She’s always been a striking figure, with one of those naturally interesting faces that draws in the eye, and The Walking Dead has always leaned on her ability as an actress to sell emotional depth without showing emotion openly. She’s great at the ability to be impassive or stone-faced while having a lot going on behind her eyes. In this episode, she’s given the opportunity to show off more of her acting range, and she makes the most of it. Shows like The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live aren’t the kind that win acting Emmys, but she will certainly be in the running for Saturn awards this year.
Rick (Andrew Lincoln, no slouch himself in this episode) and Michonne come up for air after taking the Nestea plunge out of a moving helicopter into a body of water and find themselves in, basically, a modern home. There’s a smart thermostat, a Roomba, and all the lights seem to be activated by people in the vicinity. It’s the perfect place to take a breather after, you know, falling out of a helicopter. For Rick and Michonne, who are carrying around a lot of baggage from the previous episode, that chance to catch their breath is a great chance to use that breath to pick at one another to figure out just what in the world is going on in their relationship and why Rick is so dead-set on pushing Michonne away after she worked so hard and got so many people killed trying to get him back.
The conflict starts almost immediately between the two, with Michonne sneaking her way around verbally to letting Rick know that she won’t be the one who tells his children how he refused to come back when she did all that work to find him. Rick digs his heels in, pushing Michonne away again, always citing the need to protect them from the CRM and, if possible, to change the trajectory of the ravenous beast away from Alexandria and everyone he knows and cares for. Michonne pushes back on his claim, time and time again, calling it bullshit over and over again. He’s lying to herself, and he’s lying to himself, and she’s the only one willing to call him out on it. Rick, apparently, didn’t know about RJ and that’s why Michonne hasn’t brought him up to his father yet, but she’s willing to use him as a club when necessary to try and guilt Rick into coming back physically and mentally.
Rick pushes back, hard, telling Michonne that he told her to hide who she is from the very beginning, and she refused, drawing attention to herself at every possible turn by breaking the zombie kill record and saving Thorne during the incident with the R-DIM back at base. At every turn, he’s tried to keep her safe and ensure she can still leave, and at every turn she’s made that more and more difficult for him. Jadis saved his life, and Jadis knows all about Alexandria, and she’s using that to keep herself safe from Rick and to keep Rick involved in the CRM. Killing her won’t make the threat of the CRM go away. In Rick’s mind, it’s not if the CRM turn their attention to Alexandria and company, but when.
Michonne knows first hand what happens when you catch the CRM’s eye, and it’s usually poison gas from a low-flying helicopter. But she spent a year (!!!) recovering from the mustard gas attack with Nat, and she won’t go home empty handed, especially now that the crashed remains of the helicopter wedged in the side of the very building their sheltering in give Rick and Michonne a perfect chance to escape. A flaming helicopter wreck where the corpses can get up and walk around after death doesn’t leave any physical evidence for someone interested in looking to find.
It’s the perfect cover, and Rick refuses to take it. Michonne fights, pleads, and reasons, but Rick stands firm. He’s got to go back, and she’s got to go home. Nothing will change his mind, to the point where she gives up and storms out of their shared refuge. Director Michael Slovis mainly focuses on his actors in this episode, and aside from a little zombie killing conflict between Rick and Michonne, this moment where Michonne stalks to the end of the hallway and pauses to let one tear escape while Rick hovers, his hand on the door as he tries to talk himself out of going and stopping her, is one of the episode’s emotional highlights. I can’t say enough good things about both actors in this scene in particular, and Gurira’s single tear is staggering in its power in that moment.
