The Walking Dead: Alone
The scattered survivors continue their slow march toward Terminus on this week’s Walking Dead.
Again we find strength in focus, with this episode centered on two of the six or seven groups currently wandering the wilderness. We start with a flashback to the moment Bob Stuckey joined the group. He’d been traveling alone, finding reasonably safe places to sort of sleep. When Glen and Daryl find him, he answers the Three Questions and reveals that his previous two groups had all died.
In present time, Maggie, Sasha and Bob are surrounded by a mob of walkers on a very foggy morning. Nothing amps up the scare factor on a zombie horde like super dense fog. There’s ongoing debate about whether they should keep traveling and looking for Glen or find a safe place to hole up. Maggie overhears their conversation and leaves on her own, not wanting the others to risk their lives on her quest. Bob makes Sasha go with him to find Maggie.
Maggie is operating under the assumption that Glen would also go toward Terminus to find her. This makes a fair amount of sense. If you were blundering around just barely surviving, I guess you’d head toward any possibility of a community if only to see what’s going on. But on the other hand, every attempt to form a community we’ve seen on Walking Dead so far has resulted in drama, chaos, and tragedy. Maybe people are better off on their own.
To make sure Glen knows where she’s going, Maggie leaves him messages. She’s about to carve the message with her knife, but then she has a better idea. She kills a walker and uses its blood for her message.
Meanwhile Bob and Sasha reach a town where Sasha spots a nice brick building that might make a good place to live. Bob refuses to let Maggie go alone and continues after her, but not before kissing Sasha. Romance! Sasha’s loft seems pretty nice, though it needs some work. Then she looks out the window and sees an ice cream truck, which is always creepy. But then what the hell among the corpses lying on the ground is Maggie, just chilling, having a little nap. More walkers attack to Sasha runs down to help Maggie, they fight back to back, face their fears or something and decide to stay together forever.
Beth and Daryl’s story was much more interesting. First, Daryl is teaching Beth to track and shoot a crossbow. She stumbled into a bear trap and hurts her ankle. They find a cemetery and a big house which turns out to be a funeral home. Someone’s been living there, keeping the place nice, gathering food, and dressing up corpses.
There’s been a undercurrent of romance between Daryl and Beth for the last few weeks. Beth’s youth makes it seem a little uncomfortable, and I’d argue it makes Daryl uncomfortable too. He’s clearly resisted the idea, even last week when they were playing “I’ve Never” and Beth was drunk. But their time together, and Beth’s ability to pierce Daryl’s emotional defenses, makes it seem natural. They share some more moments this week, with Daryl napping in a coffin while Beth plays the piano.
Realizing the gathered food belongs to someone else, they have a few meals and decide to leave a nice note. Daryl suggests maybe they should just live there for awhile and try and make friends with whoever shows up. Maybe there are good people in the world after all (Daryl’s one of them). Beth gets excited when a dog shows up, but it runs away. When it shows up again later, things go poorly for everyone. When Daryl went to open the door without peeking out you knew it would be bad. A ton of zombies are here for the dinner party (and they probably killed the poor dog). There’s a great, tense chase through the funeral home, Daryl fighting his way out of the mortuary while Beth gets outside. But once he gets out, Daryl finds her satchel and a Lincoln Towncar with a cross on the back window hauling ass down the street.
Based on Beth refusing to leave Daryl in the house, and her bag being left behind, we can surmise she was taken against her will. Daryl tries to track the car, but it’s well known that Lincolns are stealthy cars that leave few tracks. Daryl gives in to despair, but then he’s accosted by a group of dudes. I think these are the same guys that home invaded Rick the other week. They’re impressed by Daryl’s crossbow and leather vest, so they let him join them instead of just killing him and taking his stuff.
This is surely going to lead to some tense moments down the line, as Daryl deals with pretending he’s with these jerks so they don’t kill him. They’ll inevitably run into Daryl’s old friends, leading to hilarious misunderstandings.
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Posted by Ed Grabianowski
on Sunday, March 9th, 2014. Filed under Dark TV, Headline.
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Tags: walking dead
