At the present Chez Grimes, Michonne and Carl head out on a run for supplies and bonding while Rick hangs back to recover from his coma day. Michonne offhandedly reveals to Carl while they're clearing a house that she had a toddler, and between that and Judith and the discovery of the dead family in the nursery, it ends up being something of a mutual therapy session. But one with food that they get to take home at the end.
As for Rick, his recovery day is somewhat spoiled when a wandering gang storms in and he's forced to hide under the bed unarmed. Soon Rick is sneaking around the house, trying to stay out of sight until he's able to quietly choke out another dude for his gun. Then it's just a matter of sneaking away -- until he sees Carl and Michonne returning to the house, unaware they'll be walking into some bad. Rick's about to mount a one-man frontal assault on the gang until fortunately the zombies move in on the house from the rear, allowing Rick, Carl, and Michonne to escape and hit the road again.
Meanwhile, Glenn wakes up with Tara in the back of Abraham's truck, three hours' drive from the prison. He's ready to bail on this new group, but Abraham -- Sergeant Abraham Ford, that is -- claims that his mulleted buddy Eugene needs to get to Washington, D.C. because he's a scientist who knows what went down and how to stop it. Abraham and Glenn end up fighting, until they have to join forces against a group of walkers in a turkey-shoot in which Eugene ends up disabling their truck as well. And then Glenn, Tara, Rosita, Eugene and Abraham hit the road together on foot. Abraham's messiah complex will just have to wait, but he's going to keep it fresh by talking about it all the time.
Finally, Rick and Carl and Michonne find a sign advertising the same sanctuary that Carol, Tyreese and the girls were headed to last week. That should make for an awkward reunion.
Abraham's truck -- you remember Abraham, the guy with the big mustache and the equally big truck who Tara met at the end of last week, along with his equally silly-looking entourage? Anyway, Abraham's truck rolls past a signpost that holds three items of interest: a stop sign, a marker identifying it as Crook Road and a snagged flaccid Mylar balloon that's attracted a trio of slow-witted but -- one hopes -- eventually high-voiced walkers. Tara's riding in the truck bed, and she was apparently able to liberate from the prison a Sharpie, which she's been using to write directions on her hand. The truck stops as it reaches a logjam of abandoned cars, which includes one walker peacefully rotting away while jammed between two trucks. Those three walkers lose interest in the balloon and start reaching for the truck's tailgate. Tara preps an assault rifle that was in the back with her, but Abraham disembarks and orders, "Do not fire that weapon!" Instead, he cheerfully lets the walkers approach him and engages them with a crowbar. "Aw, honey, look at you," he says mock-sympathetically to the female one, the last to come at him. "You're a damn mess."
He's a bit less cocky, however, when the crowbar doesn't take it out, and even when he uses it to nail its head to the side of the truck, it's impaled through the jaw so it doesn't count. Abraham asks to borrow the rifle from Tara -- who has jumped down in the meantime -- and uses the butt to crush its skull, messily, as well as the one he merely clubbed at the start of this encounter. He returns the bloody rifle to Tara and pulls the crowbar out of the side of the truck, wondering why Tara's looking at him like that. It's because he was smiling. Abraham stops smiling briefly and says, not quite glibly, "Well, I'm the luckiest guy in the world." That's a pretty bold claim, these days.
It's breakfast time at the house where Carl, Rick and Michonne are squatting. Carl thinks the man's white shirt that Michonne is wearing is hilarious for some reason as they sit down to a bowl of cereal. Michonne wishes for soy milk, and Carl, still in a laughing mood, tells a story about how gross it is and that he would rather have anything else, up to and including Judith's formul -- well, party's over now, and so is breakfast.
Michonne finds Rick in the kitchen. The place is bright, clean and well-lit, which just amplifies the contrast between it and Rick's ragged shirt, which looks like it was used to clean a septic tank. He thanks Michonne for making Carl laugh. "I can't be his father and his best friend," Rick says. "He needs you." She would probably make a better father anyway. She wonders if they're staying or just stopping, and Rick says they'll stay here while they figure it out. Seeing the hunted look on Rick's face when he answers, Michonne decides not to push it. She says she and Carl will go for supplies, and Rick can stay behind to finish getting over his coma.
Rick sees them off on the front porch, and they agree that they'll be back by noon. Carl's automatic probably doesn't have new bullets yet, so Rick lends his heavy service revolver to his still-sullen son, who jams it into the back of his belt so he can waste that ammo too. Off they go, and Rick closes the door and painfully shoves the couch against it, which will be super handy if they need to get back inside in a hurry. Then he makes his way upstairs, changes the bandage on his wound, sets Carol's watch (8:25) on a bedside table and settles down on the master bed with a clean t-shirt and a thick Jack London. I bet the zombie apocalypse just cratered Stephen King's sales numbers.
Carl comes out of one house with a couple of less empty bags, and as they walk to the place, Michonne asks if he found anything good, like crazy cheese. I would think that after this long, all cheese would be crazy, but she's referring to the aerosol kind, popping a can out of her duffel bag with a flourish. She offers him the first hit, but he's still crabby and she knows it. So she tries to cheer him up by filling her mouth with the stuff and then slavering at him like a zombie. Which is hilarious, at least by Michonne standards, but he's not in the mood. On the porch of the house, she apologizes and says that toddlers think she's funny. Carl wonders what she means by that, since it's been a while since anyone saw a toddler, and Michonne comes right out and says she had a three-year-old son. "And he happened to find me extremely funny." She might have been, back then. After they enter and get down to business, Carl comes over all curious, firing questions at her. So she lays down some ground rules: she'll answer one question per every room they clear, after they clear it. Sounds super fun for both of them, plus it should keep the episode's word count nice and low.
Rick has dropped off to sleep with the London on his chest. From downstairs, or possibly from the dream going on behind Rick's REMs, there come the sounds of a door slamming, rough male voices arguing, violence and cruel laughter. That wakes Rick right up. So the noise wasn't coming from his dream, then. Disappointing.
Rick lies there for a moment, then reaches for his hip, which is of course empty because he gave his revolver to Carl. Instead he grabs Carol's watch off the table, which will be a perfectly serviceable weapon if their squat has been invaded by a gang of caterpillars that will need flailing to death. Hearing someone stomping up the stairs, he sneaks to the doorway in time to catch a glimpse of one of the new arrivals entering another room down and across the hall, disappearing from sight without seeing Rick but allowing him to get a glimpse of the big assault rifle he's carrying. Taking his book with him, Rick slides under the bed -- head facing the hallway -- just barely remembering to snatch his water bottle off the table as well. One of the gunmen comes in and stomps around, making Rick very nervous with his close, bloodstained boots and rifle muzzle pointing at the floor, stopping inches from Rick's face. Fortunately, their owner decides to sack out on the bed. Rick remains undiscovered, if somewhat squished.
Michonne is letting Carl do all the work in exchange for letting him pry tiny bits of information out of her, which is just fine with me. He finds out that her son's name was Andre Anthony, and that he was an only child. "He was a handful, like you." I bet Andre was never a meme, though. Carl wonders if the hallway counts as a room, which she says it does if he can find something they can use. For some reason she lets him get away with turning in a loosely wrapped painting, even though there are plenty of uncovered ones hanging on the walls. Not sure what that's good for, other than maybe busting it over a zombie's head and then laughing at it while it shambles around knocking shit over with the frame. Carl's question is, "How long has it been?" Michonne says that it was after everything, and lets Carl get away with another question: "Does my dad know?" Michonne says she hasn't told anyone until now, and Carl says the secret's safe with him, even though it's not really a secret.
Carl moves on to the room while Michonne checks out the painting. Which turns out to be a primitive-style portrait of a young woman, but violently scratched and defaced as though this house was visited by Andy from Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake. Michonne looks sharply down to the end of the hall where it came from and carefully approaches the nearly-closed door to that room. Hand on her sword hilt, she finds herself inside a small bathroom, which leads into a bedroom that was clearly once occupied by someone who designed catalogs for Pottery Barn Kids. There's another closed door that leads to yet another room -- this one entirely pink -- where there are two beds holding two rotting corpses each, varying in size. Michonne wipes away tears, then sees the mother in a chair behind her, the back of her head long since blown out. It's not clear whether they all killed themselves because of the zombie apocalypse or the room's décor.
Hearing Carl coming, Michonne darts out of the room and closes the door, telling Carl there's a dog in there and not a baby. Rather than pushing, Carl decides to share what's on his mind. "My dad let me name her," he says. "Maybe her and Andre are together somewhere." Michonne gently says it's time to get back and gently steers him out of the room, because Rick will worry if they're late. That is of course the least of Rick's worries.
He's still under the creaking bed, listening to its new occupant snoring softly over him, when another member of this new group comes in to demand the bed. "It's claimed," the other man says without getting up. Soon Rick is watching the feet of two men grappling, which is one way to save a lot of time and money on fight choreography. But before long, one of the men is on the floor, his head a foot from Rick's face, as Rick wills him not to see him. Which doesn't work. Lucky for Rick, his opponent has his hands around the man's throat, making it impossible to warn of Rick's presence. Finally the eyes glaze over and close, and the new guy announces, "My bed now, jack-off," and proceeds to take over the vital work of inadvertently crushing Rick, with one boot dangling off the side of the bed. This is probably not a sustainable situation for our hero.
Glenn wakes up in the back of the moving truck, and Tara hastily explains that the truck seemed safer than the side of the road after he passed out. Glenn asks if they passed a bus, and Tara reluctantly says they did. "They were all dead," she says. So that must have been after Maggie and Bob and Sasha cleaned it out, then. The even worse news is that they passed it three hours ago. I know that the zombie apocalypse erased all the freeways, but that means they must be at least a hundred miles away by now. Glenn bangs on the back window to stop the truck, but all he gets from Abraham for his trouble is a casual middle finger. Tara joins in, but the truck doesn't stop until Glenn spiderwebs the back window with a rifle stock.
The moment it does, they drop the tailgate and hop out. Abraham and Rosita climb out of the cab, Abraham telling them to get back in, because they're behind schedule. Eugene is also out of the truck and glancing around as Abraham gives Glenn an unnecessary lecture on how to survive by sticking together. "Even with all that gear on your shoulder, you won't last a night. Not by yourself." Well, if Tara could strip off his riot gear and pack it for him while he was unconscious, she can probably be of some help. Glenn is unmoved, but Abraham physically stops him from leaving. "The fate of the entire damn human race might depend on it," he declares. Glenn pushes him away, but his curiosity is aroused. "I'm Sergeant Abraham Ford," says the guy I've been calling Abraham. "And these are my companions, Rosita Espinosa and Dr. Eugene Porter. We're on a mission to get Eugene to Washington, D.C. Eugene's a scientist. And he knows exactly what caused this mess." Wow, that sounds like some stakes there. Either that or Abraham is completely batfuck.
After the ads, do we get to find out the answer? Well, Glenn asks and Eugene pipes up, "It's classified." How convenient. Abraham explains that Eugene's been on his sat-phone to D.C. until a couple of weeks ago, and they could use Glenn's help. "Sorry," Glenn says, and starts walking with Tara at his side. She hurriedly explains to Glenn (and the viewers) that she had to get them off the road, but she's written down every turn and can get him back to the bus. Assuming the ink doesn't wear off before they finish walking back, that is. Tara's also been talking to Abraham, who is following them back up the road as he insists, "There is zero chance you will ever find your wife again. Alive or dead." He makes what he thinks is a sensitive speech about love and loss and how, unlike Maggie, Glenn still has a chance. Glenn responds to this by decking Abraham (yeah, right) and walking on.
Abraham isn't about to let that slide, so he tackles Glenn from behind and the fight is on, while Tara and Rosita try to separate them. I don't care how tough Glenn is; given their disparity in size, the fight should be over instantly. Eugene just stands by the truck, looking maddeningly blank and entitled and bemulleted and generally like a possible future Carl. And of course this is the moment when a walker comes out of the trees alongside the road, noticed by nobody but Eugene. He calls out to the others, but they all ignore him or can't hear over the perfectly even matchup between a hulking Army sergeant and a featherweight pizza boy. So Eugene grabs a gun. His preliminary fumbling with it inspires zero confidence, and now more walkers are coming out of the cornfield on the other side of the road.
Eugene manages to fire off a couple of wild bursts, hitting nary a walker but somehow leaving a line of bullet holes in the truck, even though the recoil should have spun him in the exact opposite direction. The others leave off scrapping and come running, Abraham yelling at him to stop firing, even as Eugene uselessly fills a walker's torso with lead. Tara, Glenn and Rosita join the battle, and soon a dozen or more walkers lie dead on the ground. Abraham snatches the gun away from Eugene and turns back to the truck, which is now dribbling fuel onto the road from a ruptured gas tank. Never at a loss for words, Abraham makes another speech about the vagaries of cruel fate in this unpredictable world of horrors, and it goes like this: "Son of a dick."
Adding to Rick's woes is an intermittent thumping sound that someone is making downstairs, every couple of seconds. Thud… thud… thud…. He's had quite enough of this shit, so he sneaks out from under the bed, slowly wriggling around that dangling boot. He stands there for a minute with the two unconscious men, until one of their companions hollers up the stairs for them to come down. Rick dodges out of there and into the teenager's room even as this guy is coming up the stairs. He hides in the sun porch off that bedroom, lurking just inside the doorway -- a doorway that the guy comes right up to with a tennis ball in hand, which he bounces off the wall a couple of times. At least that explains the thudding, but the downside is that all he has to do is lean forward a degree and turn his head. Lucky for Rick, he doesn't, which is more believable than the idea that anyone could hang around these cold-blooded thugs for any amount of time without getting killed for that infuriating tennis ball-bouncing habit.
Rick attempts to open the windows, with no luck -- maybe try the latch, genius -- until he hears the commotion of one of the men claiming that there's a freshly washed woman's shirt in the house, meaning somebody must be here. Rick stays out of sight, grabbing a trophy to use as a weapon if necessary, as the men head back downstairs. As they're arguing about who gets dibs when they find her, Rick tries to sneak back into the master bedroom where the man is still laid out on the floor, but has to duck into a bathroom when one of the men comes back up to get a gun. Imagine the mutual surprise between Rick and the man who is sitting on the toilet looking up at him. Rick reacts first and starts choking the guy, who is so uncouth he apparently craps with his pants on, and although there's some scrabbling for a lose pair of scissors, Rick eventually renders his opponent unconscious and claims the gun he had on him without any of the others being the wiser. Don't forget to make a sign that reads, "Now I have a machine gun, ho ho ho."
After the ads, Rick manages to open a bathroom window. He tosses a jacket out onto the porch roof and follows it with the gun, putting the jacket on before gingerly easing himself over the eaves and dropping to the back porch below. He sneaks around near the front, staying as low as the house's foundation, and is soon tucked under the corner where the porch meets the house. Just as Tennis Ball Guy comes out and starts in with his accursed bouncing. Seriously, Rick should probably kill him just for that.
Abraham is under the truck, pleasantly sharing a story of how he was in one of these trucks when a camel stuffed with C4 exploded. "We were within twenty feet of a blast that sent that animal's hump half a click into the desert. And we drove home. So you tell me, how in the holy hell did you kill this truck?" Eugene looks at him and says robotically, "A fully amped-up state and an ignorance of rapid-firing weapons." Well, ask a silly question. Rosa gives Glenn back the Polaroid of sleeping Maggie he apparently dropped, and Glenn tells Abraham, "Sorry about your ride. I hope you guys make it to Washington." So they've made up just in time to split up. He gives Abraham the rifle he borrowed, and Tara gives Rosita back hers, and they start walking. Rosita starts following them, saying, "What the hell else are we gonna do?" "Go to Washington!" Abraham hollers after her, like it's obvious. "Fix the whole damn world!" Yes, but why? Eugene says to Abraham, "That way's clear. Who knows what's north?" Uh, isn't Washington north? Eugene tells Abraham that they'll go with Glenn and Tara until they find another vehicle. "Trust me. I'm smarter than you." And here I thought he was along for his charm. They grab some stuff out of the back of the truck and start walking after the others, Eugene wearing an oddly complacent half-smile.
Rick is still hiding out under Tennis Ball Guy, who on top of everything else has started whistling and spitting off the deck. How did such an irritating specimen survive before the zombie apocalypse, for chrissake? He tucks into a can of food, and Rick looks out across the yard and sees what he's no doubt been dreading this whole time: Carl and Michonne returning from their supply run. Gripping his gun, Rick prepares to haul himself to his feet and open fire before Tennis Ball Guy spots them, despite being outnumbered and outgunned. But at the very last second, yells and shots start coming from inside the house. Tennis Ball Guy rushes inside without ever having noticed anything amiss, and Rick takes this moment to run to meet the others and tell them to get going… which they do. I hope they didn't leave anything valuable in the house, but then again most of what they own is in the bags that Michonne and Carl filled up on their supply run anyway.
Tara and Abraham are walking in the back of the pack, and Abraham is trying to make friends with Tara, saying he respects Glenn's persistence and Tara's loyalty to him. Yeah, the Governor thought she was loyal too. That said, Abraham tells Tara, "Saving the world, it's just more important. I mean, even if he does find his wife, so what? How long do you think they'll live happily ever after if we don't get Eugene up to Washington?" Tara assures Abraham that she isn't a good person, and she wonders why Abraham is going. He claims he just wants to save the world, and Tara says, "You don't have to tell me why. Just don't lie to me." Something else she got more than enough of with the Governor, I'm guessing. I say that if anyone has some explaining to do, it's Eugene. Where does a scientist get off sporting a mullet like that, anyway?
Rick, Carl and Michonne are walking along a set of railroad tracks, so you can probably guess where this is going. Carl pleasantly offers Michonne a shot of Crazy Cheese, because he's all better after their therapy earlier, just before they come up on an abandoned boxcar. They contemplate it for a long while, and Michonne asks Rick, "What do you think?" I think it's a boxcar. After a long pause, Rick answers, "Let's go." He symbolically discards the bandage he's been wearing on his right hand for a while now, and repeats, "Let's go." What, is the boxcar going to pull out of the station or something? No, as they walk on, we see that a banner has been hung on the side: "Sanctuary for all, community for all. Those who arrive survive." Sounds familiar. They head on up the tracks. It should be interesting to see what happens when Rick meets Carol and Tyreese there, don't you think? That doesn't necessarily mean it will be, though.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.