While Strand has an artist paint a portrait of him, he answers calls from a callbox outside, deciding which people he wants in his community. Morgan pleads to let June treat Mo, and Strand agrees in exchange for a favor. The Stalkers threaten to release walkers stuffed with pieces of the warhead if they aren't granted asylum. Morgan offers his assistance when Strand suddenly collapses after being poisoned. Strand tells Morgan that he wants to find Alicia, but Morgan tells him he needs to make the Tower a place that Alicia would want to live in. They agree to work together to find her, until Strand discovers Morgan was the one who poisoned him.
Grace informs Strand that some of the walkers covered with material from the warhead have gotten loose and are outside the Tower, and bargains for Morgan's life by agreeing to join him. Morgan later comes across another group, revealed to be Dwight, Sherry and some members of the Stalkers. They take Morgan to their camp to meet their leader, revealed to be Alicia. When walkers arrive, Morgan notices they are covered with radioactive material and tells them not to shoot. They ignore him and shoot, releasing the radioactive gas.
The biggest problem isn't in The Portrait, although the episode certainly is a symptom of it. The whole issue is that, besides elevating Strand to the position of villain, we've had seven episodes so far that haven't advanced the macro plot at all. In fact, I lie. It's perfectly understandable that they haven't advanced the macro plot because it simply doesn't exist. There's no path, no objective, nothing more than a tenuous backdrop that deals with a place called Padre that may or may not be connected to Alicia's whereabouts, who finally shows up this season (I'll confess right here: for a fraction of a second, I thought "she" was Madison - I guess I'm as crazy as Strand...). It's a lost, foggy story that the showrunners insist on revolving around Morgan Jones, who is everywhere, always has a solution for everything, and can't speak without sounding like he's reading some cheap self-help book.
With this complete lack of direction, which reflects (at least in mine) a complete lack of interest in the fate of the characters, 80% of them are no longer more than extras who, if they're lucky, appear for a few seconds in an episode, like Wendell did here. There was no way The Portrait could be more than just interesting. And just in passing, I must say, since the whole "nobody touches my baby," "send my baby down here," "now the baby is mine," and baby here and baby there made me wish Mo would become a snack for the undead in the elevator shaft... Wasn't that scene slow? And with a direction from Heather Cappiello that was so bureaucratic, she managed to drain any chance of there being even a hint of tension, a feat she repeats at the end, when Morgan tells everyone not to shoot, only for everyone to shoot the radioactive zombies that explode in a friendly cloud of irradiated isotopes that should kill everyone in the camp, but I'm sure the "wind" will come to save...
The Portrait was a leap in quality, something that - I'm the first to admit - doesn't mean much this season. It doesn't even mean that raised eyebrow showing some interest in what's to come. At most, with goodwill, it means that I didn't headbutt the couch watching the explosive zombies being catapulted and that my first thought when the credits started rolling wasn't "just one more for my well-deserved rest."
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