‘The Walking Dead’ Retro Recap: ‘Say the Word’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

It is definitely safe to say, that the death of a loved one… is a downright devastating experience. Because this is someone that was a part of our lives for years on end, that we connected with on a fundamental level that we cannot explain in the slightest. So, to know, that we are going to wake up and not have them around or be able to speak to them and seek their advice and wisdom or feel the connection we share with them, outright breaks our heart and puts us in a tough place. The kind where we are despondent and broken… sometimes for far longer than we would like. For grief has no timeline and the void their exit creates can never be filled. But thankfully, not all is lost in this life when someone we love dearly dies, for our modern world affords us a great deal of support. For there are groups that we can join that help to support us in our time of need.
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Plus, there are medical professionals trained to help us process our grief and get us back on the right track in life. Not to mention… there’s our family and our close friends. And they never leave our side and hold us up when we are ready to fall and thanks to all of these options, we eventually see our pain fade and we are able to honor those we lost in our own special way. But while it is wonderful to know that we will get through this because of the support available, there is a little part of us that wonders and worries about what might happen if that support network wasn’t there. For our feels are powerful in that moment and at our lowest… we believe we may never recover, or we might lose control and thankfully, fiction is there to examine such fears so we can find some measure of comfort and it just so happens… that the next episode of The Walking Dead explores just that.

For ‘Say the Word’ presents us with a world where there is no support network. Since this world is all about survival and less about emotional nurturing and not being able to connect with anyone over the loss of Lori, puts Rick Grimes in a supremely dark place. Wherein rage and pain take over and motivate Rick to choose violence and to embrace those negative emotions and well, that leads to some ugly moments for certain. Since Rick puts himself at risk often and all but abandons his family to reconcile the unsaid regarding Lori and all the unresolved pain of losing the mother of his children and seeing him falter and seeing Rick go through this, makes you feel for him because you can tell he’s hurting, courtesy of Andrew Lincoln’s stunning performance here, and it makes you pull for him immediately because you know he’s more than this. And this episode deserves serious credit for showing us the worst-case scenario regarding grief and for finding a way to turn that into a positive. But more on that in a moment.

Because while it was fascinating to partake in that worst-case scenario for grief, there was more for this story to explore. After all, things were not rosy back in Woodbury since Michonne knew something was wrong about this place and worked hard to uncover its truths to Andrea realize that the time had come to leave. But sadly, she was unable to do so. In fact, she was basically painted as a fool, despite discovering that the dead were being kept in this place as captives. Which in turn motivated her to leave Andrea behind and well, that’s a scary decision on Michonne’s part. Since clearly, the Governor is not of sound mind since he was the genius behind the living dead themed Gladiator fights. Which are dangerous since Andrea correctly pointed out it makes the dead appear as though they should be not feared. Plus, he is also harboring quite the dangerous secret. In that, his reanimated daughter, Penny, is hidden away from the world in his apartment in the desperate hopes that perhaps Milton is right, and the dead can be saved from their own hunger and loss of humanity.

In the end, this is simply a unique and fascinating episode. In large part because it features two polarizing plot threads by way of Woodbury and Rick’s mental break, but also because… it really did offer up a examination of the lack of a safety net. Because Rick really is in a terrifying place here mentally, one where it seems as though there is no way out but darkness. But that really isn’t designed to be a warning or a scare tactic, it’s designed to make us grateful. Grateful that we live in a world where we are afforded opportunities to heal and have people around us that aren’t as broken as we are in that moment and unable to help us, and that’s definitely a different style of commentary to be found in a horror story. Since it asks us to embrace what we have because that will help us to heal, regardless of how bad things seem in that moment and well, now that this fascinating journey has come to an end, it is time to turn our attention to a tale that set the stage for a grand and costly fight with a madman. Until next time.

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