The Walking Dead S7E13: Bury Me Here

A lot of episodes focusing on one specific character are hit or miss. But with Morgan-centric episodes such as season 3’s Clear and season 6’s Here’s Not Here, we’ve had some very good character study and exploration of what makes Morgan tick. Bury Me Here isn’t quite as focused on Morgan as those two episodes, but we still spent a lot of time focusing on his impact with in the Kingdom and his decisions moving forward. Unfortunately, there was just far too much “been there done that” for even Morgan’s complicated character to make this episode interesting.

After last week I began to worry that the progression of this season has been so slow that we won’t even be getting to the war with the Saviors by the time it’s through. Last night’s episode only worked to confirm those fears as we saw scene after scene of confrontations and conversations that we have already seen before. Yet another food delivery between the Kingdom and the Saviors (two, in fact) where things get heated. Even the death of Benjamin from the first and drop off is just about the most predictable death ever on the show. More conversations between Morgan and Carol (two, in fact) where Morgan plays the game of should I or shouldn’t I tell her the truth. And in case you weren’t tired of the same scenes over and over, we have one more funny line with Jerry to distract you from it. I had a difficult time even enjoying Carol’s return to form and final decision to fight because I’m treading through these conflicts that have been happening for the last six or seven episodes. At some point the intense focus on detail becomes overkill and you just need to move on with the story.

This gets me to Morgan. A lot of viewers don’t like his philosophy and aren’t particularly drawn to him as a character. I’ve never been in that crowd. I love his seemingly unflinching stance against killing and watching that mentality play out in this world. I think his approach has been a pretty accurate representation of biblical peace among men and it’s been nice to see him step through that and deal with the benefits and the consequences. It is made all the better when contrasted against someone like Carol. But, when even I am getting frustrated with this guy who is still feeling the death of his son, something is wrong with the writing of his character. With the death of his disciple Benjamin, Morgan slowly reverts right back to the mental state he was in after the loss of his son. He’s back to the feeling of needing to clear everything. When he discovers that Richard orchestrated the events that caused Benjamin’s death, Richard becomes one that he needs to clear. This is accomplished in one of the weirdest scenes I have ever seen on the show. At the second food delivery Morgan, completely unprovoked, attacks Richard and chokes him to death. This easily took a full minute or two and it happened while Ezekiel and three other kingdom members stood and watched. Forget for a moment Morgan’s whole philosophy of “every life is precious” (he apparently has) and ask yourself how anyone writing that scene could imagine it believable that nobody would intervene while Morgan murders the leader of the Kingdom army. I am a Walking Dead apologist, but even this strains believability past the breaking point.

OK, now let’s get back to Morgan abandoning his philosophy that every life is precious. On one hand we know that Morgan has a history of mental instability. We don’t fault him for it. After all, he lost his wife and son right in front of him. But now we are being asked to believe that the death of Benjamin could cause him to revert right back to everything before we saw him recover so greatly in Here’s Not Here. Benjamin was a young man that Morgan had known and trained for what, two or three weeks? He sees him like a son, fine, but Morgan has already gone through this and grown from it. To force his character to revert back to this mindset is to basically abandon all that growth and reduce his character to someone out of touch and entirely reactionary. I’m not even asking him to dogmatically stick to his philosophy, but killing Richard with his bare hands and converting his staff into a spear? I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it.

My Rating: D

I want to like this episode. Honestly, there’s a lot that if I only knew that a thing happened and not the events surrounding, I would be excited. I want to love that Carol finally learns the truth about the Saviors and is back in the fight. I want to be on edge learning that the leader of the Kingdom’s army is killed. I want to love that Ezekiel is finally pushed to the point of declaring war. And I would LOVE to elaborate on the synchronicity of both Carol and Morgan coming to grips with deciding to kill again in the same episode, and how that affects them both. But alas, the sequence of events surrounding those high points was so worn out and… lazy, that I couldn’t get into almost any of it. I have little confidence that this season will reach any meaningful climax in the battle with the Saviors, and that possibility leave’s me with very little excitement for the three episodes left in the season.