The Walking Dead Review: “The Sorrowful Life”

After two mediocre weeks, The Walking Dead shambled back to life with a powerful penultimate episode. It was probably the best outing of the season outside of “Clear,” and it should come as no surprise that both episodes were written by the same man, Scott M. Gimple. I’m not sure who he is exactly other than a periodic scripter on the show, but damn does he know how to inject emotion into his scripts.

This week was all about the redemption of Merle Dixon, a character we’ve loved to loathe since his appearance in season one. He skipped out all of next season but was back with a vengeance this year, more of a bastard than ever.

But this was the best look inside his mind we’ve had so far, perhaps the only look, really. Merle is usually a closed book of snark and rage, but only now were we given a chance to see what really makes him tick.

Merle had many conversations throughout the night to give insight into his character. Nearly all of the moments were well said, be it him confessing he doesn’t know why he does the things he does to Rick, or Carol saying that he might be a late bloomer like she was, though in a different sense. I think my favorite was Michonne saying that bad deeds weigh nothing to evil people. They’re only heavy on someone who is at their core, good.

It’s unfortunate that the least profound conversation Merle last night was with his brother. Daryl found him tearing apart the prison for drugs, and had Merle call him one of Rick’s sheep. Not exactly the topics you’d like to discuss if you knew it would be the last time you’d ever speak to your brother.

And so Merle does die, at last, after surviving being abandoned on a rooftop (where he also said he wasn’t going to beg) and thrown into a zombie fight club. He has a last minute crisis of faith where he releases Michonne on the way to meet the governor. I actually think that Michonne could have gotten away any time she wanted, and easily gotten the upper hand on Merle, but she was sticking around to try and change his mind, to convince him to come back to the prison group to truly be one of them.

But Merle never really fit in there, or really, much of anywhere. But he did realize that the Governor was the pure evil one, the guy who made him murder so many men, for what? Why? His heavy deeds were thrust on him by another, and the man responsible deserved to pay.

Though his plan is relatively ill-conceived, he makes a good run of it. He lures a herd of zombies to the meeting place, and starts firing on the Governor’s soldiers as they’re flanked by the dead. He didn’t kill any major characters in doing so, but he certainly thinned out at least a few of the experienced hands the Governor relied on. I believe I saw Alan’s stupid kid take a bullet, but I’m sure he’s fine. (Update: Whoops, he was Merle’s meal. I missed that the first time through).

And so the Governor catches him and relegates him to a fate worse than death, to live on as a walker, feasting on corpses and upsetting family members. You can see Daryl’s heart break when he discovers undead Merle, and we’ve never seen his character reduced to hysteria like that. It was one of the more powerful moments I’ve seen in the show, and certainly ranks up there with all the other profound character deaths we’ve seen so far, from Shane to Dale to Sophia to Lori and so on. This might even top them all, as a broken Daryl destroys his brother’s misfiring brain with a barrage of vicious knife strikes, dripping tears onto his corpse.

I’m just glad this episode didn’t go the direction I thought it would. I’m glad Rick realized the sheer idiocy of the plan to betray Michonne because A) there was a huge chance the Governor would kill them all anyway and B) there was an even bigger chance Michonne would escape and kill them all herself. Hopefully she won’t hold a grudge after being almost sold out.

It was smart of the show to ditch that stupid plotline, and focus on the redemption of Merle instead. You could see where the episode was heading midway through, but it really was well done and gave the character a great send-off by having him choose the light side of the force before he met his end.

Next week we’ll have our final showdown, and it becomes a lottery who gets to kill the Governor. Lord knows Rick, Daryl, Michonne and Andrea all have their motivations for doing so. But will they suffer collateral damage in the process? Seems likely.

RIP Merle. You were an alright dude in the end.