In The Walking Dead recap, Daryl, Sasha and Abraham run into trouble while trying to lead the herd away from Alexandria…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
There are going to be lulls in action every season on The Walking Dead, that’s just the nature of the beast.
For a show that’s filled with such adrenaline, there are going to be a few that feel like Ambien by comparison and that’s where the latest episode titled ‘Always Accountable’ seems to fall.
The first six episodes this season have ultimately revolved around just a few days in total along with a flashback to watch Morgan’s journey from madness back to normalcy, but otherwise the entire plot has been about driving the biggest herd in history away from the safe haven that is Alexandria.
This week we caught up with Daryl, Abraham and Sasha, who were leading the other half of the herd more than 20-miles away from home in an attempt to drive them far enough away that they wouldn’t find their town again and wreak havoc.
Just when it looked like the zombie herding was going well, shots rang out as a group of attackers laid down heavy fire on the trio as they had to scramble to get away. Abraham and Sasha eventually opened fire in return and killed two carloads of people trying to come after them while Dary was left fending for himself in another direction after he put his bike down amidst a high-speed getaway.
The next 50 minutes or so was a lot of exposition but the story didn’t move along very much. It appears, however, that all parties will reconnect when the show returns next week.
With that said, let’s recap this week’s episode of The Walking Dead titled ‘Always Accountable’….
Everyday People
After skidding off the road with his motorcycle, Daryl finds himself in a field where there are dozens of walkers burned to death just outside the woods. He starts exploring the area but ends up encountering a trio of people — one man and two women — who knock him out cold and bind his hands. Whoever these people are they are convinced Daryl is ‘one of them’ and he’s part of the group sent to get them for something they apparently stole.
The group explains that they are actually from this area and they are responsible for burning the woods to the ground while trying to combat the walkers who appeared just after this outbreak first started. They fled but now they’ve come back to find a woman they call Patty. Unfortunately, when they arrive at the fuel company where Patty apparently worked, the place has been overrun with zombies and then one of the girls passes out, which give Daryl the perfect opening to grab a duffel back the group had been carrying as he ran into the woods.
Once he finally got to a safe place away from the gun fire from the only weapon the trio had, Daryl gets his crossbow out of the bag just in time to kill a walker (who happened to have a Cherokee rose on him, similar to the one talked about back in season two when Carol was looking for her daughter and Daryl tried to comfort her). He starts digging through the duffle back and finds a cooler marked for insulin and he realizes that the girl who passed out was actually diabetic and likely going into shock.
Daryl returns to find the trio and hands them back the insulin while taking a wood carved statue from the man of the group as well as his weapon. Daryl is ready to abandon them when he hears a truck pull into the woods and it’s the very people who were searching for these so called thieves.
A good heart gets the better of him and Daryl helps them escape while handing the gun back over to the guy so he can help him evade capture if need be. The trio explains to Daryl that the place they just came from is a camp built on the principle of giving whatever you have for the sake of protection. They couldn’t take it anymore and decided to grab the insulin and hit the road.
Daryl helps them avoid the people looking for them as they begin to walk back across the woods when the diabetic girl happens upon a house she once recognized. It seems these were some neighbors she used to babysit for before the world went to hell and she had heard they were away so when the forest got burned to the ground, she just assumed they weren’t home.
Wrong.
The fire caught them inside and cooked them alive but the girl makes the cardinal mistake of getting too close without actually checking if the people were dead or really dead and they both rise up and take a bite out of her. They are forced to kill her after all the trouble spent to get her insulin and Daryl helps them bury the body.
While digging, Daryl decides to ask Rick’s ‘three questions’ to see if these people are worthy to return with him to Alexandria. Rick decreed quite some time ago the town was no longer going on trips to find more people to add to the Alexandria population, but Daryl disagreed and he believed this was his best shot to prove that there are still good people out there.
The two remaining scavengers answer what Daryl needs to hear, but he still shouldn’t have trusted them because once he leads them back to his hidden motorcycle, they pull a gun on him and force him to give up his crossbow before they steal his bike. They don’t kill Daryl because deep down they are decent people, but he reminds them that they will be sorry for double-crossing him one day.
Daryl will certainly look to get revenge (and his crossbow back) but more importantly these people are going to be awfully sorry to return to whatever misery they are living in now as opposed to the community and walled in protection they would have in Alexandria.
The biggest potential teaser for what’s to come seems to be the hint from the trio Daryl met that they were at a place where protection was offered in exchanged for everything you own. That sounds an awful lot like a group called The Saviors, who we will likely meet in full force later this season with the arrival of Negan — the most vile evil-doer in the history of The Walking Dead
Not All There
While Daryl is dealing with an untrustworthy troupe, Sasha and Abraham are holding up in an insurance agency while leaving a couple of markers behind so the real tracker of the group can find them. There’s no reason to go far because Daryl will undoubtedly get back to them so long as they stay in one place.
Along the way, Abraham has an insatiable desire to kill anything and everything in his path, despite the fact that walkers who are stumbling around hundreds of feet away don’t serve any threat, he just wants to do them in. Sasha wonders what that’s all about. So Abraham answers back with his own inquisition into Sasha’s strange behavior after arriving in Alexandria while she was barely sleeping and just a few steps away from going full on crazy.
Sasha promises that she found her way back to sanity, but it still doesn’t satisfy her curiosity about Abraham’s habits including his decision to come on this potentially dangerous mission despite the fact that he wasn’t really invited. He insists that loose ends — be it a heard of zombies or just a random walker a few hundred hards a way — make his ass itch and he has to scratch it. In reality, Abraham eventually admits that ever since he left that grocery store where his family died and he happened upon Eugene, he’s been living day to day, paycheck to paycheck and maybe it’s finally time to make some changes.
Eventually, Abraham comes upon an abandoned military Hum-V where he finds a case full of explosive rockets and a box of cigars. Dangling out over the highway’s edge is the lone soldier who wasn’t extinguished but is very much dead and still attempting to scratch and claw his way to human flesh.
The soldier also happens to have the rocket launcher strapped to his back but Abraham’s efforts to retrieve it are unsuccessful. He decides to sit and have a smoke instead but the soldier eventually breaks free and plummets to its death below leaving only the rocket launcher behind. A smile creeps across Abraham’s face as he gets his weapon in the end.
Back at the insurance office, Abraham decides this is the right time to make a play for Sasha, who called him on his shit so automatically he assumes she’s just itching to get together for some man-woman time. Sasha brushes off his advances just as a truck approaches the office and they both grab their guns.
The Way Back Home
The truck actually belonged to Daryl, who found it once he began walking back through the burned down forest after having his motorcycle and crossbow stolen. He pulls up and Abraham and Sasha join him as they begin the journey back to Alexandria.
When they left, there was a car and a motorcycle but they will return with a fuel truck (hopefully with some gasoline left inside) and a crossbow-less Daryl.
The drive is fairly silent until the crackle and fuzz of a walkie-talkie sounds off and someone asks for help. Is it Glenn trying to call out for someone to rescue him from under a dumpster? Don’t forget Glenn had a walkie-talkie of his own clipped on before he ventured off with Nicholas to burn down that building. It seems plausible. Well, according to Norman Reedus, he promises the voice on the other end of that radio isn’t Glenn, but then who could it be?
Is it Rick asking for help back in Alexandria after a wall caved in? Could there be someone else nearby that spotted the truck? Or is this just The Walking Dead trying to go full on Game of Thrones with us?
Maybe we’ll get some answers next week when The Walking Dead returns at 9pm ET on AMC.
