS this Morgan
There’s another little montage of Morgan being cray, going around writing his Morganisms on trees and rocks with zombie blood. Some of his little gems of knowledge include Here’s not here, pointless acts, and of course, his catchphrase Clear.
Is the show trying to be meta here?
Eventually, Morgan wanders into a sunlit meadow filled with flowers. Naturally, he starts acting like a huge weirdo and talking to himself. He hears a goat baa-ing in the distance so he arms himself with his gun and stick and angrily seeks it out, presumably to kill it. As you do. He finds the goat in the yard of a solar powered cabin in the woods. As he approaches, a voice calls out, asking him to step away from the goat. Obviously, Morgan begins shooting towards where he heard the voice. The voice asks him to put the gun down so they can have a chat over some falafel. Morgan ignores this, because hush puppies made out of beans isn’t his thing. He continues to approach the cabin.
“I can’t eat gluten, motherfucker! Clear!”
The voice says that this is his last warning and tells Morgan to back away from the cabin. Of course, Morgan doesn’t listen because he’s batshit. A guy wearing a bathrobe jumps out and beats Morgan over the head with a bow staff, knocking him out. Morgan wakes up in a cell inside the cabin. His captor is a forensic psychiatrist named Eastman, played by John Carroll Lynch. Eastman tries to strike up a conversation but Morgan just keeps repeating “Kill me”. Eastman is delightfully snarky with Morgan and he makes me chuckle. He gives Morgan a copy of The Art of Peace.
He should have thrown this one in there too
Morgan continues to be a giant weirdo throughout the day, muttering to himself. As night falls, Eastman brings the goat, Tabitha, inside the cabin. Tabitha is adorable as fuck. I love when animals have people names. There is nothing more adorable than a dog named Steve. As Eastman heads off to bed, he asks Morgan not to hurt Tabitha.
Seriously though, how fucking cute is Tabitha?
Over the next few days, Morgan observes Eastman as he kills zombies, practices his bow staff, and unsuccessfully tries to make goat cheese. After a few days pass, Eastman tries to engage Morgan again. He tells Morgan that he is from Atlanta and he worked for the state to determine whether or not criminals were prone to recidivism. He asks Morgan what he does and Morgan says “I clear. Walkers, people, whatever gets in my way. I kill em. I clear.” Eastman calls him out on that being bullshit. LOL. Later that night, Morgan breaks the zipper off of his bag and uses it to try and Shawshank his way out of the window.
Just so you guys know, my laptop is buffering super bad during this episode. It’s putting my computer to sleep.
Over lunch the next day, Eastman casually diagnoses Morgan with PTSD. I’m not a psychiatrist or anything, but doesn’t someone have to say more than 5 sentences to you before you diagnose the state of their mental health? Who do you think you are, Dr. Phil or something? Morgan proceeds to tell Eastman about the 2 men that he killed earlier in the ep. He describes it in detail, like he wants a merit badge or some shit. He tells Eastman that he’s killed lots of people. Eastman asks him if he’s ever saved anyone. Morgan says that saving people is a pointless act. Based on the fact that Morgan is wearing a wedding ring, Eastman infers that Morgan had a wife and children and that he saw them die. This dude is like the best psychiatrist EVER! He only has to talk to you for 5 seconds to figure out your whole life story. He tells Morgan that he (Morgan) is trapped in a moment, and he looks for a door, but the door just keeps leading him back to the moment. He keeps seeing the door, and he keeps going though it but he keeps ending up in the same moment again.
This dude just summed up this whole episode. He should be recapping this shit.
Morgan tells Eastman that he is going to kill him. Why? Say it with me, now. Because he HAS TO CLEAR! Sigh. Eastman says that people aren’t meant to kill, That is why vets get PTSD, because they aren’t comfortable killing. He says that he has interviewed 825 criminals, and only one of them was pure evil. The rest were capable of healing. He says “It’s all a circle. Everything gets a return.”
When did I turn on True Detective?
Eastman tells him that the door to cell is open, and it has been all along. He was only trapped by his own mind, you guys. Eastman says that Morgan has 2 options: stay on the couch or go and clear (Eastman cannot manage to hide the disdain in his voice when he says “clear”). Morgan exits the cell and proceeds to try and beat Eastman’s ass. Of course, Eastman and his bad ass Aikido skills fuck Morgan up. Eventually Morgan taps out. Literally and metaphorically, you guys. Morgan gets up from the fight and returns to the cell and shuts the door. Eastman seems pissed that a child’s drawing that was hanging on the wall was broken during the fight.