![]() ![]() “The Walking Dead” runs on a sharklike constant forward motion, as if any pause for reflection might bring it to a screeching halt. A return by Rick to business as usual next week would be a disservice to his son’s memory, undermining the gravitas of Carl’s death and the wrenching burial scene. Will Rick and the others be given the appropriate narrative space to grieve? The writers tend to compartmentalize death, either breezing right past it once a scene is all done, or keeping the grief contained to a single episode before forging ahead. Carl’s letters also give the episode a natural means of checking in elsewhere - the focus cuts to Michonne as she argues with Dwight, and to Ezekiel in captivity - while remaining tethered to the central pillar of this week’s drama. Positioning Carl’s process as the episode’s narrative centerpiece conveys respect for a child the audience has now spent eight years following, and who has often been the only point of relatability for younger viewers. Just when it seemed as if the writers had fully numbed their audience to the impact of killing off a character, they remembered how to do so with the appropriate gravity. Only when survivors invest themselves in another person can they - or we - truly be wounded. These are the meaningful emotional stakes for which this series has fruitlessly searched for so many weeks. ![]() In the most affecting moment of the season to date, Rick sobs to Carl, “All those things you had to do - you were just a boy.” He addresses his son as if Carl were a child soldier, which he might as well be, having been left with no choice but to gun down his innocence in order to stay alive. Carl is all grown up, but too fast for Rick’s liking, and he feels tremendous guilt over the carefree youth that the boy never got to enjoy. Rick sees his son’s unbothered preparations as not inspiring but devastating, a sign that he has insufficiently shielded Carl from the cruelties of their new world. Seeing that Michonne has left him a heartfelt letter, he is moved to write farewell messages to everyone in the colony he cares about, although the plot keeps most of the characters too busy to get a moment of closure with him.īut Carl does get one last beat with Rick, a poignant goodbye in which a father must grapple with his own failings as a parent. The song scores a montage in which poor Carl, tainted by a zombie’s infected bite before to this season’s midwinter break, gets his affairs in order before succumbing to the toxins coursing through his body.Ĭarl assumes the preternatural calm of the song’s narrator as he goes about this sad work, embracing death with far more maturity and serenity than the many adults who have been in his unenviable position. ![]() “The Walking Dead” doesn’t often make use of modern selections for its soundtrack, so the creative choice to use “At the Bottom of Everything” sticks out. While my mother waters plants and my father loads his gun, He says “Death will give us back to God, Just like the setting sun Is returned to the lonesome ocean”Īs the plane plummets into the sea, the song’s narrator is not frightened he has lived a good life, and he understands that he is submitting to an inevitable and natural cycle. While the band’s music has consistently tangled with anxiety and inner conflict, the lyrics of “Bottom” come from the perspective of a man on a crashing plane as he readies himself for oblivion. The 2005 song “At the Bottom of Everything,” by the indie rock band Bright Eyes, features its frontman, Conor Oberst, in a rare position of fiery sureness. ![]()
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