'The Walking Dead' Recap: 'Don't Give Up on Us'
Warning: This recap for the “Heads Up” episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.
Glenn’s alive! And other things that happened on the way to the Season 6 midseason finale…
Glenn
Have you heard? He’s alive! As so many had guessed, those were Nicholas’s innards being eaten by the zombie herd when last we saw Glenn. While the walkers were busy snacking, Glenn scooched his body underneath the dumpster and waited the walkers out, not emerging until the next day. He drinks his last bit of water and looks around to see the broken flare gun — no way to send that message he’d promised he would if he was okay.
Just then, a voice yells “Heads up!” and a bottle of water lands in front of Glenn. It’s from Enid, standing on the roof of the building next to the dumpster. Glenn’s surprised to see her, and calls after her as she runs back into the building. He climbs in through a window, and is still calling after Enid as he finds himself in the middle of what appears to be an antiques store. Finally, Enid tells him there’s another bottle of water, and wants him to take it and leave. Glenn wants to know what happened in Alexandria, with the gunfire and the horn noise.
“What happened is what always happens,” she says. “People die.”
Related: Take a Bite Out of Our ‘Walking Dead’ Recaps
He asks her if the herd broke through the walls, and she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. She tells him the emergency in Alexandria was people. Glenn wants to know if Maggie is okay, but Enid has already taken off. He follows her out of the building, and he finds the dead end where David, husband of Betsy, is propped up against the fence he couldn’t make it over.
David has turned, so Glenn stabs him, then finds the note he’d written for Betsy. Glenn’s dejected by just how badly things have gone in such a short amount of time, but he forges ahead and finds Enid inside a diner. He tells her he’s taking her back to Alexandria, but she refuses to go, telling him they’re not friends. He agrees, but says he’s doing it for Maggie, because she wouldn’t want him to leave Enid out there alone.
Enid walks away and Glenn grabs her, but she pulls a gun on him. He bets she won’t pull the trigger and takes the gun from her. She calls him an a–hole.
“You point a gun at me, and I’m the a–hole?” he asks. He tells her they’re going home, and because the herd was headed towards Alexandria, they’re taking the main road to maintain visibility. Along the way, Enid stops to kill a walker, and spots some green balloons that were a part of Rick’s original plan to deal with the quarry herd. She takes them, to use to distract walkers on the way to Alexandria, and Glenn tells her there are more balloons, string, and a helium tank in the bushes. While she inflates some of them, he asks her who she lives with in Alexandria.
Olivia, she says, adding, “But I was on my own… orphaned by walkers.”
“Me, too. Probably,” Glenn says, telling her he understands that she’s scared. She denies it, but he insists that’s why she gives up, because she’s afraid to lose people again. “You honor the dead by going on,” he tells her. “Even when you’re scared. You live because they don’t get to. You think your parents wanted you waving around a gun because you’re afraid?”
“We don’t have to talk,” she tells him.
When they arrive at Alexandria, they’re both shocked at what they find: the walls surrounded by walkers. Enid starts to walk away. “What’s the point?” she asks. “The world is trying to die. We’re supposed to just let it.”
Glenn: “No, you’re wrong! We’re not supposed to just let the world die. And I’m sure as hell not gonna let you die.”
“I’m sure your wife will forgive you,” Enid tells him.
“It’s not for her anymore,” he says. “The walls are still up. The houses are still up. We’ll find out the rest. Okay?”
She nods.
The Ricktatorship
In Alexandria, Rick is checking the integrity of the walls, while Morgan is practicing his bo staff skills. Rick tells his friend they need to talk later, and then finds the spot in the wall where fresh blood has been dripping down.
He then visits Maggie on watch near the gate, and she tells him she’s waiting for Glenn, or any sign from Glenn that he’s okay. “When we go out there, it’s never easy… it’s always a fight,” Rick tells her. “We’ve come back from harder things. Glenn, Daryl, Abraham, and Sasha… they will, too.” He doesn’t think they should wait until their friends return to tackle the problem of the herd surrounding Alexandria, though. They have food and water, so he thinks they should take some time and really put thought into how they can “do it right… clear [the walkers] so [Glenn and the others] can walk right in.”
Rick discusses potential plans for dealing with the herd with Michonne, and says he thinks they should keep plans to themselves. Michonne disagrees; they all live together in the town, she says, so the Alexandrians should be included in efforts to save the town. Just then, Deanna shows up with a copy of her designs for an expanded Alexandria. Rick, with all his Ricktatorship-ian attitude, dismisses her by saying they have other things on their plate at the moment, but Deanna is undeterred. “These are for what Alexandria can be after this,” she says. “Because one way or another, there’s going to be an ‘after this.’”
Morgan
Morgan visits Denise at the clinic, and is trying to talk to her about something when Rick passes by and asks if they can talk. Rick isn’t inviting Morgan for a one-on-one convo, though: Carol and Michonne are also in the room Rick takes Morgan to. Rick starts by telling Morgan what happened to him with the RV, with the five Wolves who tried to kill him on his way back to Alexandria. Rick says Carol told him Morgan refused to kill any of the Wolves when they attacked the safe zone.
Carol asks Morgan if he let any of the Wolves go. “Yes, I did,” he answers. “I didn’t want to have to kill five people I didn’t have to kill.” A flustered Carol yells that the Wolves burned people alive. Morgan says he knows, then asks Rick why he didn’t kill Morgan back in Kings County, in “Clear,” when Morgan was in a crazy state and pulled a knife on him. Rick says it’s because he knew who Morgan was, aside from his state at the time.
Related: ‘The Walking Dead’ Postmortem: Lennie James on Morgan’s Backstory and What’s Ahead
Morgan says back then, he was just as likely to kill Rick as look at him. He says Rick and Michonne let him live then, which made him available to help Daryl and Aaron. He also points out that if he hadn’t helped Daryl and Aaron, maybe they would have died, and the Wolves wouldn’t have made their way to Alexandria. “I don’t know what’s right anymore… because I did want to kill those men,” Morgan says. “But I also know that people can change, because everyone here has. All life is precious. And that idea changed me. It brought me back, and it keeps me living.”
“I just don’t think it can be that easy,” Michonne tells him. “Things aren’t as simple as four words. I don’t think they ever were.”
Morgan asks Rick if he thinks Morgan belongs there. “Making it now… do you really think you can do that without getting blood on your hands?” Rick asks.
Morgan: “I don’t know.”
Later, Morgan reconnects with Denise, and asks her about the town’s supply of antibiotics. She says there’s plenty, and as he gets a sense he can trust her, Morgan tells her he’s not asking for himself. He’s asking for someone else — someone he didn’t want to get her involved with if she doesn’t want to get involved. She follows him to the place where he’s hiding the injured Wolf — stealthily, they both think. But Carol had been watching them, and after getting Jessie to babysit Judith, Carol follows them, unlocks the door to the apartment, and comes face-to-face with Morgan.
“Who the hell do you have in that cell?” she asks.
Rick, Carl, and Ron
Rick, Carl, and Ron are walking through town together, and pass Father Gabriel taping up signs for a prayer circle later that day. Rick tears them down, with Carl chastising him, and Gabriel puts them right back up.
Rick and Carl have staked out a spot near one of the walls where they’re giving Ron a lesson in how to shoot a gun. Actually, Rick’s giving Ron tips, and Carl is standing there being a jerk, making antagonizing comments as if he’s not aware that Ron already wants both Grimes fellas dead. Rick tells Ron it’s natural instinct, when facing someone else holding a gun, to raise yours and start shooting. He tells him that will result in your own death. Instead, you have to take the time to raise your gun to your eye level, then shoot.
“You gotta be strong enough to wait for your moment,” Carl says, again, seemingly completely unaware that that is exactly what Ron is doing.
Rick tells Ron to keep the gun he’s practicing with, to get a feel for it. Ron asks if he can practice shooting “at the walkers.” Rick says no, that it will draw the walkers to one place. Ron then asks if he can shoot elsewhere in town, where the sound will spread out evenly, to which Rick responds with a look that Ron wisely takes as a “no.” He gets no bullets, but tells the Grimes guys he just wants to learn more.
“You will,” says the cocky Carl.
Later, Ron tosses something into the pantry while Olivia is on watch duty, to distract her so he can sneak into the weapons supply room. He opens a box of bullets and takes a handful, which he presumably has in his pocket — or in his gun — when he starts following Carl down the street, gun in hand.
And the Walls Come Tumbling Down
Throughout the episode, the lookout tower in Alexandria, the one Spencer was in when the Wolves ran a semi-truck into it, has been crumbling. At first, small pieces of debris cracked off, then entire pieces of the structure.
And at the end, with Carol confronting Morgan, with a gun-toting Ron following Carl down the street, and with Maggie, Rick, and everyone else in town spotting a big green bouquet of balloons floating through the sky and assuming it’s a message from Glenn, the big tower comes crashing to the ground, taking out a huge wall with it. The huge wall that was the only thing separating the already decimated population of Alexandria from the throng of walkers just waiting to run (well, lumber) amok on them.
Zombie Bites:
* The color green symbolizes nature, life, fertility, safety. Think it’s a coincidence that Enid and Glenn’s balloons are green?
* Yes, Steven Yeun’s name is back in the show’s opening credits, after being MIA for the three episodes after “Thank You.”
* What’s our consensus on Spencer at this point? He stopped that raid on the Alexandria pantry, then swiped food himself. He blamed his mother for the Alexandrians’ unpreparedness in being able to defend themselves, but he wavers in seeming brave one minute and childishly indulgent the next. In this episode, he tries to shimmy across a grappling hook rope to get outside Alexandria, so he could get a car and lead the walkers away from the fences. It was a foolish move that could have gotten any number of people killed, including himself, and forced Rick and the others to come to his rescue. Yet, at least he tried. Is Spencer capable of being a hero, or of at least pulling his weight in securing the town? Or is he one of those most likely to be killed, and soon, while taking a few others with him?
Photos: ‘The Walking Dead’ Dead: Where Are They Now?
* Eugene, when Rosita clanks two blades together and startles him while teaching a weapons class: “Hey! I’m a weapons novice holding a significant blade here, and there are people in my proximity with open-toed shoes.”
* Rick bonded a bit with Tobin, who offered to help him build a brace for a section of the wall. Tobin told him everyone was afraid of Rick at first. “Things moved slow here, and then things just started moving fast. Too fast,” Tobin says. “But don’t give up on us.” Tobin seems like a good dude who wants to learn how to survive in the real world now, which of course makes us fear for his chances at surviving to Season 6.5.
* While dropping off Judith at Jessie’s house, Carol has a brief exchange with Sam, who’s still too frightened by recent events to leave the upstairs area of his house. He asks her about the “monsters,” if his dad became one, and if you become one when you kill people. Carol’s response, which visibility disturbs her once it leaves her mouth: “They only thing that keeps you from becoming a monster is killing.”
OK, Dead-heads, let’s hear your reactions to “Heads Up”: How will Rick and company deal with the wall coming down? Will Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham make it back in time to help? Will Glenn and Enid find a way inside to help? And are the walkers waiting to get in the biggest threat to Alexandria… or are other humans going to take advantage of the falling tower?
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
