This is a recap and commentary on episode 4 of “The Walking Dead”  If you haven’t seen it you might want to watch it before reading this.

Spoiler Alert!

Alright time to find out what happened to Rick and Glenn and….NOPE!!!

As we open…

Morgan is in interrogation/confession mode – in the Now.  We don’t see who all of this is directed at, but he is obviously very passionate about it.

We cut to a flashback, during a fire. Morgan is making accusations speaking to himself that someone was supposed to do something…(strap in folks, this episode is going to be a long one and since it’s 90 minutes this week. I’d say it’s a safe bet.)   Cut again to a forest where he is dispatching walkers, piling them up, and burning them.  As the fire attracts more undead, the pile gets bigger. And we are privy to the rage under Morgan’s surface. He’s got a highly evolved hunger for destruction now. Clearing large sections and setting traps to dispatch more of them at the same time.

It’s not just the dead that are stalking him, but other living as well,  and he is quick to dispatch them brutally when they attack.  The fires at night keep getting bigger. The traps keep getting more elaborate, and he’s leaving messages that seem to make no sense, “Here’s not here”, “They all turn”, etc.  All of which seem nothing more than vague justification for his actions.

Morgan enters an unspoiled glade filled with grass and flowers, he still marvels at the beauty of nature, but he also seems to be fighting invisible demons in his head. We hear a nearby goat.   We see a small solar powered outpost. Someone asks him to step away from the goat as he’s still figuring out how to make cheese. It seems like a nice outpost.   But he’s in hunter mode right now and he shoots at the approaching stanger. The voice says they can talk but he’s on the prowl.   An odd cleric like man quickly subdues Morgan, beats him senseless says he’s sorry as he finally knocks him out.

Morgan awakes to find a small plate of tomatoes and sausage in the cell he’s locked up in (oddly in the middle of the cabin)   He begs the cleric to kill him, but that doesn’t seem to be the way of the man who introduces himself as Eastman, and who also throws a copy of “The Art of Peace” into the cell.

A walker tries to attack the goat, but is quickly put down. “You shot at me…I fed you…please don’t hurt”  (referring to the goat), and with a simple “goodnight” he is gone. “The Art of Peace” still sits on the floor of the cell with Morgan obviously not interested in it. Eastman dispatches walkers as Morgan watches life go by from the (comfort!?!) of his cell. There seems to be a balance here.  Eastman still tries to make cheese, but seems unsuccessful. He practices with his bow staff, and lets time pass before he engages Morgan,

Turns out Eastman is a former criminal psychologist who was in charge of evaluating criminals for release. Eastman challenges him on the idea of killing everything that gets close to him.   Morgan tries to escape, but Eastman figures it’s just a symptom of PTSD. Morgan admits to killing a lot of people, and not really saving any, “everybody turns” is his core mantra now. But Eastman sees the wedding ring on his hand. “You loved someone” and Eastman surmises that Morgan isn’t the stone cold killer he professes to be, that he isn’t evil, but instead is just really damaged. Eastman believes Morgan can heal and he should. “It’s all a circle and everything gets returned”   Morgan wants to “clear” his world of all living and dead, but Eastman releases him (The cage was unlocked the entire time by the way), and gives him a simple choice, stay and learn not to kill, or go.   As Morgan charges Eastman quickly diverts and subdues him, and as Morgan surrenders, he again begs for death. The attack has destroyed a precious piece of children’s artwork from Eastmans past, but Morgan is still offered the door or the couch.   He chooses the cell, which Eastman leaves open. Morgan kicks it shut.

Time for Jedi Training…er…yeah well it’s training montage time anyway.

It’s Aikido, that’s how Eastman kicked his ass. Eastman’s daughter long ago gave Eastman a lucky rabbits foot because he had been drinking, angry and self-distructive, and that gift was given the day before he found an Aikido class. He knows Morgan needs the peace and discipline Aikido offers to prepare for a trip they have to take. Eastman doesn’t know where that trip will lead, but he knows they both have to take one. Morgan opens his cell, sees Eastman’s daughter’s  picture pasted back together and rather than running, sits and stays.   Eastman is a vegetarian, he’s still hoping for cheese from his goat. He asks Morgan to just watch Tabitha (the goat) as he goes searching for provisions for the trip.   Morgan starts to read the Art of Peace. Aikido is about not killing even the most evil person. While most religions have a commandment against killing, they justify it under certain cases. When a walker attacks Tabitha, reluctantly Morgan defends her, and takes her into the cabin. He finds another unspoiled forest glen and beyond it a graveyard filled with markers of all the walkers Eastman has had to end.

Eastman returns to find Morgan digging a grave, but before Morgan can toss them in, Eastman retrieves their ID’s and carves their former names on their gravestones. He tells Morgan he has to fix the fence and tomato plant that were damaged in the walker fight, but he has also fixed Morgan’s spear and returns it, so that his training can continue.    “You have to believe that all life is precious”, Eastman says, and Morgan has to leave the killing in the past, to accept what he was, and treasure all life as well.

The philosophy and the lessons seem to be transformative for Morgan. He wants to know why there is a cell in the middle of Eastman’s living room.   Eastman recalls a particular evaluation of a convict up for parole who seemed like the model candidate for release, but Eastman saw through the facade, that this prisoner was a pure psychopath.   The prisoner, Clayton Dallas Wilson realizing in the middle of the proceedings that he was exposed, attacked Eastman in rage and was denied release. The Aikido training saved Eastmans life in the direct attack, but Clayton escaped and managed to kill  Eastman’s wife, daughter, and son, then quietly surrendered claiming the only reason he escaped was to destroy Eastman’s life.   Eastman built the cell in his livingroom with the intention of bringing Clayton to his home and staving him to death.

Morgan seems skeptical believing it’s not a core life philosophy,but instead a redirection of rage. Eastman is still planning his trip and seems to need items for it, Morgan brings him back to the point of his mass walker and human killing, finding the crowbar, canteen, and other required items. Eastman asks for the names of the people Morgan has lost, Jenny and Duwane are Morgan’s wife and son. When the inevitable grief hits Mogran, Eastman allows no time for it and instad starts training again, asking Morgan to demonstrate to him the Aikido forms. Eastman promises Morgan, strangely and prophetically, that he will hold a baby again. (yeah it already happened at the beginning of the season)

A walker interrupts training, and turns out to be one of the previous victims that attacked Morgan, and he had killed. Eastman gets fatally bitten, and Morgan attacks him, again begging for death. Eastman won’t kill him, but instead drags the walkers body to the graveyard for a proper burial. “pointless acts” is carved in stone, Walking through the woods Morgan once again kills walkers this time poised to kill a living couple (the husband walking with a crutch wounded). Terrified of both the Walkers and Morgan, they open their backpack and offer some of their canned rations and a single bullet as a reward and leave.

Morgan runs home only to find Tabitha a walker victim. Morgan kills the walker, and brings the remains to the graveyard. He stumbles upon the tombstone of Clayton Dallas Wilson.  It seems Eastman’s journey to treasure all life occurred after he found the time to capture Clayton, and he admits that he let Clayton die by starvation in the cell. It took 47 days, and when Clayton was “gone” Eastman believes he was mentally where Morgan was, he only found peace when he resolved himself never to kill again. He was going to turn himself into the authorities in Atlanta, but that’s when he found the world had ended. Morgan is quick to point out the world hasn’t ended, which Eastman points out is progress.

Eastman, not able to turn himself in for punishment, walked back through 30 miles of walking dead to get the patch of drywall his daughter had drawn upon (The same picture that got shattered when Morgan and Eastman were fighting.) Eastman tells Morgan he could stay there at the solar powered house (it has energy and food), but he shouldn’t. He needs to be around people, not isolated.   Eastman is ready to die, he tells Morgan there is a gun locked up for him to finish what the walker bite started, and hands the lucky rabbit foot off to him.

Morgan is ready to make the journey that Eastman had planned to find other survivors, and sets out through the graveyard which now has a new tombstone labeled Eastman. Morgan is back from the dead, with a newfound respect for life as he finds the Terminus sign (way way back…but at least we know kind of when this all took place) and starts heading towards it.   We return to the present where Morgan we discover he has been telling his tale to the wolf leader (that he knocked out a few episodes back) hoping it will inspire him to treasure life. Even after Morgan’s story, the wolf leader tells Morgan he HAS to kill all the residents of Alexandria, women and children included because his code is different than Morgan’s. Morgan leaves him locked in the basement of an Alexandria house. Morgan is angry but still resolved not to kill.

There was no understanding until this episode of what transformed Morgan. He is not simply a pacifist because he was tired of killing. It’s obvious that the discipline of Aikido has given him a philosophy that makes life worth living. The pace is much slower this week.   I guess the show runners figured we needed a break (I don’t agree).   Eastman, who’s entire “Walking Dead” story arc is contained in a single episode, is a character so compelling that I miss him already.   And that is the only upside of this episode, it was a full story self-contained (which is rare on the show anymore.)  Eastman transformed Morgan, he saw a life worth saving, and this is his penance, his ability to pass on the futility of revenge, and inspire Morgan to live not to “clean” but to save instead.

We learned a lot about Morgan and why he is who he is, the question is do we believe in the philosophy of every life is precious in a world that has obviously chosen to favor death, or do we see this as a weakness that eventually will lead to Morgans, perhaps the entire Alexandria Compounds destruction? Is he a Jedi, or a totally misguided and now delusional threat to everyone? Stay tuned…I get the feeling we will know the answer soon.

Greatest tragedy of the episode? Tabitha never produced edible cheese…what a waste!!!

Also related.  AMC has already renewed the series for season 7 (yay!!!)