Photo: AMC
Two different women visit Rick Grimes’s apartment in the third episode of The Ones Who Live, and neither of them is Michonne. That’s unacceptable, folks! Threats circle Rick as he finds himself in one of his biggest pickles ever, while Michonne starts to doubt that her husband really is the same after all these years. Michonne is in observer mode throughout “Bye” and narrates via letters to Judith. What has the CRM done to her husband? Why is he acting so out of sorts? We see glimpses of the old Rick when he’s yelling at Jadis or admiring Michonne from afar, but Michonne sees something very wrong.
The episode starts with flashbacks that fill in some story gaps. In the first flashback, years before Rick and Michonne reunited and before Rick joined the military, we see Jadis run into Rick while he’s on consignee leave in Philadelphia. She explains how the Scavengers, her group of survivors who first appeared in The Walking Dead season seven, started recruiting for the CRM. Rick figures out that she traded his life for a position of power. (Is this the “arrangement” they spoke of before? Unclear.) In the second flashback, hours before Jadis confronted Rick in the previous episode, we see him beg Pearl to make sure Dana Bethune, a.k.a. Michonne, makes it through the CRM’s screening. She’s an “A,” he says, but she saved his life, and he wants to return the favor.
Then, immediately following the end of episode two, the aforementioned confrontation continues. Rick pleads that Michonne doesn’t belong there with a mean vibrato. Why does Jadis care so much about Rick and Michonne escaping? Jadis claims that all three of their fates are intertwined, and Rick and Michonne are an atomic force that could threaten everything the CRM has built. Plus, the CRM has a no-tolerance policy regarding secrecy. She promises that she will never stop looking for them if they leave and that if they try to kill her, she’s already prepared a file with everything the CRM needs to know about them and their family as insurance. Rick and Michonne are well and truly fucked.
Meanwhile, Michonne pretends to be Dana. She’s all smiles with her fellow consignees and shrugs off the idea that she can take care of herself. But they aren’t buying it. She can’t help but save people and show off a little. “You radiate shit-knowing,” grins one woman.
Rick attends a funeral for Okafor led by Major General Beale. He summarizes Okafor’s backstory — how he “went off mission” and bombed the Marines stationed in Lincoln Field instead of Philadelphia, saving hundreds of people but killing his own wife. Beale then shows off his antique sword, which belonged to a Revolutionary War figure named General Hugh Mercer, salvaged from a museum in Philadelphia. Like Okafor, he believes Mercer fought for different sides and died on the right one. (I know I referenced Hamilton last week, and I pinkie swear I know other musicals, but Burr mentions Mercer’s death in “The Room Where It Happens,” a villain song about political ambition and compromise. Just something to think about.)
On the way out, Pearl wonders if Okafor was right to spare her life. Maybe it wasn’t worth it. As if Beale could sense Pearl’s faith wavering, he rides up in an armored jeep and whisks Pearl away to speak privately. He also tells Rick that he’s “not sure” about him and then gifts him a book, Martial Arts: The Book of Family Traditions, by Japanese writer and warrior Yagyū Munenori. That’s suspicious to give to a man whose secret wife carries a katana and calls their daughter the shoto (little sword) to her daito (long sword), don’t you think? Maybe I’m paranoid.
Pearl returns from her conversation with Beale later that night and tells Rick that she’s been promoted and given the elusive “Echelon Briefing” that Okafor said was reserved for the inner circle. She is, for all intents and purposes, in the room where it happens. She also tells him that Dana has caught Beale’s eye (paranoia justified?), which could jeopardize Pearl’s new position. Rick promises that won’t happen.
With Ocean’s Eleven precision, Rick plans an escape — he’ll fake Michonne’s death so she can escape while he stays behind. He passes her a note on her lunch break, like a friggin’ teenager, with instructions that lead her to a locker with a key to let her out of the building, a map that will lead her to a canoe, and her katana. When she reaches the canoe Rick hid in the brush, he isn’t there. He’s left a dead body meant to look like Michonne’s and another note explaining that the only way for her to get to Judith is if he stays. He ends the note saying he loves her “forever” and begging her to leave him behind. Michonne’s understandably devastated
The next morning, Rick tells Jadis that he staged Michonne’s death, and she will keep that lie for him. “You say you did it for her,” Jadis says. “I’m sure that that’s true. But I wonder if there isn’t something else that’s keeping you here?” I think we’re all wondering that. But all Rick does in response is make fun of Jadis’ hair. He may be trapped, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be sassy.
And, of course, Michonne didn’t actually leave. She’s on the consignment crew later that day. She’s pissed at Rick for trying to trick her into escaping without him. When he tries to explain his rationale for staying, being her “someone on the inside,” she gives him a look as sharp as her katana. And now she’s no longer trying to pose as a breezy, meek follower. She takes zombies out with true vengeance, and Pearl’s upset that her strength is showing. It is wild to see an organization so seriously concerned with personality types that aren’t, like, Hogwarts or Divergent.
Later, when Michonne gets to tour the market in Philly, she discovers the portrait artist who drew her and Judith on iPhone canvasses for Rick — the one who gave both of them the mantra “believe a little bit longer.” Benjiro (Julian Cihi), the artist, recognizes Michonne from Rick’s description. He tells her that Rick asked for a portrait of his late son Carl, too, but he couldn’t get it right. Their conversation is a little bit saccharine, but Michonne needs to have her faith restored, just like Pearl.
Benjiro says that Michonne is “open” compared to Rick, who wouldn’t say her or Judith’s name for three years. If you told someone watching season three of The Walking Dead when Michonne was the stoic and silent one, they would be shocked. The Ones Who Live keeps referencing how Rick was more or less mute for long periods. It’s one of the more upsetting revelations in this series.
When Michonne returns to work, Pearl pulls her and takes her to the ruins of Lincoln Field to ask why she saved Rick’s life. Michonne says it’s because Rick seemed helpless, which Pearl finds hard to believe. From a dynamic standpoint, it’s fun to see Pearl act as if she’s the one who really gets Rick. But we know better, and when Michonne looks directly at Rick and says, “Well, I don’t know him,” we know it’s an insult. Pearl explains A’s and B’s and says she wants Michonne to enlist in the Civic Republic Military, mirroring Okafor’s pitch in the first episode. But she doesn’t want to change the CRM from within like Okafor did. She says that Michonne won’t be content as a civilian and will forever want to fight injustice and question authority. With the CRM, she’ll get in that room and have those answers — so she says yes.
Michonne flies across the continental United States in the helicopter with a small group of CRM soldiers to a mission in the Cascade Mountains. As the group clears the area of walkers, Pearl barks at Michonne to stand aside, but when Pearl can’t move an RDIM, a wheeled explosive device, that is stuck in the mud Michonne takes it upon herself to move it into position despite Pearl’s orders to stand down. Rick assists her, and everything seems back to normal for a moment. They still make a good zombie-slaying team. After the device detonates, they even steal a kiss or five behind a tree. “Come on,” Michonne pleads. They should just start running! Rick refuses, likely thinking of Jadis, who he still hasn’t told Michonne about, by the way. Communication is key, Richard!
Rick and Michonne rejoin the action and start mowing down walkers. Pearl watches them working together and looks … envious? She slowly aims her rifle at Michonne. Ex-squeeze me? Rick notices and intervenes in time to redirect Pearl’s attention elsewhere, but it’s still troubling — was Pearl’s plan to recruit Michonne just to kill her during the mission? That’s so cruel. At the base, Pearl chastises Rick for breaking protocol and says that Beale wants to brief him. How can the CRM restore the world if its officers are more concerned with their ambitions than the people they serve? I wonder. Still, Rick’s about to be in the room himself. And as if there weren’t enough walls closing around him, Jadis appears, flirts with Rick, and ensures that Michonne sees it.
Rick runs to Michonne, and his demeanor is now amped up to an eleven. “I’m getting you the hell out of here if I have to knock you out and put you on that goddamn boat myself,” he growls. “I belong here. You don’t. And you will never change that. It’s over. Everything we had is broken, you hear me?” Sure, Rick. I don’t believe that little unhinged outburst for a second. You think I can’t smell a “break your heart to save you” trope a mile away? And I’m willing to bet that Michonne can too.
Because Michonne’s next move is arguably more unhinged, but maybe it’s her only choice. Either way, I respect it. She yeets herself and Rick out of a helicopter while they’re flying over water in the middle of a storm. Welp. Guess that’s why the episode title is “Bye.” Whether Rick wanted to or not, they’ve escaped the CRM now! The next episode is written by Danai Gurira, Michonne herself, in case you have any doubts about who’s in charge. Let’s fucking go.
• Did you notice that the first three episodes are titled “Years,” Gone,” and “Bye” yet? That’s a reference to the pilot of The Walking Dead and the first arc of the comics, “Days Gone Bye.”
• I know some people online have theorized that Rick and Jadis had a sexual relationship, and I would rather not go there. But Jadis was definitely hitting on him at the end when she invited him to check out the view from her quarters, right? Michonne was around the corner! Girl …
• Beale says that Rick makes him think of the Greek word pharmakon, which means both “poison” and “the cure” and is prevalent in critical theory and philosophy. (It also means “scapegoat,” as something that is blamed for poisoning the community and removing it, thereby curing the community.)
• While I’m being academic, I wonder if Michonne chose “Bethune” after Mary McLeod Bethune, a civil-rights activist known as “the First Lady of the Struggle” who started a girls’ school in Florida that became the HBCU Bethune-Cookman.
• Never once have I wanted to be in a position where I had to kill zombies in real life, but the CRM’s twisty trident “killsticks” make it look kind of satisfying. Am I okay?
