The Walking Dead Recap “Crossed”: Don’t Trust Anyone

In the latest Walking Dead recap, Rick puts together a team and a plan to rescue Beth and Carol as everybody shows up again in the latest episode, which ended up as one of the best of the entire season….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Don’t trust anyone.

It’s a philosophy that should be tattooed on the heads of anyone still fortunate enough to be living in the world of The Walking Dead yet people still continuously try to go back to the days when helping someone was a sign of being a good, decent person. In a world where the dead walk and survival becomes instinct, trust turns into a four-letter word. Sasha found that out the hard way this week and as frustrating as it was watching her trust a cop from a hospital that kidnaps people, fixes their wounds and then puts them on a lifetime contract of servitude as payback, there are millions of people out there that would do the exact same thing wearing her shoes.

Sasha’s emotional turmoil is one of the landmarks of this episode and watching her be the one to get played by the treacherous cop might be unnerving, but it also makes perfect sense. She was so fragile this week in the wake of Bob’s death. She took out her frustration early on with an axe to the church pews as the group tried to fortify the building before going off on a mission to save Beth and Carol. Her angst came not only from Bob being gone, but the fact that she couldn’t pull the trigger when it was time to prevent him from coming back to life after he was about to die anyways. She saw it as some kind of weakness.

Tyreese saw it as Sasha just being normal if only for a few minutes. He suffered the same stages of grief when Karen died last season. But no amount of digging dirt, chopping wood or other physical act is going to relieve the stress from the hurt that seeps inside when losing a loved one. Even in the zombie apocalypse.

Let’s get into this week’s recap of “The Walking Dead” where the show hit on all cylinders again as we got updates on everybody instead of just one group or another as showcased for these past few weeks.

The Struggle is Real

At the church, the survivors are breaking apart the pews, tearing down the organ and using the cross on top (if we need it) in an effort to fortify the church in case this has to be home base for a little while longer. Rick, Daryl and a few others are about to embark on a mission to save Beth and Carol and they want to ensure Carl, Michonne and the others are safe until they return. Michonne offers to go in Rick’s place so he can stay with Carl and baby Judith but as he puts it so eloquently:

Rick: I owe Carol
Michonne: We all owe Carol
Rick: I owe her more

Rick is taking Tyreese, Sasha, Daryl, and Noah back to Grady Memorial with a plan to free Carol and Beth from their captors. The group he leaves behind follows his instructions to keep the church locked up, tight as a drum, until they get back. Father Gabriel is still struggling to understand how things work in this new world. He’s unable to adapt and unwilling to do what’s necessary. Instead he just stares around at the remnants of his church with a sad, sour look on his face before feverishly cleaning the floors of the bloodstains left behind from the slaughter of the Terminus folks.

Carl tries to lay it out for him — we keep moving, never stay in one place for too long and you have to defend yourself or you will die. He lays out all the weapons and offers one to Gabriel, who opts for a machete. Good choice Carl tells him, but Gabriel has other plans. This is the part that should make your head spin off your shoulders, not the part with Sasha, which we’ll get back to in a few moments.

Gabriel insists he’s not feeling well so he goes to lay down. In reality, he’s chopping a whole in his floor using the machete so he can quietly escape through the basement and get back to the outside world. Maybe somewhere deep in his head, Gabriel just can’t grasp the fact that the Terminus people were cannibals, who would have gladly eaten him alive for days if they would have won, but instead Rick got the drop on them and now they’re dead. It’s not even about trust with Gabriel — it’s this disdain he has for what it takes to survive in this new age. Whether he likes it or not, when Gabriel finally escapes and comes face to face with a walker, he’s forced to defend himself or die.

He downs the walker, but when he picks up a stone to kill her he notices she’s wearing a crucifix around her neck. Gabriel stops, puts down the stone and walks away. There’s some sort of karmic justice coming his way like the time Carl couldn’t kill the walker stuck in the mud, and the creature comes back to haunt him when he takes a bit out of Dale in the field. Gabriel needs to get his shit together or just realize he’s going to be kibble in about 10 minutes.

Plan of Attack

Deep inside Atlanta, Rick is plotting a course of action to take out the hospital dwellers and save Beth and Carol. His plan involves a Navy Seal-esque incursion where they will take out the sentry lookout guards, sneak inside before slitting throats, kicking ass and taking names until Beth and Carol are free. It’s a no frills kind of attack, but it ends with a lot of dead people and no 100-percent guarantee that a guard won’t discover the attack when it starts or possibly figures out they are there for Beth and Carol and kills them as payback. Tyreese offers up another solution — another way that doesn’t involve anybody dying. So right away you know this is going to get fucked up.

He decides that grabbing two of Dawn’s patrol cops and offering to trade them for Beth and Carol is the best plan of attack. Daryl inexplicable agrees and Rick is out voted so he opts for the kidnap and trade version of the mission, which you can tell right away doesn’t sit well with him.

The situation unfolds like this — Noah shoots his gun in the air, drawing Dawn’s patrol unit to where he’s standing. She bites when the gunshot is heard and sends off a couple of her cops to see what’s happening. Doing good so far.

When the cops arrive, they grab and “arrest” Noah, but they are quickly ambushed by Rick and his team. Things go sideways from here. The two cops in the car are subdued and cuffed, but what they don’t see is a second car trailing them and when it pulls up and starts firing shots, everybody scatters and the cops from Grady Memorial start to get away.

Sasha being a good shot (obviously taking Andrea’s place from the comic books where she’s the crack shot of the bunch) takes out the getaway car’s tire and the chase is one to track down the three wayward officers under Dawn’s command. As everybody’s racing off, Daryl notices a spot that might be a good hiding place. He does this amidst a field of dead walkers, melted to the street after napalm was dropped on Atlanta in a last ditch effort to stop the zombies from spreading out of the city. The special effects crew gets an A+ this week for a truly ghoulish and disgusting look at these half-zombies all trying to crawl from the ooze that was once their lower extremities.

Daryl was partially right — the third cop was hiding, but not inside the trailer where he was looking. Instead the cop was just behind it and he gets the drop on Daryl before picking him up and throwing him to the ground. The cop starts to choke Daryl and every Norman Reedus fan starts to panic as the grip tightens and the melted zombie heads start chomping closer and closer to his face. To make matters worse, Daryl has no weapon so he’s feeling around trying to find anything close to him, and he brushes by the open mouth of a walker on a couple quick passes that sent shivers up a few million Walking Dead fans’ spines. Ever resourceful, Daryl was trying to get a hold of a skull, which he then rips off the walker and hits the cop with it. The only thing that would have made this scene better is if Daryl had a quippy line after smacking the cop like “thought you needed some head!”.

When Rick circles back with the other two cops in tow, he’s about to shoot the third one dead for nearly killing Daryl, but again he’s stopped before he can pull the trigger. Three is better than two, Daryl tells him in an effort to up the ante for an exchange to get Beth and Carol back. Rick reluctantly agrees and lowers his weapon.

How to Save a Life

Back at Grady Memorial, Beth is settling into her routine as floor mopper and medical assistant while keeping a close, watchful eye over Carol, who is still unconscious after being run down by a car last week. One of the cops is arguing with Dawn that since Carol hasn’t woken up, it’s time to pull her off life support and stop wasting valuable resources on a dead woman. Beth tries to fire back that this douche bag’s DVD player gets charged everyday and that’s also taking away valuable resources. Dawn ultimately sides with the cop and tells her to pull the plug on Carol.

When the other random cop leaves, Dawn tells Beth that by arguing with her, she basically signed Carol’s death warrant. At this stage of the game, Dawn is keeping a very delicate balance to make sure this situation continues to work. One too many apple carts being tipped over means there will be a mutiny and Dawn probably won’t be the one that survives.

Since she couldn’t offer life support, Dawn instead gives Beth the key to the drug cabinet while admitting that she thought little blonde girl was weak, but she was wrong. Beth is off to find out the drugs needed to save Carol once the machines are shut down.

Beth visits Dr. Creepy Edwards to find out the drugs needed to save Carol, but all he wants to talk about is how he killed the other doctor as an act of survival. In reality, the doctor did what he had to do to survive and in this world, he can’t be faulted for needing to make sure he’s the only one that can provide a certain service. Makes him that much more invaluable in the long run. Still he’s trying to explain the why’s and how’s, but Beth doesn’t give a shit. She just wants to know how to save Carol’s life.

Edwards finally gives in and tells her the drugs needed, but also issues a very specific warning. If Dawn really gave over the drug cabinet keys, it wasn’t out of the kindness of her heart. There’s a big agenda at work here and Beth needs to be aware of the trap she might be stepping into. Beth sort of listens, but then runs off to save Carol’s life.

A brief distraction caused by an elderly resident faking that he was choking (all for the price of a few strawberries), gives Beth the opening she needs to get to the cabinet, steal the drugs and slip away again without ever being seen. In Carol’s room, Beth administers the drugs while clutching her friend’s hand to let her know she’s there. Carol will probably wake up next week before kicking Dawn’s ass and chucking her out a window to save the day. One can hope anyways.

Gone Fishing

Back with the ‘we’re no longer going to Washington D.C. crew’ — they are still planted right in the middle of the road after Abraham laid a beat down to Eugene for telling the lie that he was the one capable of saving the world. Abraham has slipped into an almost catatonic state as he looks off into the distance with a zombie 1000-yard stare in his eyes. Rosita offers water, but enraged when she doesn’t back down, Abraham snaps back to life and jumps to his feet before a gun is clocked and pointed right at his head.

It’s Maggie and she’s had enough of this post traumatic stress shit. Everyone’s traumatized. Get the fuck over it. So she tells Abraham to sit down or she’ll put him down. He complies and goes back to sitting silently while staring off into the abyss.

Meanwhile, the water reserves are running low so Glenn, Tara and Rosita head off to a stream a few miles away to gather supplies. Tara tries to make jokes on the way, which no one found funny (I thought they were pretty good actually), before they make to a stream that’s more mud than water, once again defeating the group’s effort to find something good to drink. Thankfully, Rosita knows how to filter the water through a piece of cloth to weed out the sediment and what comes out is clean to drink after boiling. It’s a method Eugene taught her or she could have watched any number of Bear Grylls shows because he uses that trick all the time!

While waiting for the water to drip through the filter, Rosita gives some back story on how she ran into Abraham and met him for the first time. Her old group were battling some walkers when Abraham came along like Captain Courageous and slaughtered the entire herd by himself. When it was over, he told Rosita that he liked how she moved and he needed somebody like her on his side. It was the first time since this whole thing started that anybody said that to her and it meant a lot.

Glenn interjects and tells Rosita that they need her now and whatever road they travel down next, they want her with them. She smiles and a new friendship is formed. Awwww.

The happy times just keep on coming for this downtrodden group when Glenn and Rosita team up to capture some fish still swimming in the stream. They found a delicious dinner for everybody and at this point any fish probably tastes like a delicacy. Not sure I’d trust any fish you catch from a stream this close to a major city like Atlanta, but hey it’s the zombie apocalypse, you take what you can get.

While Glenn, Tara and Rosita walk back to the truck, Maggie finally questions Abraham about his current death wish. She was ready to pull the trigger if he didn’t back down earlier, but now she’s realizing that might have been exactly what he wanted. Abraham finally speaks and says that at the time that was the plan, but now the plan has changed. He wants to live. Moments later a groggy Eugene finally wakes from his extended slumber and Abraham decides to end his hunger strike and drinks some water after sitting silent for who knows how long.

Abraham was clearly feeling guilty for snapping in a moment of rage and beating up poor helpless Eugene. He had every right to be angry, but beating up on somebody who has no chance whatsoever to fight back isn’t revenge. It’s just mean spirited bullying and it seems Abraham finally realizes the gravity of what he did. Eugene waking up absolved Abraham of his deeds, at least for a little bit.

DTA

With the cops captured, Rick and the group are trying to decide the best course of action to get in touch with Dawn to hopefully make the exchange. The female cop tells them that they kidnapped the wrong people. Apparently there’s an uprising forming from within and Sergeant Lamson (one of the guys they captured) is the person most likely to take over if Dawn gets taken out. In other words, Dawn will probably sacrifice this guy as opposed to offering a ransom for his safe return.

Lamson disagrees and tells them the plan will work, but they have to know how to talk to Dawn first to make sure she goes for the deal. He’s been under her command for eight years, long before the zombie uprising took place and he understands the way her mind works. Rick agrees to do it his way while Lamson deduces that the man he’s dealing with used to be a cop, same as him. There’s a mutual respect, but in reality it seems Lamson was just sizing things up and trying to find the weakest spot in the team.

He found it in Sasha, who was barely hanging on by an emotional thread after everything that happened with Bob just days ago. Lamson tells her a story about a cop he worked with on the force who he saw outside in the group of melted zombies. He says that when the zombie war started, he was supposed to drive a bus load of survivors to a safe zone, but Dawn switched his job with another cop. Lamson stayed behind and he’s still alive. The other cop, who in theory should have been safe because he was going to a safe zone, is very much dead. Lamson just wants to put him out of his misery.

He’s a very good listener because this is the same problem Sasha just encountered by not being able to pull the trigger to kill Bob. In her moment of distress, Sasha agrees to help Lamson so she takes him to remote corner of the building, far away from anyone else hearing what’s going on. She has Lamson point out his former colleague and just as she’s aiming up her shot, he rams his shoulder into her torso and she crashes into the glass, getting knocked out in the process. Lamson makes a run for it as the episode comes to an end.

And the collective world shakes their head in disapproval — Sasha how could you fall for that?!?

In the end ‘The Walking Dead’ returned to true form this week because the sum of the parts are greater as a whole than separated. The splintered episodes for the last month bouncing between Beth’s hospital adventures to on the road with Abraham and Eugene to everything’s consumed with Daryl and Carol have been good, but still felt like only pieces of a bigger puzzle that needed to come together. This week’s episode titled “Crossed” did exactly that as the stage is set for the mid-season finale next Sunday as Rick’s survivors go after Dawn’s police squad.

Does everybody make it out in tact or is someone destined to die before ‘The Walking Dead’ disappears for two months? Tune in next Sunday night at 9pm ET to find out!

It appears we are on a collision course for a showdown with Dawn’s police squad and Rick’s survivors in the mid-season finale one week from now as ‘The Walking Dead’ wraps up for 2014. The only question is who survives the raid and is there a chance Beth or Carol don’t make it out alive?