i ain't sorry

ed is babygirl. stede is blorbo. thank you for understanding.

I've always assumed it was an oblique reference to The Jessie Mess. Frankly, it would almost make more sense if it WAS referencing Lori since at least Carl unambiguously knows his parents' marriage was troubled.

Does Carl know about Rick and Jessie's brief situationship? Does anyone?!?! Like I am genuinely so fascinated by that entire clusterfuck on a narrative level. It's like they were so scared of Michonne interacting with that storyline that they refused to let anyone else interact with it either. The only one who ever says anything about it is Carol that time she was like, "I've seen you talking to her." (Which has the almost certainly unintended but very fascinating consequence of making a read where Rick is subconsciously treating it as if he's sneaking around kinda chewy.)

But I guess we can assume Carl is aware that Rick is hanging around her? Even though he legit only was for like two days? Because it's established that he was actually deliberately avoiding her after the Pete thing?? And they don't interact again until the herd already has the town surrounded? Maybe Carl somehow saw that one time they sadly kissed in a garage literally the day before she died?

IDK. Anyway, I assume it's referencing that because at the very least Carl was dealing with Ron, and Ron at least has the scene where he asks Jessie if Rick is her friend. And I don't think Rick would use his relationship with Lori as a negative comparison TO Carl.

So it kinda has to be him reassuring Carl that he's in his right mind and genuinely committed in direct contrast to Whatever The Fuck That Was.

For me, personally, Rick comes right up to the point of bringing his feelings for Michonne to consciousness in 5x16, then pulls back again (at her perceived rejection imo!) and doesn't let himself go there again until they're all safe and the world stops screaming in his face (as Gimple once put it).

So, honestly, no, while I think it's a valid enough reading and I understand why people lean towards it given how they fumbled the Jessie storyline (esp in 6A). I mostly think it was just the PTSD.

The Jessie thing, from the moment they meet, is so inextricably connected to this mental breakdown that he's actively having for the entire length of their acquaintance that suggesting that he's deliberately choosing to pursue her as a safer option v Michonne is almost giving it too much intention for me? Bcs like, I'm not particularly convinced he was ever actively pursuing a relationship with her at all. Everything he does wrt her is so completely consumed by this weird miserable guilt and PTSD driven almost fugue state that it becomes difficult to divine any specific intentions towards her at all.

He fixates on her because she reminds him of Lori and she and her kids are in danger. He seems to feel some sort of obligation/responsibility to them after Pete is dead. But does he have any actual plans there? Does he intend to have an actual relationship with her? Were they gonna date? Was he going to move her and her kids in with him, Michonne, and his kids? Or was he just sad and working through some shit?

Not a fair comparison, though it's one that Rick implies himself, but we see how he goes about pursuing a relationship with Michonne. We see the absolute crystal clear intention and commitment from moment one. And obviously Rick and Michonne's relationship is the actual love story whereas his relationship with Jessie is a plot device. But the Jessie thing exists in this strange weightless way in the narrative and part of that is the extremely compacted timeframe (he knew her for legit two weeks lol) and part of it is definitely owed to the writing failing at adapting something that no longer really worked in the narrative that the show had already committed to so they just quarantined it away from everything else, and especially away from Michonne and Rick's relationship with her, and hoped no one would notice.

Anyway, I'm rambling at this point and I'd have to do a rewatch of those eps to form a more coherent argument here. But yeah, in short, I think, largely by the specific design of the writers, Michonne didn't really have much of anything to do with the Jessie thing at all. It would've made more sense on every level if she did, and the fact that she doesn't is both comically contrived and heavily contributes to the Jessie storyline amounting to nothing but a weird and incoherent blip that no one ever thinks about again. But it is what it is!