Our Town - Walking Dead - Season 5, Episode 13

I'm officially worried about Carol.  Don't get me wrong.  I love Commando Carol, and always will.  But a tweenie who's caught her stealing guns isn't the same as cannibals about to kill her friends.  To be fair, she doesn't give him the full Commando Carol treatment.  She just threatens him, in a voice that could have been telling him a fairy tale.  Problem is, I think she'd really do it.  I think she'd really kidnap the kid, leave him tied up to die, make it look like he ran away, and hide the body.  It'd be so easy.  So few others leave the walls.

So, I guess you're not my Fairy Godmother after all

Well, so few of the long-term Alexandrians.  Team Carol leaves constantly, in and out, in and out.  It almost defeats the purpose of the wall if other people can see the gate in action all the time.  Do people have to sign out, so someone knows they're in the danger zone?  Deanna, for all her fingers in all Alexandria's business, seems completely unconcerned that her gate is like a back door in summer.  It does give her an opportunity to be made at a member of Team Carol for the first time.  But, her snitfit with Sasha really started the morning before.

With Sasha, waking up to see the family photos that littered her new home.  The happy family, intact, alive, and frozen in time for her to stare at, is too much.  There are a few things one does to make a new home one's own.  Decorating, minor renovations, and taking out the old family photos to use as target practice.  After each shot, make sure you peer around the creepy forest you're shooting in to see if any zombies have finally found you, daring them to come.  Because a day without zombies in the the zombiepocalypse is just weird.

Fuck yoga.  I kill zombies in the morning.

Good thing we have Aaron and Darryl and their quest for rabbits and a horse.  How would these two have done if they met 2-3 years ago?  Would they have bonded as quickly as they do now, over shared zombie kills and a tragic failure to capture a live horse?  When Aaron points out his quest to tame Buttons the wild horse, Darryl is on Team Aaron, helping when he can and consoling Aaron when Buttons meets his end from a pack of zombies.  Yes, since you asked:  the wild horse Aaron can't tame that gets eaten is a metaphor for Darryl himself.  Stay too wild, too isolated from those who want to help you, and you get taken down.

Is there really no sugar left?

Aaron just keeps getting more likeable.  He tries to bond with Darryl, claiming to be an outsider due to his neighbors' lingering homophobia.  Darryl, who probably thinks homosexuality is a choice, just doesn't respond.  But Aaron's not done.  He brings out his two big guns: well cooked spaghetti and a custom-refurbished motorcycle.  He doesn't know it, but that's Christmas to Darryl.  Aaron also has another present for Darryl.  He personally asks that Darryl replace Eric as his teammate in the wild, finding new residents for Alexandria, vetting them, and bringing them in.  And, maybe, even finding a pasta maker.  Is there really no Bed Bath Beyond near this place?

Will Darryl make a good fellow recruiter?  He tends not to trust strangers, except when he remembers Beth's exhortations that there are still good people left.  Will he be able to get strangers to trust him?  He doesn't have Aaron's patience or forgiving nature.  Will he be Aaron's backup, waiting to rescue Aaron should their bet on a particular group go horribly wrong?  Will there be any more wild horses?  Will they find that pasta maker?

Also, will Darryl admit to Aaron that he, Rick and Carol conspired to steal guns from the storehouse, run by a very chatty Olivia?  Olivia kind of bungles a request for a leg of meat from a woman who's last boyfriend lost his leg to cannibals, but that doesn't mean she deserves to be taken advantage of by Carol.  Will Deanna punish them if they're caught?  Or will the reveal that Team Carol has their own firearm stash be in such a way that Deanna decides that Carol was right, after all?  When Carol's threats against a boy make the theft successful, it's Darryl who turns down the offered gun.  He's got his crossbow, and he's wondering if maybe they are safe within the walls.  At the prison, Rick refused to wear his gun inside the fences.  They were stacked together, accessible for defense, but no one carried guns at home, preferring knives instead.

While Rick, Carol and Darryl confab on their new, concealed firearms, they realize one of the zombies laying around has a "W" etched into its forehead, as did the zombies piled into that truck outside Shirewilt.  Which is a sign that that weirdness wasn't some random scenery to creep you out once;  The "W" marker will be around, and soon.

Someone's art project?

Team Carol, or rather, Rick, does have some useful ideas, like putting a 24-hour, 365 day watch in the abandoned church tower right outside town, telling Deanna that she should have had one already.  Deanna's counting on the town's obscurity to protect them.  And she's a little surprised when Rick informs her that she needs patrols along the wall to protect the town from climbers.  We saw Enid demonstrate this last week, but Deanna really doesn't know her town as much as she likes to think she does, because that possibility hasn't occurred to her before.

Speaking of Rick, when he's not conspiring to break gun laws behind Deanna's back, he's fucking up in other ways, too.  He is officially on the tail of Jessie, who's married.  This is literally what he killed Shane over when Shane wouldn't let go of his wife.  This is literally what drove two life-long friends apart and left one dead.  And he is literally repeating Shane's mistakes.

Hey there, do you mind if I fuck your Mom?

Jessie even has a son, so now it's totally like Shane's affair with Lori.  Let's hope Jessie's husband is never presumed dead.

When not chasing married tail, Rick is then introduced to the First Husband of Alexandria, Deanna's architect husband Reggie.  Reggie is literally like every architect I have ever known.  Which isn't good.  But, he's polite to Rick and not too condescending, informing Rick that every video of his crew praises him to the skies, so he's totally glad this adulterous fuck-up who lost a farm and a prison is here in Alexandria.  

Abraham and Rosita and Noah make brief appearances, mostly to look incredulous at a return to normalcy, or shrink into the wall in shyness.  Maggie is already Deanna's assistant, following her around at Deanna's invitation but with nothing to really do.  Tara and Eugene are on supply runs outside Alexandria, despite Eugene grumbling about it.  Now, we just need to see Gabriel, who is no doubt praying.

Deanna's party is a chatty, loud, pretty event.  And our ragtag crew adjusts to varying degrees.  Michonne, who we saw last season used to live this life, adapts right away.  Glen and Maggie, already a couple used to helping others adjust, adjust themselves quickly enough and try to convince Noah to blend in.  It's really, this episode, Sasha who just can't handle the safety. So soon after losing her lover and brother to the dangers outside the walls, she is now safe and comfortable.  She feels alone, especially as she sees her old group starting to adjust to Alexandria.  

She lashes out at some random partygoer, who's terrible crime is wanting to make Sasha dinner.  But, like all unbearable bitches, this lady wants to know if there's anything Sasha doesn't like, because the world's biggest bitches make sure to bring you something you'll enjoy.  Sasha just can't believe that this world can still have people who get to have normal, healthy problems.    She just can't believe that there are welcome wagons and parties and neighbors coming over for coffee.  Let's hope this place doesn't have block parties.  That could blow Sasha's mind to bits.

Sasha, predictably, loses it with the neighbor lady, and promptly leaves the party.  The next morning, she'll pronounce to Deanna that Alexandria is like Disneyland in the zombiepocalypse.  It's not a real place, with real people, unless there's the almost constant fear of death and loss.  Unless you wake up every day worried about survival, and your loved ones' survival, something's off.  Deanna is rightfully pissed that Sasha feels that way, and seems happy to see her off to the church tower.  Will that be Sasha's permanent home?  She sure looks like she'd prefer that.

Please have your freakouts in the tower

Rick, after a successful party the night before, now secretly armed by Carol, wearing his police uniform and settling into small-town constable life, can't resist getting a taste of life outside the walls.  He's drawn by the sound of a zombie who's found a section of the wall, but can't get in.  The zombie gropes uselessly on one side, as Rick joins with the wall to hear, feel, everything.  Does he miss them?  He's definitely that crazy.  Does he miss the outside world?  It's easy to see how he and the rest of the group could be claustrophobic.  Does he marvel that he can experience the zombies, still perfectly safe behind a wall?  That would be as marvelous as the lights and hot showers.

I just can't quit you

It's Michonne who demonstrates the point of the episode.  Last week established that Team Carol doesn't feel threatened by Alexandria's people.  This week starts to establish that Team Carol is now adjusting their tactics to thrive in Alexandria themselves.  Maggie is happy to be mentored by Deanna.  Carol is scheming for her own imagined protection.  Darryl accepts Aaron's job and motorcycle offer.  Rick is working on getting some alone time with Jessie.  Abraham and Rosita are attempting to be a regular couple.  Gabriel, presumably, can get back to praying all alone.  Tara can razz Eugene when he balks at work.  It's only Sasha who just can't move forward, at least not yet.

But Michonne, ever the one to move forward, after consciously choosing Rick and Carl and the others as her family a season ago, demonstrates that this can be a good thing.  That the lessons from outside the wall can be remembered, cherished, but laid aside for new lessons about surviving together, making a safe place into a real town.  Now in her officer's uniform, dressed just like Rick, Michonne decides her katana will be on display.  It gets a place of honor over the mantel, a sign of the times and what it takes to survive them.  But she no longer carries it, slung over her back with one hand on the handle, ready to wield it at all times.  It will be a symbol now.  

But I can take it down the second I need to be a badass again