RECAP: The Walking Dead – A Return Home Doesn’t Go As Expected “Thank You” [Season 6, Episode 3]

Are we really only three episodes in? Watching our “The Walking Dead” family, and the Alexandrians fight to control the loose herd is excruciating. Rick has decided to double back a mile and get the RV to keep the escaped walkers from hitting home. Glenn offers to go with him but is refused. Rick wants him to help lead the Alexandrians back.  Michonne is fighting off whiners who are busy giving up and blaming Rick for their current predicament. Rick tells his people to do what they can to save the group, but not everyone will make it home – save themselves if they have to. Leave the others if they can’t keep up. On cue a Rick-faulting whiner who blamed him for bringing them to the woods to die is eaten by a walker and put down by Michonne.  Watching him die doesn’t sit well with the Alexandrian – who still haven’t figured out that there was no choice. The real lesson is: LESS whining MORE running.

Lesson UNlearned.  Some are trying to hold steady, others are caving, and Glenn reminds them that he wants to get home, too. His wife is home waiting, just like their loved ones. Just then they find a small herd that Heath (WTG, man!), Michonne, and Glenn begin to take out.  Several other Alexandrians decide to not let the moment pass and jump in to thin the herd out.  The cowardly Sturgess, who was warned not to shoot unless necessary fires in fear, taking Scott down – though not killing him.  The others now begin firing as more walkers draw near.  Sturgess, of course, takes off. While Scott is saved, for now, David, is bitten, but wants to help while he can. Only five miles out, Daryl wants to double back but Abe reminds him that going  20 miles out is the mission.  They need to make sure walkers are “munching on infirm raccoons”, instead of the rest of them. Seeing the sign for the “newly constructed” Alexandria, serves as a sign to Daryl that he needs to go back and fight for home, leaving Abe and Sasha to finish the mission.

Michonne asks brave David about his wife, as she watches him play with his wedding band. He has only been married for three months, and met his wife, Betsy, when Aaron found him, first. On the way back to community, they found his wife. They met when he no longer felt human, was ready to give up, and she saw the human in him and saved him. He only wishes he could make it home to tell her he loves her.  Annie has a twisted ankle and is being held up by Glenn.  Nicholas and Heath are holding Scott up.  They are about ½ hour ahead of the herd when they stop in a small town to patch up Scott and look for a working car. No such luck on the car.  Glenn reminds Michonne that he needs to get home, but he is not leaving the Alexandrians behind.  Heath begins asking Nicholas about a prior run in the same town, where it appears quite a few were lost, and Nicholas reminds him that he already told them that he and Aiden had no idea what they were doing. They find Sturgess’ hat in the middle of the road, and shortly after find a small herd consuming him.  They find another small herd as they try escaping. Luckily, Nicholas leads them to a small pet shop.  

Glenn decides that burning a set of buildings will draw the herds away from the exits toward Alexandria and give them a fighting chance. He and Michonne both want to stay behind to set the fires. Glenn refuses to let anyone help him, even Nicholas who offers to go with him to a feed store full of dry goods that should burn with little effort. Glenn eventually relents and takes him.  He then radios Rick to tell him what’s happening and just how much time he has to pass safely by.  While listening, Rick approaches three walkers and in the fight to take them down, seems to get a cut on his hand. Is it covered in walker blood?  Is he bitten? We hear Glenn ending his message with “Good luck, dumbass” as it happens. Rick rifles the body the walkers were eating (an Alexandrian?) for the weapons and supplies it had.

Scott is patched up, but Annie asks to be left behind. Scott then decides to stay with her – telling them that they will have to leave them out in the woods, anyway. Heath reminds them that they have each others backs, like always. Michonne echoes the sentiment. Privately, Heath tells Michonne he heard what Rick told them and he doesn’t trust that her people will fight for them given Rick’s directive to save themselves, first.  Michonne is not pleased when Heath thinks his experiences on runs equals the hell her group has been through and asks him if he’s ever been covered in so much blood that he couldn’t tell if it was his own, walkers, or his friends’ blood.  No? Then she lets him know that he doesn’t know or understand Rick’s comments.  Meanwhile, Nicholas steps up to put down a walker trapped under a car, a 19 year old man named Will, someone he and Aiden left behind, before. Glenn reminds him that he is not that man, anymore. They hear the gunshots from home and keep going.  From the pet store, the others also hear the gunshots and decide to wait out the walkers on the move before  joining Nicholas and Glenn at the feed store.

Rick makes it to the RV. I hope he is on the way to the small town because David has written a good-bye letter to Betsy and Michonne has written a promise to him, on her arm, that he will make it home to say it himself.  Just then, they hear noises from inside the store.  Two people hiding out in a locked room behind a huge poster have apparently died and turned while inside.  Their banging attracts walkers to the store.  Hundreds of walkers are descending upon the store.  The group makes a break for the feed store.  Annie falls and takes out as many walkers as she can before they finish her.  

Glenn and Nicholas are trapped by a huge herd after finding the feed store already burned out.  Chased down an alley, they climb on top of a dumpster but are surrounded on all sides. Across town, David doesn’t make it over a locked gate, as the others do, and his letter is destroyed while the herd kills him.  Heath finally gets what Michonne warned him about earlier and yells that they have to keep moving.  There is nothing they can do.  Back on top of the dumpster, Nicholas is overwhelmed by the sight of the chopping, snarling, herd. He thanks Glenn and then commits suicide, falling into the crowd, taking Glenn with him. It is as horrible as watching Noah die as Glenn is disemboweled. I can’t believe it ends for him, this way.  Nicholas has taken Noah and Glenn from us.

At the end, we see Michonne, Scott, and Heath as they realize there is no signal from Glenn that they made it and no smoke from a fire. She removes the inked message to David that he will make it, and the three begin to cross a creek near home.  Heath is momentarily stopped by his bloody reflection in the water.  Rick radios and tells Daryl, Sasha, and Abe that they have to keep moving forward for sake of the people in town.  Going back to it would be for themselves, not the people there.  They have to keep the herd moving and hope the town is taking care of itself. Just as Rick is about to send another message (about his hand, perhaps?), he is attacked by armed wolves who fire into the RV. One looks like the man Morgan let escape.  

Rick kills them both and finds a jar of baby food in one of their pockets. Just then he sees the small group of “human wolves” sneaking up the side of the RV and kills them too, firing through the side of the RV.  Daryl is racing back, but to where?  The community?  The RV?  Sasha and Abe?  Michonne, Scott, and Heath return and are stunned at the sight of their burned out community.  We get our answer on Daryl.  He rejoins Abe and Sasha. Rick attempts to start the RV, as the walkers approach. It is stalled. Is this the end for Rick, too? Do we dare tune in next week?

 

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