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The Walking Dead S03E12: "Clear"

Note: I wrote this review based on a press screener, so no GIFs for now. I'll try to add some within a day or two, but until then I'm stuck with AMC's production stills for art.

Hello boys and ghouls! I'm surprised you're back, given the fact that I was the only person on the earth who enjoyed last week's to-the-prison-and-back Andrea trek. I still defend my stance that Andrea rejoining the group but finding them nearly unrecognizable means a lot to the show and its themes of adaptation and survival, and that "I Ain't a Judas" was the best use of Andrea all season long (which shouldn't necessarily be celebrated, because she's been awful). Personally, I'd rather watch that version of The Walking Dead over The Governor suddenly showing up and taking potshots at the prison almost any day. But hey, what do I know?

Hopefully we can all agree (oh God, I hope we agree for the sake of our friendship) that tonight's episode, "Clear," breached new dramatic territory for The Walking Dead Season 3, and I'll put myself out there by saying it was the best of the season so far. No, it wasn't action-slammed and it didn't feature a river of zombie brains and intestinal tracts. But it was one of the most thought-provoking, enlightening, and well-written episodes of the series. That is to say, "Clear" felt deserving of one of television's grandest compliments: It felt like "a cable-quality drama."

Some of the improvements were obvious: no Woodbury, no Woodburyites, no prison, no Judith (stupid baby), no Lori, no Lori the unfriendly ghost, no "let me tell you sumptin'," no arguing about Rick being the leader, no arguing about Merle, no arguing about trusting strangers, not much arguing at all in fact, no Carol rubbing up on the nearest man, no spontaneous Beth songs, no frumpy Michonne moping in the background, and none of Andrea's hands-on-the-hips head-bobbing. Instead, the focus of "Clear" was sharper than Michonne's katana because the episode isolated its story. And it was just the kick in the pants the season needed.

You can thank Scott Gimple, who wrote "Clear," for that, and I hope his eye for telling interesting stories within an episode continues when he takes over as showrunner for Season 4. If Glen Mazzara added the right amount of blood and action to The Walking Dead, then maybe Gimple will finally bring some badly needed characterization. Looking back, it makes you wonder what Frank Darabont brought to the show except for his loyal stable of actors like Laurie Holden and Jeffrey DeMunn.

"Clear" was essentially a side-trip episode as Rick, Michonne, and Carl ventured out in a search for guns and ammo and gun magazines and maybe Guns & Ammo the gun magazine to prepare for the big battle with The Governor. You can still question Rick's timing (what if The Governor came back when he was gone?) and his choice in companions (Rick saying Carl "is ready" isn't a satisfying qualification to bring his son out on a dangerous mission, what if they get eaten and Judith grew up dad-less and brother-less?), but the drama and character interactions worked so well, I was just happy to see The Walking Dead add substance and continue its improved characterization from last week. Heck, Michonne cracked a JOKE! ("The mat said 'Welcome,'" when Rick asked why she was eating Morgan's food.) MICHONNE! Queen Sourpuss of the New World! Time to start an open-mic night, maybe she can add slicing watermelons in half like a post-apocalyptic Gallagher. 

Though to be fair, this episode couldn't help but be good since it was the re-introduction of Morgan (Lennie James), a character we've been waiting to run into again since Episode 2 of Season 1. Last week I talked about the show's theme of change, and how the amount of personal evolution for each character was distorted through perspective. Perceived personal change varied depending on how long it had been since characters last saw each other. I loved putting myself in Andrea's pants and seeing The Group 2.0 through her eyes. Rick and friends, once so focused on getting back to normal with the good life on the farm, were now a lot of secession-happy survivalists that could barely bring themselves to trust their old blonde friend. Tyreese, on the other hand, saw Rick for who he was at that moment, a crazy mofo. One is a sympathetic, "You've changed," the other is a scared, "That white boy is bat shit crazeeee!" It took a bit of empathy to appreciate what Andrea went through, because the change among the prison group was something we had witnessed through the show, so to many it was no big deal. I loved it though, but maybe it's because I'm a sensitive softy and I think the differences were proven well through practice.

In "Clear," witnessing stark evolution/devolution brought on by a world in which the dead stalk the living was unavoidable because we were all on the same page with Morgan. We hadn't seen him since the series premiere "Days Gone Bye," and back then he was a strong man showing cracks and mourning the recent loss of his wife, but he still had something to fight for in his son Duane. In "Clear," he was a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. Since Rick last saw him, things had been really stinky for Morgan to the point where he shacked up in a top-story storage room, built a Wipeout-style zombie obstacle course, raided the town for all the Sidewalk Chalk it had left and wrote jibberish all over the walls with it, and most importantly, stockpiled enough guns to make Charlton Heston die from boneritis.

Seeing his old buddy like this was bad times for Rick Grimes, but it was also an eye-opener. As Morgan told him about how he failed by not being able to go through with killing zombie wife Jenny–who would eventually eat little boy Duane because Duane couldn't do it either (ugh, the heartbreak)–Rick saw a potential future for himself in Morgan. Becoming Morgan was a worst-case scenario. And when Rick was telling Morgan, "You have to be able to come back from this," he was giving that advice to himself also. Lori's gone, but he still has Carl, and the madness has to stop. At the end of the episode, when Rick is staring off into this distance and Michonne tells him she knows he sees "things," the "thing" Rick was staring at could have easily been Lori waving goodbye because Rick got rocketed back into reality from seeing Morgan as a suicidal, going-through-the-motions hermit. I was never a fan of Rick going bonkers and talking to dead phones and dead wives, but if Rick truly has shaken off the crazies because of this encounter with Morgan (and I think he has), this was a fantastic way to do it.

And let's throw our thongs on the stage towards Lennie James, who delivered an outstanding performance as a distressed Morgan, broken from grief. He was absolutely fantastic. I don't know if we've seen the last of Morgan, but at least Rick knows where to find him. And there's still a crapload of guns there. Put that in your pocket for Season 4, Gimple. I don't think any of us would complain if Morgan spent more time with us.

The Michonne-Carl shopping trip to Cribs-R-Us was also a maturation for The Walking Dead, most notably because it set out to fix a pair if characters that have been problematic. It started off by establishing Carl's distrust of Michonne at the beginning when Michonne drove their shiny, self-cleaning 2011 Hyundai Tuscon Limited Edition (just $18,895 MSRP for the base model!) into a mud trap. Then Carl went off on what seemed like another one of his stupid self-worth proving "I'm a big boy" solo trips, ditching Michonne as she made a zombie kebab. It felt like trouble in that moment as we all groaned "Here we go again," and screamed, "Stay in the damn farmhouse, Carl!" out of force of habit.

But Carl bit back at Michonne's attempts to overparent with such conviction that we realized he's not just on a quest to annoy the Internet with boneheaded decisions. No, he wanted to get a picture from the town cafe, a picture of Rick, Lori, and himself. "I just thought Judith should know what her mom looked like," he said, making me feel like a total asshole for ever doubting his purpose. It hit Michonne hard, too, and in that moment it was obvious that getting that photo–essentially preserving the Grimes family for the future and holding onto humanity in this world of shit–was worth stepping into a zombie feeding trough. Michonne ninja'd her way into the restaurant, came out with the photo (and a sweet cat sculpture), and we saw a badly needed new side to her. After the mutual showing of respect and compassion between the two, they skipped back hand-in-hand to Rick where Carl declared, "I think she might be one of us." And like that, Michonne and Carl grew leaps and bounds.

In an hour, "Clear" managed to fix three broken characters that were in bad need of fixin', both from the audience's viewpoint and from a personal standpoint. Maybe a day trip to grab some supplies is just what the other characters need as well.

NOTES

– We need to talk about that hitchhiker. It's so difficult to see Rick completely ignore a person in need, but apparently everyone else is also on board. Carl and Michonne hardly flinched when the hitcher screamed after them, instead hurrying up to get in the car and peel out. On the way back they see pieces of the guy strewn about the highway, and snatch his knapsack. The look in Rick's eye is hard to decipher, but was there a pang of guilt in there? Did he regret not giving the guy a ride? What are your theories on the hitchhiker?

– I was so happy to be away from the prison and Woodbury for an episode. This was kind of like the episode "18 Miles Out" when Shane and Rick drove far off the farm and had it out. These changes of pace are great for the series because they break up the monotony of sedentary life and they always seem to bring out character.

– I dig the rats on skateboards trick.

– When Michonne got the car stuck in the mud, how did that crazy zombie ambush happen? How are zombies still popping up out of nowhere in this show?

– Did Michonne kill Jenny, Morgan's wife? One of the zombies looked an awful lot like her.

    Follow TV.com writer Tim Surette on Twitter if you want to: @TimAtTVDotCom

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How I Met Your Mother S08E16: "Bad Crazy"

After several weeks' worth of mythology-advancing episodes, How I Met Your Mother is taking a breather from the tough stuff, instead opting for episodes like last week's ode to Robin Sparkles and Canada (which was one of the show's best episodes ever) and this week's journey through Crazyville, population Ted and Jeanette. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that we've arrived at the Season 8 episodes that were originally designed to slow down the story as HIMYM's writers awaited a verdict on whether or not the series would end this year. The massive information downloads we got a few episodes ago—that the Mother is the bass player in Robin and Barney's wedding band, and not Barney's half-sister—I'm pretty sure we got those pieces of the story just in case the show had to wrap everything up by May. But now that Season 9 is confirmed, the show can pause and figure out where it's going next.

That's the long way of me trying to say that tonight's episode "Bad Crazy," didn't lead to any earth-shattering revelations or inspire any game-changing new theories about how and when we'll meet the Mother. "Bad Crazy" was HIMYM humor at its best, though, with the gang just hanging out and ragging on each other (usually ragging on Ted).

Jeanette—Ted's final girlfriend before he meets the Mother—is crazy. The gang realizes this, and Ted does too. And even though Ted doesn't mind a little crazy at this point, Jeanette is full-on bonkers. She throws remote controls at TVs. She threatens hockey refs with death before games even begin. Unfortunately for Ted, he's never been good at initiating break-ups. When Barney and Marshall let Jeanette into Ted's apartment after he broke up with her, she locked herself in Ted's room, and in typical Ted fashion, he didn't quite end things, leaving the poor (crazy) girl with false hope that they were still together.

When the group pointed out to Ted that he had led Jeanette on, and Lily told him that he could use a crazy relationship at the moment, Ted returned to his room and fully embraced Jeanette's insanity.

It's a shame that Abby Elliott will only be around for a few episodes. I always thought she was underutilized on Saturday Night Live, and she was great in Jeanette's few scenes, effortlessly flipping between sweet-talking Ted to screaming obscenities at a television. While her time on HIMYM is limited, I hope this leads to something bigger for her. I also hope that the show finds a reason to put Jeanette and Lily's dad in a scene together, since Abby Elliott is the daughter of Chris Elliott, the actor who portrays Mickey. As we saw last week with Bob Saget acknowledging Dave Coulier's Full House reference, HIMYM isn't afraid to wink at the world beyond the show.

While Ted was dealing with Jeanette's home invasion, Robin had her own adventure with baby Marvin. It turns out that during the first eight months of Marvin's life, Robin never held him. We've always known that Robin is a bit squeamish around kids, but future Ted told us that she would one day warm up to them. It looked like Robin would have her chance when Lily left the baby with her so she could chase down a bus and retrieve Marvin's favorite binky, but as HIMYM would show us through a series of hilarious flashforwards, Robin didn't quite take advantage of the opportunity. We got a peek at Robin and Lily meeting to drink wine and catch up at four-, 12-, 14-, 16- and 17-year intervals, and in each instance, Robin revealed a new secret about the day Lily left her alone with Marvin. Long story short, Robin let a nice older woman hold Marvin to quiet him down, allowed Marvin to roll into the street in his stroller, brought him to a strip club to get him out of the cold, and finally left him alone with the woman while making a bathroom visit. Oh, and one more thing: It wasn't actually an older woman. It was Mike Tyson, or Senator Mike Tyson, as 2030 Lily would refer to him.

Did anyone get a look at Robin's left hand during those flashforwards? The show seemed to keep it hidden, and I'm not sure if that was on purpose or just how things worked out. I'm fully of the belief that Robin and Barney will go through with their wedding, but seeing a ring would've been a good way to settle once and for all whether they got married and were still married anywhere between four and 17 years in the future.

There are eight more episodes left in Season 8, meaning we're two thirds of the way through. Will HIMYM slow-play the final few episodes before finally revealing the Mother in the season finale? How long will Jeanette stick around before Ted finally manages to break up with her? He's going to need a date to Robin and Barney's wedding, right?

– Barney summarizing why Ted had to break up with Jeanette: "Cray-Cray gotta go bye-bye before you get stab-stabbed."

– Since Ted is the only member of the group who hasn't been in a relationship lately, Barney and Marshall have been using his apartment to stash items their significant others don't want in their own homes. These items include a vintage video game machine, a Boba Fett suit, a cotton candy machine, a moped, a horse, and a canoe that was somehow carried at both ends by Barney.

– Speaking of the Boba Fett suit, is there any chance Disney/Lucasfilm will consider Josh Radnor to play the infamous bounty hunter in the alleged spin-off Star Wars movie? He probably wouldn't be allowed to bring one of the swords from the apartment with him, though.

– After Superstorm Sandy, Ted stocked his bedroom with a ton of food and survivalist items, making it possible for Jeanette to hunker down there and possibly never leave. When Marshall and Barney mocked Ted for making those preparations, he pointed out the hypocrisy in what his friends were saying: "If this disaster had been a superstorm instead of a hot lunatic, you'd all be begging to eat my freeze-dried protein paste and crap in my biohazard bucket."

– Upon learning that Jeanette was actually a police officer (thus allowing her to intercept Ted's 911 call), Ted and Marshall launched into what's probably my favorite new joke of season so far: Ted and Marshall playing The Departed, a game that is pretty much just the two of them yelling "ARE YOU A CAWWWP" at one another in awful Boston accents. Unfortunately, Ted did not know that Jeanette was a cawwwp.

– Lily upon learning the secrets of Robin's day with Marvin: "You took my infant son to a strip club?" Robin: "It was just topless."

– I'm pretty sure Marvin was playing with a tassel while at the strip club. A baby has to entertain himself somehow, I guess.

– Barney: "What do I do for a living? There are some questions that we're not meant to know the answers to."

– While wearing Ted's red cowboy boots, Jeanette demanded to know why they were in Ted's bedroom: "Did Lily leave these boots here or was it some other bitch?" Oh, that's right—Jeanette thinks Ted is secretly in love with Lily.

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Wilfred S02E12: "Secrets"

Wilfred, at its heart, isn't a buddy comedy. It's a buddy tragedy, because one of the buddies is a depressed head case and the other might not even be real. Even if Ryan actually is talking to a dog, he's not a picture of mental health. He's still the man we first met as he was making a prescription-drug smoothie with thoughts of never waking up.

So it's no surprise that "Secrets," the show's Season 2 finale, was a total bummer (unless you were wearing a Team Drew shirt). I've always had my doubts about Amanda's mental state—remember how she threw herself on the new guy (Ryan) at work seconds after meeting him? True, their brief relationship was adorable through its ups and downs, and we were all rooting for Ryan to find something stable in his life, but we all knew this would end badly. We just didn't know it would end THIS badly.

Too-good-to-be-true Amanda turned out to be too-crazy-to-be-a-girlfriend for Ryan, confessing that she too had conversations with Wilfred. But that wasn't the admission that made us want to tighten her straightjacket. After being pegged with accusations that he sold company secrets and brought down the medical firm, Ryan learned that it was Amanda who sold the secrets for a cool $10 million (I'm still not sure why Ryan's name was on the off-shore account) in hopes that the two of them could abscond to somewhere tropical and spend their days drinking fruity drinks on sandy beaches.

That left Ryan facing the tough decision of whether to turn her in for her crimes and for her own safety. Look ladies, if you've got a pretty face like Amanda's, I'll look the other way while you discuss the weather with a dog. But bringing down a company by selling its secrets and causing the CEO to shoot himself in the head is where I draw the line! But that doesn't mean it was easy to see Ryan's face sink or see Amanda's glow, not knowing that she did anything wrong. Hearrrrt brrreak.

In turning Amanda into a cuckoo clock, Wilfred didn't leave us with any hope of Amanda and Ryan getting back together (unless Ryan ends up being committed to the same loony bin Amanda will be staying in). "Secrets" also chose not to show Amanda being hauled off by authorities, in what would surely have been a powerful scene. It's almost as if Amanda became a scapegoat for a lot of the ills of Wilfred's second season, and the show couldn't wait to send her off. And now that I think of it, I'm not sure her character really worked for the show at all. Aside from Allison Mack's natural charisma, there wasn't much meat to her character, and her relationship with Ryan didn't factor into the heart of the show that much. She was supposed to be Ryan's ideal life that could never be attained because of Ryan's mental issues, but instead she ended up being a back door through which the loose threads of the company problems could escape.

Although, if you want to make the situation mean something for the show overall, it's also a statement on mental illness and adds to the conversation of Ryan's own well-being. If Amanda can be that crazy, then it's all the more possible that Ryan could be insane, too. And that was punctuated at the end of the episode, when the drawing that Ryan assumed was the work of Wilfred actually turned out to be his own. In the drawing, apparently drawn by a young Ryan, a cartoon version of Wilfred could be seen poking his head out from behind a tree—the implication being that Ryan had been imagining Wilfred long before he actually met Wilfred.

It didn't have the same impact that the disappearing basement had in the Season 1 finale, because it essentially told us the same thing, just in a different way. Sure, it's fun to have that tiny mind explosion and say, "Whoa duuuude! He like, totally drew him when he was a kid!" But instead of adding anything new to the conversation about Ryan, it was just a reminder of what we already knew. I'm a little worried that Wilfred will just keep doing the same thing whenever it needs to pique our interest, but will never bring us closer to the answers we're all looking for.

Though Season 2 started off great and had some amazing highlights, I'm not sure I can call this a good season of Wilfred. I love the idea of what the show is trying to do with the question of Ryan's sanity, but I'm not sure it's being executed as well as it could be. Obviously the series can't resolve the issue because it excels when that question is on our minds (and the series would be over if we knew for sure). But this season stayed too close to the middle, i.e. the generic "maybe" that Ryan is crazy, instead of leaning heavily in one direction before countering it in a big way later and keeping us off balance.

The Wilfred writers needed to anticipate our theories—Wilfred is a product of Ryan's id, Wilfred is a byproduct of Ryan's depression, Wilfred actually can talk to Ryan, Wilfred is a secret government conspiracy—and play with those for a bit by exploring some specifics instead of simply repeating the same question over and over. Otherwise, it's just "here we go again" and the idea loses a lot of punch.

But this is a tough task for any show, let alone a half-hour comedy. Wilfred is still great at what counts, and that's being funny.

NOTES

– One Wilfred fallback joke that continues to work is the fake story pulled from a TV plot. The show has done it in the past with Lost, and tonight it was Battlestar Galactica. Will it get old soon? Probably! But not yet.

– I really thought we would meet Ryan's dad this season!

– This Wilfred quote pretty much sums up the show: "I'm a dog, Ryan. I can't talk to people. How many times do I have to tell you that?"

Follow TV.com writer Tim Surette on Twitter: @TimAtTVDotCom

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