The intro for last night’s The Walking Dead episode, “Try” was as jumbled up as poor Aiden’s terrible ‘Run Mix’ CD. The awful music was a reminder of how grateful I am that he met his maker last week due to his own stupidity. The intro ranged from Carol cooking up a casserole to Sasha on the verge of losing her mind, then a glimpse of Deanna’s family dealing with the loss of their son Aiden. The former Congress Critter was not accepting of the meal Carol had prepared and promptly burned up the sympathy note. The scene of the walker stepping on the family photo in a broken frame was very fitting to what happened this week.
Daryl and Aaron are doing some scouting outside the gates and they see some signs of human life. Scouting at night doesn’t seem to be the safest way to go about things with the undead roaming around. But it is better for sneaking up on the living I guess.
As predicted, Glenn and Nicholas have very different accounts of what happened at the warehouse. Nicholas the coward paints a picture of him trying to save Aiden while Glenn and company wanted to abandon him. His story is recorded by Deanna while Glenn is telling an opposite story, the truthful version, to Rick. Surely Deanna knows how cowardly Nicholas really is. She can’t be blind, but maybe she has never seen him on the outside where things are quite different from her walled garden. Glenn made it clear to Rick that they “have to make this work,” despite what happened at the warehouse.
Carol relays the story that Sam told her about his dad Pete yelling at his mom and finding her unconscious on the floor. Rick is mulling over just what to do when the woman-beating Pete strolls by and says hello. Rick’s cold response was simple, “Keep walking.” Pete wisely does just that and lives to see another sunrise. This was such a tense scene as Rick was barely holding on from taking his gun and killing Pete right on the spot.
Rosita and Michonne, who needs some pajamas, head out to look for Sasha, who is headed over the edge of sanity. She is apparently out hunting walkers for the hell of it. Michonne is out in the real world without her sword. She realizes she is becoming too comfortable.
Deanna and Rick have some serious talk by several headstones. Viewers can assume that one of them is Aiden’s although his body clearly was never recovered. Rick breaks the news about Pete hitting Jessie, which comes as no surprise to Deanna. She knows about it and had “hoped it would get better.” Rick wants to separate the couple to protect her and the kids. Deanna says no and has a good reason….dude is valuable as a surgeon. Now, is this a moral reason to let him continue his abuse of Jessie? Of course not, but is it for the greater good of the group? Unless they can find another doctor really quickly I would say it is for the greater good to keep Pete happy. Me, I would kill the doctor and the greater good can work itself out…until, of course, someone is in dire need of a doctor. Deanna’s solution would be to exile Pete if things escalated. She wouldn’t consider execution under any circumstances no matter Rick’s opinion. Deanna is also under the impression Rick could be exiled if he didn’t tow the line, a thought I laughed at and later took more seriously. She’s definitely one to be taken seriously, but it still doesn’t dawn on her that exiling someone can wind up coming back to haunt you in the end.
One of the brighter story lines was Carl finding a bit of puppy love with Enid. They hang out a bit in the woods and eventually hide in a hollow tree trunk as some zombies pass by. They come close to a kiss and she sees Carl is just as afraid of her as she is of him. The sooner he ditches the hat and gets a decent haircut, the better off he will be and we as the viewers also.
Glenn lets Nicholas know that the coward is no longer welcome on the outside. Glenn tells him, “People like you should be dead.” He is correct of course. The walls are doing a good job of keeping the naive Alexandrians sheltered from the brutality of the real world. I’m not sure why Nicholas is upset about being banned from heading out into danger. He should be glad to let Glenn and crew do all the dangerous shit. He could hang out in Alexandria living a perfect life. We do see later that Nicholas is the one who took Rick’s hidden gun. He now takes it with him so something wicked this way comes from him.
Michonne and Rosita finally catch up to Sasha who is capping walkers galore. She doesn’t want their help, but eventually the pair do end up killing off a few undead. Sasha is pissed that Michonne has found happiness in this new environment, however it’s not like Michonne hasn’t lost anyone. This scene was pretty powerful as Michonne could relate to what Sasha was doing, and trying to take some control of her situation by clearing a huge path of walkers out. Michonne went through a similar thing as was shown in the flashback, and then she went ahead and started blasting away at them too followed shortly after by Rosita. It dawned on them that Alexandria could easily give them a false sense of security while also softening them from the outside world.
Daryl and Aaron find some dismembered walkers along with a woman tied to a tree apparently as bait for the walkers. This is pretty sickening stuff done by the group branding a “W” on foreheads. I can imagine the “Wolves” will make some kind of appearance in next week’s season finale. I’m tempted more than ever to get some spoiler info, but I am resisting for now. One thought that would be interesting is if the ‘W’ was actually an upset down ‘M’ for Morgan since he’s out there watching the gang still. Just a thought…
The conversation between Rick and Jessie seemed to go nowhere as he confronted her with his knowledge of her abuse. She turns down his help until he makes a second attempt at convincing her Pete must go. The info about her son wanting a gun so he can protect his mama was enough to convince her now. She asks if he would do this for someone else and he says no so she agrees to have Pete killed. Pete is dead man walking from this point forward. The camera angles were brilliant during this scene, as one minute you saw the open door, and the next it was Jessie’s eyes waiting for that moment when Pete stumbles upon the two.
Speak of the devil. Pete comes in on Jessie and Rick as they stand in the family kitchen. Dude is irate! He does something that smart people in our world don’t do. He attacked a policeman. In our world Pete would have to deal with the entire force coming after him, but in ‘The Walking Dead’ universe he knows Rick is basically alone with no radio to call in backup. Maybe Pete didn’t think this as far through as me and is simply an angry drunk who likes to hit folks. This solo officer may be alone with no backup, but he has quite a mean streak developed from killing his best friend, biting the jugular vein out of a guy, and hacking to death a cannibal in the middle of a church.
I’ll give credit to Pete. He may be a cowardly beater of females, but he can take a punch. He went on the offensive with Rick and was matching the constable blow for blow and choke for choke. Rick was not doing so well until Jessie tried to pull Pete off his full mount position. Rick then reversed things and wound up with a rear naked choke hold on Pete as a kid’s red balloon sailed sadly into the sky.
Deanna demanded Rick let him go as more townspeople approached the lawman. That’s when Rick Grimes pulled the stolen gat and started his monologue looking like a bloodied madman. Carol was almost giddy as Rick threatened Deanna and her people, telling them how weak they were. To the Alexandrians, Rick looked like barbarian. To the audience he looks like a hero. He is both. That’s what his world requires in a leader, but there was a point when he looked like he was ready to start making those phone calls to Lori again.
It takes a lot for a TV show to shock me. The ending of “Try” did just that though. I never expected Michonne would KO Rick. She came out of nowhere to knock her fellow LEO off Pete and into unconsciousness most likely. Michonne didn’t know about Pete being an abuser so maybe that would have changed the course of events, but I’m not totally sure. This shocker wasn’t ‘The Red Wedding’ in GOT, but it was pretty great. It made sense to have Michonne take Rick down as she was his equal as constable, plus it was a good show for the townspeople to know that she was able to control the situation. If Rick had continued, you almost wonder if someone might have gotten shot as he was using the gun for emphasis when he was talking. That’s usually when it misfires, and that would have quickly been the demise of the gang in Alexandria. Now, there’s an old fashioned town meeting to look forward to next week regarding Rick.
The exile of Rick’s that seemed laughable at the start of the episode now seems imminent. Maybe the entire group gets ran off like a pack of rabid dogs. Next week’s preview only shows Rick making the lonely walk away however. If Deanna was really smart, she would heed Rick’s advice about the dangers of exile as opposed to execution. Can’t wait for the finale next week, and thankfully, it’s 90 minutes long so expect a lot of shock and awe. It sucks that we will have a summer of no WD, but luckily Game of Thrones starts up on April 12th.