The Walking Dead Review: Bury Me Here (Season 7 Episode 13)

It looks like Carol and Morgan may be going back to their old selves after The Walking Dead Season 7 Episode 13, “Bury Me Here.”

Well, maybe not their old selves exactly, but Carol is planning to fight, or at least planning to convince Ezekiel to fight, and Morgan has a bit of a meltdown that leads to him breaking his no-killing vow.

A lot of “Bury Me Here” feels a little bit like an episode from the first half of Season 7. There are two significant character deaths, yes, but other than those two brief scenes, most of the episode is slow, quiet, and subdued with the threat of the Saviors looming over everyone’s heads.

By the end of the episode, there’s a sense of, “Okay, now that that’s out of the way, things can really get going.” Many episodes from the first half of the season caused a similar reaction. Plotwise, the episode isn’t a very strong standalone, but it moves Carol, Morgan, and the Kingdom into place for the final episodes of the season.

The second half of the episode, after Benjamin dies, does take a slight turn for the better as Morgan’s stoicism starts to crumble.

(Sidenote: Everyone, myself included, has known all along that Benjamin was going to end up dead, right?)

The sequence just after Benjamin’s death is particularly well done with its frantic editing, Morgan’s incoherent yelling, and Bear McCreary’s tense score. The use of old footage from the Season 3 episode “Clear” in the sequence is also a smart move. It serves as a reminder of the man Morgan was back in Season 3 after he lost his son.

Of course losing someone, especially someone so young, is going to be upsetting, but Benjamin was only in three episodes before “Bury Me Here.” We knew Morgan was training Benjamin, but we didn’t really see that a strong, father-son-like bond had developed between the two. The flashbacks to “Clear” help viewers understand what is going through Morgan’s head more clearly.

All of that pain and loss comes out when Morgan finally snaps and strangles Richard to death.

Lennie James once again proves that he’s one of the strongest actors on the show in that scene and the following scene, where he stammers and struggles to tell Ezekiel why he just murdered one of their own.

It’s unclear if Morgan will be joining in the fight against the Saviors, since he wants to isolate himself again, but he did seem to be sharpening the end of his staff in the episode’s final moments.

The episode is mostly Morgan-centric, though Carol does appear in a few scenes, and she does finally find out the truth about Glenn, Abraham, and the others the Saviors killed.

Even though she does tell Ezekiel that the Kingdom needs to take on the Saviors, she doesn’t quite seem back to being the badass she once was.

Regardless, the Kingdom is now ready to fight, Carol and Morgan may be joining them, and we can finally, finally, get ready to see the battle we’ve been anticipating since Season 7 Episode 1.

 

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The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.

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