In The Walking Dead recap, Alexandria comes under attack but it’s not from the dead and Carol has to save the day…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Just survive somehow.
Those are the words behind the mysterious title for Sunday night’s episode of The Walking Dead as the hour kicked off with a look at how Enid came to be an Alexandrian once upon a time.
Her journey started out innocent enough — living with her parents in an SUV while traveling across America to avoid the zombie apocalypse. But one fuse going out and no hope of getting it fixed led to Enid’s parents dying and her being forced to survive on the road, all alone, with no help in sight.
She killed and ate raw turtle meat, slept in cars and all along the way carved the letters ‘J.S.S.’ wherever she went. It was Enid’s own way of telling herself ‘just survive somehow’.
A prophetic warning for what ultimately unfolded in Alexandria this week as the wolves finally struck and the town found out just how woefully underprepared they were to deal with an outside threat of this magnitude while Enid fell back into the only mode she’s known since the moment she watched the undead snack on her fallen parents.
Just survive somehow.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of The Walking Dead titled ‘J.S.S.’….
A Normal Day Until
As this week’s episode started, it appeared we were getting a view inside Alexandria while Rick and the others were leading the zombie horde away from town. It seemed like — at least for a few moments — that this was going to be a character study for those left behind in the wake of Pete’s death.
Deanna seemed numb while she was trying to follow Maggie’s lead to start growing crops on the land inside Alexandria. Jessie and her kids attempted to adapt to the reality that their abusive husband/father was dead. Carol even had her latest casserole creation in the works while making due with everything from noodles to ‘that can of stuff no one will eat’.
Carl cared for his sister as he quietly watched from afar as Enid connected with Ron, presumably over the death of his father Pete. Father Gabriel got into the act when he told Carl that his reason for ratting out Rick and the other survivors was from his own guilt and nothing to do with them. He even asked Carl to train him and the boy ultimately agreed to help.
Over at the makeshift hospital, a psychiatrist named Denise took over the ward following Pete’s death while getting some moral support from Eugene and Tara. Sam even got in on the act when Carol found him sitting on her front stoop and he looked like someone just took a dump in his cereal, but she had a rather quick wake up call for the kid.
“Your dad used to hit you and then he got himself killed. It happened. Now it’s done. You live with it or it eats you up.”
~ Carol
At this moment it looked like the episode was going to spiral into everything that happened while Rick and the others were gone and the end would be the zombies attacking the walls after somebody laid on a horn that drew them away from the herd and towards Alexandria.
It looked that way until Carol put her casserole in the oven, set the timer for 45 minutes and saw her neighbor smoking outside after she warned her earlier about how nasty it was to do that in the house. A small smile crept across Carol’s face until it turned into a grimace as the woman was cut down by a crazy man wielding a machete, who just kept hacking away at her until she was very much dead.
Maggie and Deanna were then caught off guard after the man keeping watch on the wall was engulfed in flames courtesy of a Molotov cocktail and seconds later the entire town was under attack.
The Wolves finally arrived…
Little Pig, Little Pig
As soon as the Wolves begin attacking the town a few things are rather evident — first off the people in Alexandria have no idea how to protect themselves from living or dead threats. Second, the Wolves are vicious killers like something out of The Crazies, but they don’t have anything other than knives and sharp weapons so they are literally outgunned.
Without hesitating, Carol immediately takes action although she’s forced to kill another woman from Alexandria when she’s attacked and left to turn undead. Carol is making a bee line towards the armory because she needs the weapons and as long as they have guns and the Wolves don’t, the town has a chance to survive.
Spencer sits in the guard tower as he tries desperately to pick off a few of the Wolves with the scope on his gun, but he’s no crack shot. He misses everything he fires at until he finally sees a tractor trailer barreling towards the town and he unloads with shots, riddling the cabin with bullets. The truck careens towards the wall and smashes into it — as the horn begins to blare incessantly and it’s not going to stop.
So there’s where the horn came from that pulled the zombies away from Rick’s masterful plan — it wasn’t Ron being a rebellious ass and it wasn’t technically the Wolves on purpose. It was a truck full of zombies being driven into town that got headed off at the pass by Spencer’s gunfire.
The horn continues to sound until Spencer finally comes down from the tower and attempts to shut it off. When he opens the cabin door, a zombie is trapped inside and attempting to get at him. Spencer is too scared to either kill the zombie or reach to turn off the horn that is drawing every walker from at least a mile in every direction.
Finally out of nowhere, a wooden springs into action killing the walker and Morgan appears like a superhero sent to save the day. He turns off the horn and then warns Spencer than no one else is coming and they will need to band together to save this place before it all falls apart.
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Morgan gets inside the walls to deal with the Wolves, but his first encounter comes against a man with a rather long axe and against a wooden staff, it almost seems like a mismatch. Except Morgan is no ordinary man wielding a bo staff but the man opposing him never really gets to find out just how good he is facing an axe after another hooded person swoops, slices him dead with a knife and then cuts him again for good measure.
A moment later the mask is removed and it’s Carol, dressed head to toe in bloodied garb just like what the Wolves are wearing and she’s adapted even further by painting the letter ‘W’ on her forehead in someone’s blood. Morgan pleads with Carol that these people can be saved and they don’t have to die, but rather than argue about it, she just gets into action to save the fucking day!
The bodies are starting to pile up and one woman named Holly is brought into the infirmary where Denise attempts to save her life, but it’s all for naught and she’s lost anyways.
Enid makes her way to Carl’s house where he nearly cuts her down with a machine gun when she uses keys to open the door rather than knock. Carl eventually has to go outside to save Ron, who was about to be slashed in two by another stray Wolf roaming around town.
At Jessie’s, she’s forced to hide in a closet to save her and Sam from an intruder but when she hears Ron returning home, the single mom is forced to spring into action.
Jessie gets the drop on the woman inside her house, but as she’s briefly knocked out after she’s slammed against a wall and falls down to the floor. While the Wolf woman tries to grab Jessie’s gun, she retaliates by getting the sheers she was using earlier in the episode to give a haircut and then proceeds to stab the woman in the chest and face repeatedly until there’s zero chance she’s coming back.
At the tail end of Jessie’s assault, Ron makes it into the house to watch his mother butcher the intruder.
Meanwhile, Morgan saves Father Gabriel, who is just about to get gutted from another crazy man as Carol gets into the armory, kills two more Wolves and then grabs some handguns to give out to those people in town who could help her most.
As Morgan and Father Gabriel stand over the fallen man who is handcuffed and begins to wake up, they find out the true mission of The Wolves and why they attacked in the first place.
“We’re freeing you. You’re trapped. You need to know — people don’t belong here anymore.”
Before he can spout off any more nonsense, Carol puts a bullet between his eyes, hands off guns to both Morgan and Father Gabriel and tells them to get to work. If Alexandria survives this day it’s going to be thanks to Carol making all these fools look at some flowers.
How I Could Just Kill a Man
Carol continues her assault across Alexandria, picking off Wolves one by one while others like Aaron attempt to help her save the town. Morgan ends up facing off against five members of the Wolves all at once — including one of the men he encountered last season and left alive in the backseat of a car rather than kill him.
Morgan pleads with them that this isn’t the way things have to be and everybody can come back from the brink — he did after all. But these people are far too gone to be saved but Morgan still only hurts them with his bo staff and then let’s them all go. One of the Wolves — the same one who survived his last encounter with Morgan — even grabs a gun on his way out from one of the fallen Alexandrians. Something tells me that gun will come back into play before this season is over.
In the heart of the town, Carol and the others finally get the upper hand to eliminate the Wolves while Deanna, Spencer and the rest of the native Alexandrians (minus Aaron) are all terrified and essentially cowering in the corner. As Deanna emerges from the tractor trailer she was hiding in while the action was happening, she surveys the damage and realizes that this town was always at risk. It was crazy to think this wouldn’t happen eventually. And now they paid for it.
Aaron finally finishes off a couple stray Wolves wandering out of homes and then notices a burlap backpack stuffed underneath one of the fallen killers. He knows in a split second that this is his backpack — the same backpack he dropped when he and Daryl were forced to run for their lives after going inside the cannery and finding trailers filled with zombies set as traps. Aaron doesn’t say a word but as he thumbs through the pictures that give a clear look at what Alexandria looks like from the inside and out, he knows that Rick was right — they were never safe and all he did was write these killers an invitation to get inside.
Carol finishes her day by wiping the bloody ‘W’ from her forehead as the gravity of the situation finally settles in. It looked like Carol realized what she just did and how she was more than capable of killing 20 or so men without even blinking an eye. Her secret’s out and there’s no more Holly Homemaker after this but which mask that Carol has worn over the last few years is the real one now?
She’s clearly no longer the meek wife trying to survive an abusive husband and she’s not the grieving mother who watched her little girl disappear before being shot dead as a zombie. She might not even be the cold-blooded killer who burned a sick woman alive or told a twisted little girl to look at the flowers before blowing her head off. Carol might be a bit lost but there’s one thing for sure — this new world is better off with her in it!
And finally Morgan encounters the other half of the Wolves that he left alive during season five. The man realizes that Morgan doesn’t want to kill him so he charges and taunts him while doing his best to add another body to the pile. Morgan finally snaps and puts his bow through the man’s head to put an end to him. All life is precious according to Morgan but some people just don’t deserve it.
Back at Carl’s house, a timer bell rings and he takes Carol’s casserole out of the oven. In 45 minutes flat, the Wolves attacked and Alexandria overcame. Spencer asks a bloodied Rosita if this is what it’s like on the outside and she nods but then tells him that places like this — like Alexandria — are worth fighting for and that’s why you survive.
The town has been ravaged and nearly destroyed. Dozens are dead and the perimeter is anything but secured. And just a few hundred yards away there are zombies piling over top of each other to respond to the sound that they heard and within minutes they will be the next group of attackers knocking at Alexandria’s front door.
Tune into the next episode of The Walking Dead on Sunday night at 9pm ET!
