I like The Walking Dead when its episodes give us a series of vignettes much more than when it’s trying to pull off a single story that has umpteen tangled tentacles. That’s why Season 4 was such a high point for the show. Rather than weaving and unraveling scores of different characters, episode after episode, the show took time to let each of them have their own stories and gave their individual narratives the space to really breathe. That allowed the audience to get to know those characters and better appreciate their individual struggles and perspectives, rather than letting them be rolled up into the morass of dinge and lopsided plots that otherwise rumble through the series.
So my favorite parts of “Dead or Alive Or” are the interludes with Father Gabriel and Dr. Carson, because they feel like a throwback to those semi-standalone adventures from earlier in the series’s run. That duo’s portion of the episode doesn’t move the overarching plot forward much, but it serves as an illuminating short story in the midst of the larger, ever more tiresome narrative machinations of the Negan/Saviors arc.
Granted, the episode isn’t exactly subtle. You’d have to be half-asleep to miss the tension between Gabriel’s “the Lord will provide” mentality and Dr. Carson’s “He helps those who help themselves” perspective. But the story feels so much smaller and more intimate — two guys just trying to scratch their way home while questioning the order of the universe — than the convoluted series of fraying alliances and escalating conflicts that the series is otherwise embroiled in right now.
The push-and-pull between Gabriel and Carson centers on the same basic dichotomy that permeates the episode writ large — should you take a leap of faith and hope for the best, both from the individuals around you and the larger forces guiding you, or should you should take the harder, more pragmatic approach? It is, admittedly, a mere variation on the same sort of “trust or defect” binary The Walking Dead was essentially founded on. But it works here, or at least works well enough to pass muster, and filters out to the other stories in the episode.
"Doc, I don't think is the right time for the old 'pull my finger' gag."
For Maggie, that same tension comes out in her moral dilemma over how to balance the lives of her Savior captives (plus Gregory) against the needs of her own people. The rations at the Hilltop are dwindling. It’s taking all her manpower to defend and maintain the place. And yet the prisoners are going hungry and asking for a little leeway in light of their good behavior, while Maggie’s first response is a curt and unsympathetic one.
The same goes for Tara when she’s forced to tolerate Dwight. Tara is, understandably, still angry about the fact that the man who killed Denise is still walking and breathing and worming his way into their group. The episode hammers that point home a little too bluntly, but it’s a natural conflict. And while Daryl and Rosita try to hold Tara back, they get wrapped up in a (well-done) special effects-laden zombie skirmish in the swamp, and Tara gets her chance to avenge the woman she loved.
The resulting scenes of her confronting Dwight are a bit much. “Dead or Alive Or” can’t quite hold the tension as Tara repeatedly goads Dwight at gunpoint, without actually killing him, despite having the means and seemingly the desire to do so. It eventually strains willing suspension of disbelief.
The core idea is a good one, though. Tara’s seen firsthand what sort of cruelty and deceit Dwight is capable of, so she doesn’t buy that he’s truly on their side and won’t turn on them or allow more people they care about to be killed. Then, in a fairly contrived coincidence, the two of them nearly stumble across the pack of Saviors who’ve been tracking the Alexandrians. Dwight bursts into view, plays the part of the Negan loyalist, and directs them away from Daryl, Rosita, Tara, and their band of Alexandrian refugees, making good on his word that he really does want them to survive, even if it puts him at risk.
Ah, the look of a budding friendship.
The lesson, however ham-fistedly it’s delivered, is that Tara was wrong and people who’ve done terrible things are also capable of doing noble things. This parable conveys the idea that if you give people you hate a little dignity, a little forgiveness, and a little faith, they might just earn your trust. Tara’s been the biggest Savior skeptic this season, but by the end of the episode, she’s changed her tune, at least about Dwight, and is a little more open to treating her enemies as potential allies and not just bodies in the way.
And ultimately, Maggie makes that same choice. Thanks to Dwight’s help, the Alexandrian refugees make it to the Hilltop. There’s a slow motion, mostly unaffecting attempt to show the others reacting to Carl’s death. But more important than the misaimed emotional reaction the show tries to gin up there are the moral ripples the result from the young man’s passing.
Carl died trying to save someone, not knowing what would come of it, not thinking it was pragmatic, not trying to gain anything from the act beyond the righteousness of saving a life. But because of his actions, Siddiq makes it to the Hilltop, grateful for Maggie’s help and generosity, and suddenly there is someone with medical training there to help her during her pregnancy — a tiny bit of grace and good fortune.
That’s a good thing, because Dr. Carson doesn’t exactly make it out of his vignette intact. Again, his back and forth with Gabriel over the nature of divine intervention is admittedly a bit rote, but it functions well enough for the story being told. Gabriel is going blind from an infection, but is optimistic that God will show them the right path, and Carson can only see that they’re lost, without transportation, and basically hopeless.
"Hey wait, this is just a placemat from Arby's!"
Despite those impediments, time and again, the two of them fall backward into good fortune. The cabin they stumble across just so happens to have the kind of antibiotics that can help Gabriel. When it seems like the pair is out of options, a piggy bank breaks revealing keys and a map, giving them both a star to steer by and the means to follow it. And when it looks like their luck has run out, when Carson inadvertently steps into a bear trap as the walkers start to swarm, a lucky shot from half-blind Gabriel manages to kill the zombie, but not the good doctor. However much Dr. Carson disbelieves Father Gabriel’s pollyanna perspective, it seems to be working.
But just when it looks like Dr. Carson and Father Gabriel have found the right path, the Saviors show up to spoil everything. Carson attempts to escape the situation by nabbing a revolver from one of Negan’s goons, and it all goes horribly wrong. He takes a bullet for his troubles and Gabriel weeps at the realization of what his faith and hope and effort to find his purpose has turned into. (And it should be said, Seth Gilliam does a tremendous job here.) All the good fortune they’d enjoyed, all the faith they showed, ended with one of them dead and the other captured by the bad guys and forced to sort shells.
It’s hard to know what message The Walking Dead wants to send with all of this. At face value, it feels like the gnawing bleakness that the show’s harshest critics accuse it of. “If you believe, if you trust that there’s a greater plan,” the episode seems to say, “then everything ends in ruin.”
But that message is contradicted by everything else in the episode. Gabriel may not succeed in getting a doctor to Maggie, but Carl unexpectedly does, with Siddiq’s presence coming as a side effect his act of kindness. Bad fortune strikes Tara when she runs into her pursuers, but Dwight proves himself worthy of her trust when he draws them away. Morgan seems lost to nihilism, ready to let the harshness of this world wash over the next generation, but Carl’s death and Carol’s encouragement gives him the impulse to relieve his would-be ward, Henry, of his mortal grudge.
Half of Lauren Cohan's job on this show is just to stand around and look morally conflicted.
Hell, even Eugene, in his black-hatted guise, gets a reprieve in the form of the captive Gabriel telling Negan that it was Dr. Carson, not Eugene, who let him escape, a story that jibes well enough with what Eugene told Negan to let him off the hook. Sure, that results in a mostly pointless tease of Negan deploying some biological warfare in the form of walker viscera, but it’s also another character taking a risk on others and having the universe reward them for it.
So maybe the point is that Gabriel was right, that there’s a plan here and all these moving parts are building to something. I’ve watched The Walking Dead long enough to be wary of the notion that all these disparate threads will be tied together in a satisfying fashion. But this episode toys with the idea that even when terrible things happen — things like bear traps snapping and helpful physicians dying — the kindnesses released into this world, the moments where you risk your life to save another, or show some basic decency to people who’ve wronged you — can come back in your favor in unexpected ways.
Or maybe “Dead or Alive Or” just stands for the idea that good luck rains down on the good and bad alike. Maggie finds medical help; Tara’s escapees are safe for the moment, and Gabriel has his medicine. But the Saviors luck into finding their prey; Eugene lives but lives to make bullets for his master, and Negan himself is given a terrible bolt of inspiration.
So maybe these are all pieces of something bigger, some sort of plan, where good deeds are rewarded and momentary setbacks are part of a larger vision. Or maybe like the show itself, it’s just a set of only loosely-connected events, where folks like me try to find some larger theme or direction when the truth of the matter may amount to no more than a collection of stories that only sporadically become more than the sum of their parts. In the world of The Walking Dead, the gods might be crazy, or maybe we are, for watching and expecting the answer to be any clearer than Gabriel’s vision is.
