The Walking Dead’ recap: ‘Stranger danger’

A new character emerges

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  • Gene Page/AMC



If there’s one thing in life we all know to be true it’s that no one person grieves the same way. In the last two episodes of “The Walking Dead” we lost two prominent (and beloved) characters in Beth (Emily Kinney) and Tyreese (Chad Coleman), and neither we, the audience, or our or band of survivors has gotten a moment to mourn the losses. In “Them,” the follow-up to last week’s mid-season premiere, the focus was on Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Daryl (Norman Reedus) as they dealt with Beth’s death, as well as Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green)’s attempts to cope with the losses of her lover (Bob, aka Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) and brother. The episode was all about our main characters questioning their will to live given the increasingly dire circumstances around them. Like the grieving process, each person went about responding to that existential question in his or her own way. dig in. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

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So the crew is struggling, arguably worse than ever before. Daryl’s digging up earthworms and eating them because that’s like, uh, a delicacy in some parts of rural Georgia. Somewhere Sasha finds a trail of dead frogs, and if that doesn’t spell O-M-E-N, I don’t know what does. Wait, so, <a href=”http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/storms/rain-frog.htm” target=”_blank” target=_blank”>can it really rain frogs? Anyway, back to the journey at hand. And here it is by the numbers: it’s been three weeks since the crew left Atlanta; they’re 60 miles outside of Washington D.C.; Carl’s looks 25 now; and we’re down to 14 survivors. Which, by horror standards, it too damn many. Oh, and let’s not forget they’re traveling on foot, tired, thirsty, and starving. As they aimlessly walk down the highway, walkers trailing, it’s hard to tell the difference between our collection of human survivors and their undead stalkers.

The bleakness of our protagonists might not have been any more clear than last night. At one point the group crosses paths with a pack of wild dogs looking for some human puppy chow. Sasha puts a bullet in each pooch’s head and, in the next scene we watch as everyone tears through and devour the dog meat. One couldn’t help but feel that the visual felt eerily similar to the one when the Terminus folks had grilled Bob-leg. Noah (Tyler James Williams) looks so grossed out when he sees a bloodied dog collar, and you can’t even blame him.

One aspect of our characters that you can’t get mad at it is their penchant to distrust everyone outside of their clique. This becomes an issue when the group is somehow miraculously blessed with a care-package full of water, and a note that it’s all, “From a friend.” Naturally, Rick and Co., are quick to say “fuck that noise.” Clearly, it’s a trap, poison, a bad idea, etc. Well, everyone but Eugene (Josh McDermitt), who tries take a swig from one of the bottles, but gets his shot of agua rejected by a snarling Abraham ( Michael Cudlitz), whose hair seems to get redder with each passing day. At this point, the lack of trust in our survivors is outweighing they’re need for life’s natural sources of survival. It’s the apocalypse, no bottle of Dasani is safe.

While all of this going we see Sasha, Maggie, Daryl, and even Noah come to grips with the recent losses. Sasha’s just plain angry, getting aggressive with walkers and inadvertently slicing friends in the process. Maggie’s refusing water, and finding old, bound and tied walker ladies in the trunks of cars. But more importantly, she finally shares, with Glenn, her pain from the death of not only Beth, but her father, Herschel. Meanwhile Daryl’s way of coping seems to be going on solo missions into the woods in search of food and water, but really it’s to put a cigarette out on himself and cry alone. Fortunately, he spots a barn during one of these outings and relays that info to the group as a storm approaches.

In the barn we get arguably the moment of the night. Rick’s telling everyone about his Papa that served in WWII, and how they’re situation in the zombie apocolypse is much like his being behind enemy lines with insurmountable odds. Rick and his ridiculous beard tells everyone: “This is how we survive. We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead.” Boom. Were y’all satisfied with that? I kind of dug it.

Anyway, the real walking dead shows up to the barn in bunches later that night. In an epic shoving match/reverse tug of war in which the survivors push up against a barn door being bombarded by a hoard of walkers, you don’t need the camera shots of boots digging into mud to realize the will to survive has returned to everyone. Our best shot of the night came in the aftermath of that struggle when Sasha and Maggie emerged from the barn to find all of the walkers impaled by trees and branches caused by the storm. When Maggie says, “It should’ve ripped us apart,” we get the feeling she meant the storm AND the enormous pack of walkers that lay before them.

Sasha and Maggie go for a walk and that’s when this dark and dreary episode picked up. Hashing out their issues and watching the sunrise, our ladies are greeted by a clean-cut, fresh clothes-wearing man by the name of Aaron (Ross Marquand). Aside from lol’ing when he said, “Stranger danger,” I thought, “OK, this Topher Grace doppleganger might be the ‘friend’ from earlier.” He tells Sasha and Maggie he’d like to speak with Rick (yes, he knows his name already) because he has some “good news.”

Who is Aaron? What does he really want? The previews for next week’s ep suggests Aaron may not have some not-so-friendly peeps coming to look for him. BUT, another source says he might not be all bad? Aaron, you’ve got some explaining to do. We’ll give you a week.

BEST LINE
“We are the walking dead.” — Rick, with the title drop

WTF/AWESOME MOMENT
Sasha and Maggie emerging from the barn to find the flock of walkers all impaled by trees from the storm.

RANDOM ASIDES
- The second best line(s) came from Maggie when Father Gabriel tried to comfort her. “You don’t know s***. You had a job. You were there to save your flock, right? But you didn’t. You hid. Don’t act like that didn’t happen.”
- Where is Morgan?