The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Episode 3, “Bye.”
To read our spoiler-free review of Eps 1-4 of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, head here.
Michonne and Rick have finally found each other after seven long story years (and six long us years) apart on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. But the circumstances are massively complex thanks to the Civil Republic Military and their devastating firepower. Rick, the noble, sacrificial person that he (frustratingly) is, would rather lose Michonne to secure her safety and the safety of everyone back in the Alexandria Coalition – so he’s going to push her away, for her own good. For their own good. She’s not having it, though. Not at all.
It’s a heroic love story cliche that’s as old as dirt, and when it works it’s Harry and the Hendersons (they were in love, right?) and when it doesn’t…well, then it just makes for sort of standard, plot-driven TV. Yes, it’s a love so big that Hozier would croon about it. It transcends all and makes people commit lofty, heightened grand moves in the name of something bigger. It romanticizes the denying of one’s own happiness.
Late, great film critic Roger Ebert popularized author James Blish’s notion of the Idiot Plot, which refers to a story that’s only held together because the main characters are all idiots and do things no one with half a functioning brain would do. An offshoot of this, which sometimes gets referred to as “soapy” (which is funny because soap operas are 99% conversations), is a plot that can only function because no one ever sits down to have a simple, clarifying conversation. This type of story is laden with misunderstandings and overreactions and thrives on there never being time for the leads to take a time out to have, even, 30 seconds of meaningful words with one another.
Well, Michonne was going to make sure she and Rick would have that time to talk.
With the CRM showing up right away at the end of Episode 2, “Gone,” and then keeping Michonne and Rick apart most of “Bye,” it sure seemed like The Ones Who Live was giving us the old romantic runaround by never providing a moment for Michonne and Rick to stop and say their peace. But, instead of continuing on past this episode with stolen moments where Rick only has time to say things like “I don’t have time to explain,” “this is bigger than both of us” and other bits of stalling dialogue, Michonne, in an almost meta-fashion, saw the way the plot wind was blowing and threw them both out of a helicopter. With this dangerous Hail Mary maneuver, she was going to give them the time out they so desperately needed.
And The Ones Who Live needed this. Fans have been waiting a long time for a follow up to Rick’s story and then, afterward, Michonne’s quest, and if viewers had waited all this time just to have these two do a regular, factory setting love story then it all immediately loses its specialness. This is Michonne and Rick. No offense to other top shelf Walking Dead characters, but these were the two anchors of the mothership series. Maggie and Negan can go to New York all they want and Daryl can get stranded in Paris to his heart’s desire, but The One Who Live is the show bringing the most people back to the Walking Dead fold (having AMC’s highest premiere numbers in six years).
It’s bad enough that Michonne and Rick have connected after so many years and Rick actively wants to save her by getting rid of her, not even giving these two more than a minute’s worth of reconciliation, but now the series, in Episode 3, threw tired tropes at us that did nothing but delay any form of gratification. And maybe that’s the point. Obviously, there must be conflict. But by allowing Michonne to go to war with these conflicts, with these plot devices, she’s able to sort of bust the entire franchise apart at the seams, tearing apart the stitches of what makes a rote love story.
Because Rick’s first tactic in “Bye,” when faced with threats of Alexandria’s annihilation, was to trick Michonne into escaping alone. Quite desperate, he even used their romance against her, writing (and saying) “If you love me, you’ll leave.” In most other TV scenarios, this would be the end of a couple. This would be the giant sacrificial moment that fills viewers with glorious star-crossed agony. But Michonne doesn’t allow Rick to banish her. The Ones Who Live is treating “Richonne” like a playbook ship, rife with the usual beats and bits, while Michonne is treating it like real love and rebelling against these platitudes.
By the end of “Bye,” Rick went full George Henderson on Michonne, resorting to forcefully making her leave. So what does Michonne do, riding back to the base, in a storm, in that helicopter? When she sees that the story is working against her? Against them? She removes them both from the story. In what almost felt like a fourth-wall break, she grabbed Rick and hurled them both out of the helicopter and into the water below. Boom, instant time out. Now these two can have their moment together. Michonne has raged against the Idiot Plot, and the soapy misunderstandings that fuel unrequited romance, to make sure she and her man can – well – go to couples counseling. They have s*** to hash out and now there will be breathing room to do so.
At the heart of this, of the whole spin-off series, is “hope.” The CRM is obsessed with rebuilding the future, in a very brutal fashion that has no time for love, sentiment, or empathy. They have a 500-year plan to bring the world back better than ever, but love is not a part of it. The point of Michonne and Rick now, in the larger Walking Dead saga, is to rediscover love that has been stamped out of the world. Michonne knows that even though she’s found Rick, she hasn’t found Rick. She’s found a plot-morphed, story-warped Rick and she knows that she has to break the story apart to get him back.
