One interpretation is that Morgan plans to put himself in the jail cell, if there’s an attack. That’ll stop him from pulling B.S. like saving the bad guys, at the risk of his colleagues. He won’t be forced to make the choice of killing the attackers or risking his people.
Basically, it’s a different solution to the same problem, compared to Carol.
I find it easier to excuse the odd behaviors from Carol, Morgan, etc. This whole season appears to be focused on showing us what Bob meant with all his optimistic speeches about who they’re going to be once the nightmare ends: “We push ourselves and let things go. Then we let some more go and then some more. And pretty soon, there’s things we can’t get back.”
These people have spent most of their time on constant alert, and much of their time shooting other people or shoving knives into zombie brains. You’d expect some pretty dramatic and unhelpful reactions as they decide where they are on the ‘normal person to murderbot’ scale, and whether that’s who they want to be.
Oh man, I didn’t catch that either. That’s even more silly! But, yeah, you’re probably right. Hence Rick’s concerned attitude. I figured it was entirely prudent to have a jail cell ready.
-Tom
Seriously, what good is a cell in their circumstances?
If someone is doing/has done something bad enough to get tossed in jail then why not just kill them? Even with specific facilities to imprison people and trained personnel to guard them, prisoners still escape in today’s world. In their situation an escape would have deadly consequences. Then there’s the food thing, why would you want to waste food on a prisoner? They are short on food to the extent that they are willing to kill another group for Hilltop, so they can get some food out of it. I sure as hell wouldn’t then turn around and give some of that food to someone who has done something bad enough that he or she is locked up.
I think realistically they only have two choices, banish the person and take the chance that the person doesn’t come back to cause trouble. Or execute them for their crime, whatever it was. I think a jail would be handy far in their future, when basic survival is no longer a struggle.
It’s not that simple for Morgan. He won’t kill. But he also learned that locking someone in a normal room doesn’t work. So how else would he react?
How much of civilization do you give up, and do you ever try to get it back? Different characters have different ideas. Morgan’s solution is not as practical as Rick’s, “Sorry it’s come to this…” BANG justice, but that has its own problems.
Morgan should have left. Morgan was taught or trained by a guy who did not see anyone except Morgan during the post apocalypse. This means that guy’s theories about rehabbing people who’ve gone feral are completely useless. He had the luxury of spending all his time on Morgan, without having to fight off any human attackers. He did not have to get along with any other communities, he did not have to go out and scavenge, and risk his safety that way.
Morgan has a set of skills in mental health care that have no application in the ‘real’ world that Alexandria and Hilltop have to live in. Building that jail cell won’t change that. He of all people should know there will always be another Wolf or Negan to deal with.
Not killing IS possible, but only if he lives as his instructor lived- by himself far away from others. If you never see anyone you’ll never have to kill anyone.
Well shit. I do not like where this is heading, not one bit.
just in case
If Daryl dies, riots in the street.
I do think we’re headed toward a bad end for a certain someone (if not more), however.
Daryl is the worst tracker in the entire world. Either that or every survivor put enough points into their stealth to hit stage 2.
This is the kind of episode that drives me insane, INSANE!
They’re expecting visitors…so every good fighter(almost)leaves. The weird thing at least half those people have no reason to leave. Carol goes, then Rick and Morgan go to get her back. How? Talk some sense into her? So they really think the reason she left is no one made a good case for her to stay? And with Daryl it’s worse. Hey let’s all go to where we were outnumbered and our doctor got killed. We have fewer people this time, so the odds should be better now?
And Rick with his “I don’t think we finished it” comment, really, what gives him that idea? It’s not like they’ve run into a never ending stream of these people.
That final scene
I think it’s going to be more mis-direction on the part of the show. Daryl was probably shot in the shoulder or arm or someplace like that.
final scene
Well, considering after “Hi Daryl”, he shoots, the screen goes blank and we hear him say “You’ll be all right”, I don’t think it’s too much of a mis-direction. “You’ll be all right” would be a strange thing to say to someone if you just shot them fatally.
.
Morgan’s monologue about how “it’s all a circle” might be one of the most inane pieces of writing on this show, which is quite an accomplishment. It’s not just that it’s a silly bit of reasoning. It’s that it’s so transparently wrong. Were the writers hoping we aren’t paying close enough attention?
So Morgan says that he spared the Wolf guy who was part of the attack on Alexandria, who then saved Denise’s life so that Denise could save Carl. “It’s all a circle,” Morgan says sagely. Rick is dumbfounded. Or at least impassive. But it’s not a circle; it’s a line that Morgan let continue twice! If he hadn’t spared that guy, Denise wouldn’t have been kidnapped in the first place. And she still would have been available to tend to Carl. I don’t understand a) how the character can be so dumb as to not understand the basic tenets of cause and effect, or b) how the writers can think we’re so dumb not to immediately see through it. Morgan’s risible “every life is precious” philosophy is so strained, so contrived, and so completely nonsense in the context of the world the show has created. Dumb dumb dumb.
It’s even dumber than everyone leaving town to go track down their buddies who don’t want to be tracked down and left for dumb reasons in the first place. And it’s certainly dumber than supposed badasses like Daryl and Michonne getting sneaked up on by a squad of good ol’ boys. Sheesh. I’m guessing Carol will rescue everyone? At any rate, I suspect Daryl is safely tucked into his own Dumpster ™.
-Tom
I’m not so sure. That seems like the sort of line a Savior would crack right after blowing someone away.
I don’t know how any of these people survived this long.
I was hoping that, after Rick’s little bit about not taking any chances anymore, he just shot Morgan in the head after that dumb diatribe. Now THAT would have been unexpected, and it’s not like Rick’s never done that sort of thing before.
I half expected the theme from The Lion King to play in the background of Morgan’s ridiculous philosophical moment. The Circle of Walking Death indeed.
Daryl and Rosita being snuck up on by the Saviors when they were supposedly trying to infiltrate the camp and presumably on high alert is pretty far-fetched, but the writers needed some way to put multiple characters viewers care about (Daryl, Glenn, Michonne) in the hands of the bad guys so that it wouldn’t be clear just who ends up hurt or worse in the season finale next week.
I am finding the Negan camp thing less and less plausible with every episode. I mean, come on, with the seemingly endless supply of Saviors it’s pretty far-fetched that Negan’s group wouldn’t have encountered Alexandria and/or it’s people long before Rick and Co. ever showed up. Remember when Alexandria sent people out to look for other survivors and supposedly recruit them to the cause? You mean to tell me Negan’s 100+ guys never ran across one of the recruiters, or a scavenging party? And that pickup truck…seriously? I’m Negan, and I know the people from Alexandria have taken out one of my strongest outposts, one of my most heavily armed road gangs, and at least two of my scouting/scavenging parties. So my brilliant plan is to send a pickup truck with 5 idiots in it to go take care of the problem.
I also noticed how in every scene this episode where our gang exited their vehicles, they left the doors wide open. Maybe that’s now protocol, leave the doors open and keys in the ignition in the event they get overwhelmed by walkers or surprised by people they can flee back to the vehicle and jump right in and zoom away, but it seemed more to me like a good way to come back from your search for Daryl/Carol/whatever and discover your ride gone or full of unexpected hitchhikers.
People are that dumb. They see what they want to see. Morgan wanted to see the Wolf be redeemed, so he thinks he saw that happen.
His philosophy is ridiculous. Carol gave it a shot, and it lasted about 12 clicks down the road. But I maintain that this is about different characters picking different ways to adapt. Some of them are wrong. Heck, Morgan says that, “I don’t think I’m right. There is no right.”
Morgan’s reasoning is dumb, not just wrong but also dumb, because he’s claiming credit for things he had no way of knowing about when he chose not to kill.
A Wolf in the here and now IS a danger, that’s a fact. That Wolf may or may not renounce his or her ways and be redeemed AND maybe even help out in the future…but that’s not a fact. That’s just speculation at the time of the decision to kill or not kill.
Because Morgan lives in a world with few living humans, he’s seeing the same people over and over, so he’s happy to claim credit for any good any of them do, such as that Wolf. What about the stuff he doesn’t see? What about the people killed by Morgan’s reclamation projects? Morgan doesn’t seem to even think about that, he never addresses how he feels about being an accessory to those crimes. I wish Rick or someone would call him out on that.
Well, you’re expecting rational, pragmatic reactions from people who probably all have some degree of PTSD, living in 24-7 life-or-death stress.
I think the show is about the range of reactions to this world. Morgan is wrong. He says that, explicitly. Pacifism is just his way of preserving what he thinks of as himself – “It’s the wrong that doesn’t pull you down.” Rick, now basically a murderbot, disagrees. Carol can’t commit to either path. None of them is right.