This week’s episode of The Walking Dead revolves around dealing with the herd that has arrived at Alexandria, and the despair that has gripped the town in various ways. Check out Josh’s recap of the episode titled Now, followed by our thoughts on the episode!
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Episode Recap of The Walking Dead, Season 6 Episode 5: Now
This episode opens with Deanna deciding to climb the ladder, and see what is going on on the other side of the wall. She looks around, and sees an engraving from her husband, who built the wall. She overhears Michonne, Maggie and Rosita talking about Glenn. Then we hear Rick screaming, “Open the gate!” The herd. It’s coming. Following Rick. Michonne and Maggie throw the gate open, and Rick makes a mad dash inside, and Michonne and Maggie slam the gate closed, but they see that there are now dozens, if not hundreds of walkers beginning to surround Alexandria.
Alexandrians begin reinforcing the wall, and Rick comes back to the gate, and gives a speech to the crowd. Rick tells them about the dire situation they are in, but he assures them they are safe for now. He says the wall will hold, but questions if the Alexandrians will keep it together. He also says that the others outside the wall will make it back. He tells the group that they need to keep quiet inside, but many Alexandrians begin to give up hope, and seemingly blame Rick. But Aaron steps up and says that Rick got half of the walkers away, rather than having the entire herd come back. Aaron then comes clean and explains how the Wolves got to Alexandria when they found his backpack. Deanna still seems to be in a daze, and walks away.
Jessie
Moving over to Jesse, we see her return home, still with the dead Wolf woman in her house. She drags it to the makeshift cemetery within the walls and begins digging a grave. Rick shows up though, and tells her that killers are not buried within the walls. Jessie asks what to do with the bodies, and Rick simply says, “We wait.”
Later, Jessie finds that inside a house, there is a walker. Some Alexandrians outside freak out. We see the walker’s wrists, and we learn she committed suicide. Jessie takes out the walker, then speaks to the Alexandrians around her, telling them that this is the new reality, and they have to deal with it.
Jessie returns home, and tries to coax Sam out of his bedroom with some cookies. He refuses to leave the upstairs because it didn’t change up there, referring to the dead that happened. She gives up and puts the cookies at his door.
Rick has come to visit Jessie after talking with Deanna, and he tells Jessie that he wanted to wait to bury the bodies because he was hoping the people outside the wall to be back, and the walkers at the walls to be gone. Jessie tells Rick that the people outside could still be alive, but they have to deal with how the world is in this moment. Then Rick and Jesse have a moment, where they get a bit smoochy.
Deanna and Spencer
At the food storage place, Olivia tries to convince people to not ransack it. They go in anyway, but Spencer shows up and talks some sense into the group of people. They calm down, and leave the food. Deanna overheard Spencer’s speech and seems proud of her son.
At home, Deanna seems distraught still, staring at her husband’s wedding band. But she then gets a little manic, and begins drawing plans for the expansion of the town, adding training areas, farming areas, places to explore, and so-on until she hears some noises from her kitchen. She goes down to see Spencer drunk, and stealing food for himself. Deanna berates him for being a hypocrite, but Spencer says one person stealing is no big deal. He wants his one last celebration before he dies, saying that the Alexandrians at the food bank were right. Spencer then screams at Deanna, blaming her for not getting her people prepared for the harsh reality the world has become.
Later we see Deanna walking at night, when she is jumped by a walker. She gets angry and begins shanking the walker repeatedly in the chest. Rick shows up and takes out the brain, and Rick says this was a Wolf that was wounded by Carol, but went missing. Deanna tills Rick, “I want to live,” and Rick tells her to lead the people. Deanna then says that Rick is what is needed for Alexandria. Deanna asks Rick if her hopes for the town were in vain, but Rick reassures her that her hopes weren’t.
Deanna walks to the gate, and begins slamming it in anger. She walks away, and as she does, we see some blood dripping onto the inside of the wall…
Maggie and Aaron
Maggie, meanwhile, seems to be preparing for a mission. The mission to find Glenn. Aaron watches her from a distance, and in the background, Alexandrians mark the wall with the names of the deceased. On that wall is Nicholas and Glenn. Maggie heads to the armory, where Aaron finds her. He says she cannot go, but when she refuses to listen, he says he has to go with her. She refuses to let him go, but he tells her he has a better way to get out, where they can more easily get past the herd.
Aaron leads Maggie to a sewer entrance that will lead outside the wall. They head down, and move through the sewers. Maggie starts going through the scenarios as to what could have happened to Glenn, but she says she has to help him. Aaron says that he feels responsible for what happened, and thinks he has to help.
In their journey through the sewers, they try to move a ladder, but once they do, some walkers are awakened. Rotten ones, that have muck and filth on them. After a pretty intense struggle, Aaron is able to save himself, then Maggie. They continue on, till they find an opening that they hope will lead to the surface, but past the herd. Unfortunately, they don’t get past the herd. But the herd is not right up to their opening, so Aaron thinks they might be able to make it. Aaron begins to figure a way out, but Maggie demands that he stops. She screams so loud, that walkers are alerted, and the opening to make it through this grate is closed, since it is now surrounded by walkers. At this point, Maggie tells Aaron that she can’t go on, because she is pregnant.
Aaron and Maggie make their way back to town and are on the wall, hoping for a sign from Glenn. Maggie steps away from the wall, and washes Glenn’s name from the dead written on the wall. Aaron joins her, and they begin washing Nicholas’ too. Aaron then decides to offer his name as a name for her child.
Carl and Ron
Carl approaches Ron, who is still being a punk, and Carl asks about Enid. Apparently Enid and Ron were a couple, but Carl wants to go help her outside the wall, but Ron refuses to help Carl. He goes so far as to say he will rat out Carl to Rick if Carl goes, so that Rick will have to go find Carl, leading to more death which would be Carl’s fault.
Ron visits Rick who has moved to the wall, and Ron tells Rick about Enid going over the wall, and about Carl wanting to save her. Ron then offers to keep guard, so Rick can go talk to Carl. Ron then asks Rick to train him with weapons. Rick gives him a once over with his revolver. He empties it, and hands it to Ron to take aim at a walker.
Denise and Tara
At the hospital, Denise is not sure how to help Scott with his wound. Tara walks in, and asks for some help with her headache. Denise says that Scott’s leg is infected, and she doesn’t know how to help. Tara tells Denise that she is lying about her headache, and she is trying to see how she is doing. Tara tries to reassure her, but Denise is freaking out.
Denise goes through a medical book that Tara gave her, and seems to find a solution to help Scott. She performs a procedure with a syringe and things seem to level out for Scott.
Denise then takes a break, and finds Tara sitting on a porch. Tara asks how Scott is, and Denise gives her a kiss on the lips. Denise is still all doom and gloom, but Tara tries to cheer her up.
Rosita
Rosita is standing guard on the wall, crying some, probably worried about Abraham, and Spencer comes to relieve her. Rosita tells Spencer he did a good job taking out the driver of the semi truck that rammed the wall. Rosita heads down, and Spencer snacks on some of his stolen crackers.
Josh’s Thoughts: The Walking Dead, Season 6 Episode 5: Now
There was hit and miss this episode for me. It was a step up from last week’s Morgan episode, but I still do not think it was as strong as the first three episodes. Let’s go over what worked and didn’t work.
First what didn’t work for me. One big disappointment I had going into this episode was the very beginning. Last time we left Rick, he was surrounded in the RV with seemingly no way out. It was a very tense build up, that I was excited to see the result of. This episode decided to simply skip over his escape from the RV and just somehow have him back at the gates. Extremely poor decision for the show, in my opinion, for a couple reasons. One, just getting out of the RV would be a feat itself. How could he by the time the RV was surrounded? Two, how did he have the stamina to run all the way back to Alexandria? I would have liked to see his journey back to the wall, and how he was able to avoid walkers, and see the climactic moments leading up to his bolt for the gate. Very disappointing we couldn’t see that. The opposing argument I could see for saying not showing it, is that Rick is the guy who could get out of the most hairy of situations, so we don’t need to see it, but I would argue that I want to see Rick in danger every now and again.
What also didn’t work for me was Maggie and Aaron’s storyline. I didn’t really understand Maggie deciding to go out to look for Glenn, to just abruptly not wanting to go. It seemed like a bit of wasted time. I guess I should say I understand the reasoning for it, but I don’t agree with it. I understand that she was wanting to see Glenn at least one last time, either dead or alive, but that risking her own life, and her baby’s life was not worth the risk of going outside the walls, but I think the story would have been written better if Maggie just said she can’t go after Glenn because she is pregnant, but maybe Aaron tries going himself.
Now let’s talk about the positives of the episode. I thought Aaron was great this episode. So far, I really like his character. He stepped up, admitting to a mistake he made, that was really hardly his fault at all. I admire people who admit their wrong doings, or even clear the air over things that aren’t necessarily their fault, but could be construed that way. I then liked that he was determined to help Maggie, even volunteering to go when Maggie wanted changed her mind.
I also liked the exchange between Carl and Ron. Ron seems to be up to something I think, and I liked the confrontation that sort of showed that. Carl has grown on me as a character, and I want to see him step up. I would certainly be interested in him trying to save Enid. But I also liked that Ron is playing this game, and am curious to see where it ends up. I am wondering if Ron really wants to be trained to kill walkers, or if he is looking to maybe take out a few people, such as Rick or Carl…
As for Spencer’s storyline, I am not sure what to make of it yet. I am kind of wondering if the blood we are seeing on the wall is Spencer’s attempt at suicide. I can’t think of another reason there would be blood on the wall. I sort of wondered if it was coming through the wall, but I can’t see how that would be happening.
The one frustrating thing for me is the resolution of Glenn. It has been way too long to dangle this carrot, and it is hard to really enjoy these episodes without that resolution. I am hoping we get an answer next episode, but it seems Daryl-centric, which leads me to believe that we will still not get an answer–unless Daryl happens to run into Glenn on his journey
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 6 Episode 5 of The Walking Dead: Now
As I suspected, this week’s episode focused on Alexandria, and we didn’t get any new information about Glenn. Although this was expected, it’s still frustrating. Just tell us what happened already! One thing that I didn’t expect was that the episode would start off with Rick returning to Alexandria. I thought it might be another episode before we got back to him in his RV situation. However, we don’t even get to see how he got out of that, we just see him running down the road to Alexandria yelling, “Open the gate!” While watching it, I thought it was a little odd that they would skip past his escape to his return, but figured that we would probably see a flashback and see what actually happened. But nope, they never went back to it. So that was a little disappointing.
Other than that, this episode was pretty slow for the most part, though not as slow as the previous episode, which focused on Morgan. I think maybe the show wanted to start of the season fast paced, and then brought things to a screeching halt with the Morgan episode, and now they want to slowly build things up again.
I’m not sure what to make of Ron. I was pretty sure he would be anti-Rick because he’s the one that killed his dad, but now he seems to be coming around and warming up to Rick, even asking him to teach him to shoot, although Jessie had said Rosita was teaching her, and that she would teach the boys herself. Speaking of Jessie, she seems to be coming to grips with reality and has a take charge attitude. Jessie and Rick’s kiss felt a little odd, because I had thought she was trying to distance herself from him. On the one hand, it’s no longer taboo because her husband is dead. On the other hand, it feels weird because Rick is the one who killed her husband. So I don’t know what to think about this relationship.
Speaking of kissing and relationships, didn’t see that kiss between Denise and Tara coming! Good for them.
Carol was mysteriously absent this episode. Although she was mentioned a couple times, it still felt kind of off after her big action episode a couple weeks ago that she’s nowhere to be found this episode. I guess she’s still trying to keep her cover and pretend she’s just a meek, scared woman that just likes to bake food. But at this point, I don’t think it matters, and that she needs to reveal herself for who she really is. It’ll be safer for Alexandria in general.
As for Aaron, I figured something would come up about his backpack being left behind and the Wolves seeing his pictures. But as I’ve said before, I don’t think just a few pictures would lead them to Alexandria. It’s not like there was a map pointing out the location. So I don’t think he has anything to be guilty about, and I hope no one blames him. He and Maggie made a pretty good team, though I don’t know what Maggie thought she could accomplish by going into super walker infested territory alone. I’m glad she came to her senses and turned back, and that she told someone she was pregnant. Hopefully her pregnancy goes better than the last pregnancy we saw on this show…
Looks like we’re finally getting back to Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham next episode. Is it possible they could find Glenn and save him? Let’s hope.
Scenes from The Walking Dead, Season 6 Episode 6: Always Accountable
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Walking Dead, titled Always Accountable:
