Synopsis of 6×04: A standalone episode that gives us a look at Morgan’s backstory, which may have been better received by the fandom if it had been before last week’s episode.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Anyone who was looking forward to finding out whether Glenn is alive or dead is going to have to wait (rumors are that we won’t be getting answers until after the mid-season break in February). “Here’s Not Here” is a ninety minute look at how Morgan got from “Clear” to the zen master he is today through his own words, as told to the W Man that he still hasn’t killed (twice now).
He clears out of the town that he’d set up in “Clear” when his ranting and raving hits a fever pitch – also, you know, he knocked over a gas lamp and set the whole place on fire. So Morgan sets out to kill walkers in the woods, burning their bodies, and sets up a new perimeter as he attracts them to himself. He also kills two people that he comes across in the woods before he finds a cabin with a goat and a tin can perimeter.
![[AMC]](http://www.nerdophiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/morgankills-470x264.jpg)
Morgan is witness to him going outside to defend the goat against a walker with a stick. He brings the goat inside and asks Morgan not to hurt her before turning in for the night. While in the cell, Morgan is witness to Eastman’s every day – practicing aikido (the thing with the stick), attempting to make cheese, making small talk. He even lets Morgan in on what he used to do before the apocalypse. He was a forensic psychologist from Atlanta.
In return, crazy Morgan intimates that he “clears” now – that’s all he’s good for, walkers, people, anything that gets near him he kills and he clears. When the man tries to pull some psychology hoodoo on him Morgan says that’s the only reason he’s still here.
![[AMC]](http://www.nerdophiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/jail-470x264.jpg)
Eastman shares more about his life, talking about his daughter, and when Morgan asks where his wife and daughter are now, all he can answer is that aikido will help Morgan. He wants Morgan to be prepared for the trip they’re headed out on and leaves him in charge of the goat. At the last moment, Morgan does go out and save Tabitha from certain death at walker hands, damaging some of the property in the process.
At the back of the property, there’s a makeshift graveyard for walkers and they go about burying the two newest walkers that Morgan killed. Eastman goes so far as to find their wallets and put grave markers for each of them. These baby steps segue in to Morgan learning aikido and slowly coming back to the land of the sane.
![[AMC]](http://www.nerdophiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/headstone-470x264.jpg)
He admits that the cell was for Wilton and that he was going to let Wilton starve to death in it. When Morgan asks if he did, Eastman’s only answer is that he has come to believe that all life is precious.
They take a trip to where Morgan was staying out in a field prior to finding Eastman and it’s another testament to his crazy. They talk a little bit about Morgan’s family – Jenny and Duane – and then do some aikido, even though Morgan is insistent that they not do it here. When they finish, Eastman tells him the encroaching zombie is all his. He freezes up when he realizes it’s one of the humans he strangled to death without putting him down permanently.
![[AMC]](http://www.nerdophiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/eastmanscrime-470x264.jpg)
When he returns to the cabin, he finds Tabitha being eaten by a walker and Eastman laboriously digging graves. He helps Eastman before finding Crighton Dallas Wilton amongst the grave markers. Eastman explains that it would have been better if they caught him, but they didn’t. For 47 days, he let Wilton starve to death and then he went to turn himself in. The world had ended in that time period and he never knew, taking on a new stance of never killing anything ever again.
After he failed to turn himself in because there was no one to arrest him, he went all the way home to his house and cut off that drawing that was previously damaged. He brought it back to the cabin and he’s been there ever since. He gives the rabbit’s foot to Morgan, which we saw in season five as being put on the altar at Gabriel’s church with the previously offered Goo Goo Cluster and bullet before he sees the sign for Terminus.
![[AMC]](http://www.nerdophiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/wman-470x264.jpg)