The Walking Dead Recap “Forget”: Domesticated

In The Walking Dead recap, Rick, Carol and Darryl hatch a plan to maintain safety inside the walls of Alexandria as the town throws them a welcome to town party that goes from good to strange in a hurry….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

It’s fairly clear after two episodes of being inside the Alexandria Safe Zone that our survivors, who were once domesticated folks, have now forgotten how to function in a normal, well-behaved society and they may be the biggest threat to the townspeople living inside the walls.

Rick is staring down another man’s wife and then suggesting that he’s about to pull a gun and end the husband problem before it begins. Carol is threatening to tie little kids to trees so they can be ripped apart by zombies just to ensure her secret mission to steal guns is safe. Sasha is just full bat shit at this point and that’s all that matters (That’s what matters?!?). Who would have thought by the end of this episode that it was Darryl who would have acclimated the most of everyone?

The latest episode titled ‘Forget’ was another deep dig into the psyches of the survivors, who fought to get free of The Governor and slaughtered the cannibals from Terminus, and now find themselves becoming what they once feared the most. Toward the beginning of the episode, Rick warns Deanna that the biggest threat aren’t the zombies but instead the human element who might want to climb those walls and find sanctuary whether they were invited or not.

Maybe the most dangerous humans are already living inside as the newest residents of Alexandria.

With that let’s recap the latest episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ titled ‘Forget’.

Everybody Has a Job

As noted by last week’s episode, the new arrivals into Alexandria will all have jobs to do inside the Safe Zone. Rick and Michonne are dressed and ready to act as constables. Michonne even hangs up her sword above the mantle place because inside the walls, the worst she might have to deal with are some arguing neighbors or bickering husbands and wives. No one needs their head chopped off (yet).

Sasha is still awaiting her assignment, but in the mean time she’s using the leftover pictures of the family whose house she’s occupying as target practice while quietly whispering that the zombies should just come and get her. Maybe she’s got a death wish or maybe she just needs to vent some more frustration after losing her brother and her lover within the span of a few weeks.

Rick, Carol and Darryl are currently plotting to steal a cache of guns so they always have weapons to use no matter the situation. The guns could serve as the way they overtake the town one day or it could just be extra preparation in the chance the walls eventually fall and there’s no time to run to a stock room to find ammunition and rifles. It could also be just another way Rick and the others maintain some kind of readiness because the looming threat of domesticity and letting their guard down still seems to be what they fear most.

Outside the wall, the trio find a zombie with a mysterious ‘W’ marked on its forehead. What could that mean? If you want to find out my theory, make sure to read at the bottom of this recap when I get to my ‘extra bites’.

Rick isn’t sure why the people of Alexandria are so trusting of them already. They could just use this as a way to keep an eye on the newcomers or they are just that naïve and believe Rick and the others are just the latest additions. Rick’s real theory is that they came along at the exact right time because despite the people in Alexandria living and thriving for the past couple of years, bad is always lurking just around the corner and it’s clear they weren’t ready for a real threat. Meanwhile, Rick and his people can handle just about anything.

Rick also suggests a lookout on the clock tower immediately to spot any looming threats coming from further way. That’s the job Sasha wants, but Deanna isn’t ready to give her the assignment just yet but she does bow to Rick’s authority and agrees to put a spotter in the tower just in case. Seeing as how woefully prepared these folks are you have to wonder if they are either really lucky or hiding the real reason they have survived this long?

Deanna also proceeds to tell Rick and his people that she is going to rebuild this town into something the entire world will envy. She wants industry and government and basically society. It sounds like a pipe dream and hell, it probably is a pipe dream, but dreams are about all these people have anymore so they all agree that Deanna’s plan sounds pretty damn good. Before sending everybody off to work for the day, Deanna also tells them there will be a party that night to officially welcome everyone from the group and so they can meet all the people from the town.

Deanna sees this as a good old-fashioned mixer. Rick and Carol see this as the perfect distraction to steal the guns. Who will be right? Well sort of both of them by the end of the night.

Recruitment Center

Darryl is still really uncomfortable living in Alexandria (as well as taking a shower) so he’s staying outside the walls for now where he runs into Aaron, who is also there ‘hunting for rabbits’ (be very, very quiet, he’s hunting for wabbits). Aaron promises he was just searching for food, but he was likely tracking Darryl to try and get a beat on this mysterious loner.

The two of them converse — as much as Darryl converses with anybody outside of Carol and Beth (RIP) — and along the way they even try to rescue a stray horse named Buttons, who wanders around the town but can’t seem to be captured. Much like the theme of this episode, the horse was once a friendly, domesticated animal who probably rode around a stable and ate hay out of his owner’s hand. A couple of years outside of captivity and his wild streak has come back and his fear of humans is stronger than ever before. A metaphor for Rick and his people if there’s ever been one!

Well, Buttons tries to run but a group of zombies catch him and eat him alive just like in the initial episode when Rick rides into Atlanta only to watch his fine furry pal turn into zombie bait.

In the midst of the hunt, Aaron opens up to Darryl about being the outsider for the Alexandria Safe Zone. Even in this new world where it’s rare to find one living person much less two of them together and in love, Aaron still feels the sting of homophobic slurs and looks being thrown his way. He understands why Darryl probably feels the same way given the fact that everybody has been looking at him non-stop since he arrived. Aaron does try to convince Darryl to attend the party, even if only for a few minutes, just to get a sense of everybody and everybody can get a sense of him.

At some point he must clean up or at least wash his face because Darryl shows up to the party! And then promptly doesn’t go inside and keeps on walking.

Thankfully, Aaron finds him and invites him over to dinner at his house with Eric where they enjoy a nice spaghetti dinner with just the three of them. In between mouthfuls of pasta, Darryl finds out the real reason Aaron wanted to invite him over and it didn’t have anything to do with selling him Amway. No, Aaron shows Darryl that inside the garage they’ve been living in is a motorcycle nearly put together and he’s sure he’s found the right person to finish the job.

But mechanic’s work isn’t what Darryl will do long term — instead Aaron wants him to replace Eric out on the road as a recruiter. Following Eric’s accident where he broke his ankle, Aaron can no longer deal with the fear of losing the love of his life and while it sounded like he was saying Darryl was expendable, he was actually suggesting that he’s far more suited for this work than anyone else in Alexandria. Darryl has been out there long enough to tell the good people from the bad and he’s made for survival.

And in the strangest twist yet — Darryl accepts.

The Cocktail Party

So the cocktail party happens and there are a lot of odd occurrences here.

Rick meets Deanna’s husband (cuckold) and finally meets Jessie’s husband Pete, who is the doctor in town and not quite the same asshole who shouted at him from his porch a week ago. Carol makes cookies and shows up in another of her never ending string of cardigans while Carl quickly integrates with the other kids in town. Abraham starts drinking and doesn’t stop and Michonne is contemplative while playing with a plastic hors d’oeuvre sword while thinking about the one she’s got hanging up at home.

Sasha shows up briefly and then freaks out when someone asks her what her favorite meal is because they want to prepare it for her. She’s officially the new annoying character everyone will be complaining about on Monday.

Cookie Monster

While Rick is playing congenial guest, Carol slips off to the armory to steal the cache of guns but there’s one problem — Jessie’s son Sam followed her because he was told that cardigan lady was the master cookie maker and he wanted some damn cookies.

Carol tries to convince the little guy not to tell his mother that he saw her stealing guns, but he can’t do that. He tells his mother everything (side note — what 10-year old kid tells their mother everything?!?). Carol has another alternative to help Sam keep his mouth shut and it’s down right frightening.

She moves closer and closer to the boy while telling him that he has two choices. One — he can tell his mother what he saw and then during some night in the not too distant future he’ll go to sleep in his bed, but then he’ll wake up outside the walls tied to a tree. No one will hear him scream except the walkers lurking nearby trying to find lunch. And as they tear him apart, limb from limb and Sam screams in terror, his blood will gurgle up his throat and he’ll die an awful death all because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Or two — he doesn’t tell his mother and Carol is gonna make him some mother trucking cookies!

Carol is officially the boogieman of Alexandria. She straddled the line between creepy awesome and just plain creepy but chances are she got the point across and it’s doubtful Sam will tell his mom he just shit his pants much less that she was stealing guns.

Foreshadowing

Back at the party, Rick is talking up Jessie once again while she holds onto Judith. After a brief conversation, Rick takes his daughter back and then thanks Jessie for the hospitality by leaning in for a kiss (on the cheek). Jessie seems taken back but also kind of interested. Rick just seems interested.

In another odd turn, when Carol decides to dole out the guns she stole from the armory it’s Darryl that actually opts not to take one because he’s convinced the people from Alexandria are on the level. The way to Darryl’s heart is apparently through motorcycle repair and spaghetti. Even Rick is having second thoughts but ultimately he takes a weapon. Carol/Rambo doesn’t hesitate. She’ll take all the guns.

Back inside, Rick sees Jessie and her husband Pete walking hand in hand and just as they turn away from him, he reaches back around to his waistband to the gun he just got from Carol. Has Rick gone full Governor here or what? He looked at Jessie like she was meant to be his and when her husband appeared, Rick only saw him as an obstacle. Like a fence standing in the way of safety for a surrogate family and Rick’s new gun was like a tank ready to tear through the walls.

Rick didn’t pull the gun but a few moments later he races off to one side of the high walls where he puts his ear to the cold metal and hears a walker on the other side scratching and moaning because it knows there’s food on the other side. Rick’s move to basically do the prison ‘you put your hand against the glass and I’ll put mine up on yours’ probably leads us in one of two directions.

Either Rick is missing what it was like to live outside those walls and hearing the walker trying to get at him is the only sense of normalcy he’s known for the past few years or two, it’s just a subtle reminder that no matter how safe they may feel, danger is always just a few feet away.

Extra Bites:

First let me say SPOILER ALERT — because I’m going to reference something just slightly from the comic book series although truth be told I’m not sure I’m even correct in this assumption. The ‘W’ carved into the head of the zombie could stand for ‘Wolves’, which is a popular theory in The Walking Dead universe right now.

There was the sign inside the town where Noah once lived that said ‘wolves not far’ and now we’re seeing these ‘W’ symbols. Now there leading guess lately was that Rick and his people were the wolves being let inside the henhouse that is Alexandria and maybe they have become what they fear most. My theory goes to a standoff from the comic book with a group known as The Scavengers.

They were a band of raiders, who went town to town looking for supplies and whatever else they could get their hands on and when they run across Alexandria, the group sees it as prime pickings. The leader of the group, Derek, comes to the gates where he meets Rick and says ‘little pig, little pig, let me in’, which of course is reference to the Big Bad Wolf in ‘Three Little Pigs’.  Have The Scavengers become The Wolves in the new television Walking Dead universe? With only three episodes to go it seems like a good cliffhanger for the season finale.

Then again the second shot we got of the zombie was technically upside down but the ‘W’ turned into an ‘M’. Morgan is still out there and nowhere to be found since several episodes ago? He was marking his territory as he made his way past Terminus. Maybe this is just more of the same?

One more note — the song that played at the end of the episode was “Spicks and Specks” by the Bee Gees

Hopefully we’ll get some answers next Sunday night when The Walking Dead returns on AMC at 9pm ET.