#TheWalkingDead Recap: A Welcome Party Tests The Survivors [Episode 13]

Sasha checks her gun from Olivia, at the crack of dawn. She is so tired of memories, including other people’s, that she goes out to use the photos of the family who once lived in her home as target practice. They must be constant reminders of her recent losses. She’s glancing around nervously. Is she worried she’ll attract walkers with the sound of the breaking glass, or is she hoping to?  The question seems answered when she walks further into the woods, puts down her rifle and says, “Come and get me.”

Rick, Carol, and Daryl are secretly meeting outside the white house in the woods. They’re plotting how to get extra weapons. Rick thinks the Alexandrians are lucky they arrived. Me? Not so much. Before leaving, Carol unloads a full mag into a walker saving the last bullet for the kill shot. She doesn’t want to raise suspicion by coming back from “shooting practice” with a loaded gun.  Daryl notices a “W” carved into the head of a walker.  The look on Rick’s face is strange.  Does it know/hope it’s an “M” (for Morgan?).

Rick returns and tells uniformed Officer Michonne that he can’t figure out if handing power over to strangers is some kind of play. She reminds him they don’t have a lot of power, they’re breaking up fistfights, to which he replies that Deanna should have given the position to Daryl, instead. Maybe he forgot that Daryl nearly took off Aidan’s head. Back in the woods, Daryl is busy hunting when he suddenly yells for whoever is in the bushes to come out. Aaron is stunned that Daryl can tell the difference between a human and a walker. He asks if Daryl can tell the difference between a good vs. bad person, because he doesn’t think Rick can. That’s just not the way to make friends.  Aaron claims he was hunting rabbits. Daryl lets him follow if he can keep up.

At home, Deanna tells Maggie, Rick, and Michonne that she thinks a government will one day be restored, appointing Maggie as her right hand. She wants Rick and Michonne to start the new police force. All tell her it’s not pie in the sky (don’t believe you, Rick). Rick only wants to discuss security issues, like moving the supports inside since people are now the real threat and it’s too easy to climb the walls.  Deanna still doesn’t want to arm everyone. Sasha comes and offers to sit as look out, taking every shift they can give her. All are horrified to find out there is no look out. Spencer, her son, put an empty gun up in the tower there to make others think there was. Deanna tells Sasha she can do it, if she joins the welcome party for the group, tonight. Sasha almost smiles. Later, Carol tells Rick that the party is good cover for their plan, and that she likes being invisible again, in Alexandria. Is it wrong that I’m getting squicked out by our #TWDFamily?  This feels wrong.

Aaron and Daryl come across a horse the kids have nicknamed Buttons. Aaron wants to catch him for the kids. Daryl, looks almost touched, and offers to get the horse. He comes close but walkers approach and Buttons runs. Aaron is a good shot, he and Daryl take down the small herd.  Back at Alexandria, Carol and Olivia at talking recipes when a man named Tobin walks in with a companion, both needing weapons. They’re off to check one of the walls. He asks Carol if she’s afraid of guns. She plays clueless. He offers to help her learn to shoot. As this is going on, Daryl tracks the horse and Aaron follows, talking to him about how fear shrinks the brain and he should let everyone get to know him.

The party starts. Deanna tells Rick that she envies Judith because she’ll get to see what the place becomes.  Rosita and Abe are out of uniform and almost unrecognizable, except for his hair.  Deanna’s husband, Reg, watched the interview tapes and talks about how incredible Rick is given things he’s done for his group. Rick has a drink with Reg, eyeballing Jessie as she walks in.

Daryl and Aaron find Buttons trapped in a pen with a small herd. Daryl kills one (I swear I’ve seen that walker killed off, before). Aaron is tripped by a walker lying on the ground. Daryl rushes to help him. It’s too late. They kill off the rest of the walkers and give Buttons peace.

Back at the party, Glenn and Maggie tell an uneasy Noah that it’s ok, he’s with family, asking him to stay. Back at camp, Daryl passes Aaron’s house and is surprised when Aaron steps out. Home nursing Eric, he invites Daryl for dinner.

Once Olivia walks into the party, “invisible” Carol steps away. Rick meets Jessie’s husband, Dr. Pete, who walks off to get a drink, there is real tension between them. Jessie talks about how everyone lost something, about the larger group and how they never would have met before, but they are now each other’s lives. She continues with, “we all lost things, but we got something back”.  Rick watches Carl with his new friends and smiles.  When Jessie’s son, Sam, is upset there are no more cookies, Rick jokes that he knows the cookie maker and might be able to get more.  Her son stamps his hand with a red letter A.  Jessie tells him that he is now one of them. Rick looks as if he has conflicting messages in his head. Sasha meets Spencer and he’s crazy HOT.  She notices! Well done, Deanna. Sadly, Sasha walks away – she can’t take the happy when Spencer tells her he’ll protect her from Mrs. Needlemeyer, who wants a pasta maker and talks about nothing else. It must the show’s running joke because Daryl, who is amusing his hosts with his caveman table manners, is told Mrs. Needlemeyer wants a pasta maker if he ever comes across one on his trips out. He is confused. Where is he going.

Aaron shows Daryl a motorcycle in need of repair.  He wants Daryl to join him as a recruiter, replacing Eric, since Daryl knows what he’s doing and knows the difference between good and bad people. Michonne is staring at her toothpick shaped like a sword, as if she appreciates the absurdity of it. Abe approaches and jokes that she’s packing different steel these days. They talk about their weapons, their connection to them and that they should pray to God they never have to use them again. She jokingly asks him how much he’s had to drink.  He says that he’s a large man and has had many beers to make up for it.  He realizes that things have worked out pretty damn well for him, and her.

Carol is caught stealing guns by Sam, who was looking for more cookies. She threatens to take him in the night so that he wakes up tied to a tree screaming as the monsters come to get him.  She tells him he can keep silent and get more cookies.  If you’re not disgusted, I didn’t do that scene justice, it was awful.  At the party, Rick and Jessie talk while she’s holding Judith. He tells her that his kids are why he’s still alive and that being in Alexandria isn’t that bad.  She and Rick are clearly flirting. I still want Michonne and Rick, but at least the writers are breaking my heart in ways that leaves everyone alive – except Buttons.

Deanna invites Sasha to join the party. Sasha’s overwhelmed by party talk as she is reliving the recent horrors. She flips when asked about her favorite meal, disgusted that the woman asking is worried she’ll cook something Sasha hates, it’s all so trivial. Yelling at the woman drops the party into dead silence and Sasha runs off. The next day Sasha is staring out the gates when Deanna tells her she wants to understand what’s going on. She tells Sasha it’s bullshit when Sasha tells her that the community isn’t real.  At the secret meeting at the white house in the woods, Daryl is now questioning if they need the weapons, but takes one. As our three conspirators return to the camp, Michonne is hanging her sword above the fireplace. Rick waves at Jessie and Pete and flashes the “A” still stamped on his right hand.

After they pass, he runs to the gate behind a house.  He can hear a walker pounding on the fence and raised his hand to it to feel the pounding. Is he enjoying knowing it can’t get to him or does he feels disconnected from the fight?

 

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