'The Walking Dead' Recap: 'Are You Sure We Can Do It? We Can Beat 'Em?'
Warning: This recap for the “Not Tomorrow Yet" episode of The Walking Dead contains storyline and character spoilers.
Another new, and surprising, romance sparks; a long-running romance ends, harshly; and Rick’s group finds out they may have grossly underestimated the Saviors. Negan’s introduction, as a result, seems likely to happen even sooner than the Season 6 finale.
The Carol Show
She’s been MIA since the midseason premiere, but Carol’s back in action in an opening montage that also keeps the series’ recent forays into comedy going. Backed by Parsonfield’s infectious “Weeds or Wildflowers,” Carol goes shopping at the Alexandria pantry — taking the canned beets and water chestnuts no one else wants — gathers acorns in the woods, kills a walker (getting her nice, white shirt all messy), selects a flowery, clean outfit after showering away the zombie innards, and bakes batches of beet and acorn cookies that she puts in plastic containers and distributes to her fellow townsfolk, dishing up a smile with every package of beet-sweetened goodies. It feels like an episode of a show-within-the-show, a zombie sitcom that might be called It’s Carol! or That Carol or The Carol Peletier Show.
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There’s even potential romance ahead, as Carol knocks on Tobin’s door to delivery some sweets. Tobin protests taking food that should go to the children, then says he isn’t a fan of beets. Carol tells him to try them, and he agrees they’re the best beet and acorn cookies he’s ever eaten.
“Are you screwing with me?” Carol asks, and Tobin, continuing their mutual flirtation, assures her that her weird, pink, veggie and nut cookies are “amazing.”
Rick and the others arrive back in town in the RV, and Michonne tells her friends they’ve return with enough food supplies for a month. Rick tells Sasha to gather everyone at the church for a meeting, and when Carol asks what’s going on, he tells her, “We’re gonna have to fight.” So much for Carol’s brief respite from the uglier side of life in the apocalypse. As she takes a container with a single cookie out of her tote, she’s approached by Morgan, who wants to talk. He indicates they’ve haven’t spoken in weeks, and he wonders why she never told Rick about him sparing and holding hostage the Wolf.
“Can we just forget it, move past it?” she asks. Morgan tells her, “You know what I did. You don’t want to tell anyone… it’s kinda like you did it, too.”
“No it’s not! Just go.”
They both walk away, and we see Carol has put that single cookie on Sam’s grave.
The Plan
At the church, Rick stands in front — with Jesus sitting off to the side — and tells everyone Maggie made a deal that means they’ll have eggs, butter, fresh vegetables… but The Hilltop colony is not giving it to them for nothing. Another group of survivors called the Saviors, who tried to kill Abraham, Sasha, and Daryl on the road, have to be taken out, Rick says. That’s not only the payment for the goods from The Hilltop, but it’s something they must do to protect themselves, he says. Sooner or later, the Saviors, like the Wolves, would find Alexandria and kill some of them.
“And the they would try to own us and we would try to stop them, but by then, in that kind of fight, low on food, we could lose,” he says. “This is the only way to be sure, as sure as we can get, that we win… we do this for The Hilltop, it’s how we keep this place, it’s how we feed this place.”
Rick adds that this needs to be a group decision, and that anyone who objects should speak up now. Morgan stands up in the back of the church. “Are you sure we can do it?” he asks. “We can beat ‘em?”
Rick: “What this group has done, what we’ve learned, what we’ve become, all of us, yes, I’m sure.”
Morgan: “Then all we have to do is just tell ‘em that.”
Oh, Morgan. Rick tells him the Saviors don’t compromise, and Morgan tries to talk his way around it, saying he’s not suggesting a compromise, he’s saying give them a choice. “Where there’s life, there’s possibility,” Morgan continues to repeat, still neglecting to recognize that his friend Eastman’s philosophy only worked in the woods because they were living in the woods, without the constant threat of the dead and the living.
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But Rick presents the idea to those assembled at the church, saying, “Morgan wants to talk to them first. I think that would be a mistake. But it’s not up to me… who else wants to talk to the Saviors?”
Aaron stands up. “What happened here, we won’t let that happen again. I won’t.”
“Looks like it’s settled,” Rick says. “We know exactly what this is. We don’t shy from it. We live. We kill them all.
“We don’t all have to kill, but people who are gonna stay here, they do have to accept it,” he adds, looking at Morgan.
Love, Apocalypse Style
That night, Carol is in bed, but can’t sleep. She takes a journal out of her nightstand, and turns to a page where she’s keeping track of the people she’s killed. Karen, David, Lizzie, Ryan (Lizzie and Mika’s dad), several Wolves and Terminus residents are on it, and she puts her kill total at 18. Carol gets dressed and goes outside, where she walks around and indulges her new habit: smoking. She passes Tobin’s house, where he’s sitting on the porch. He wants her to share her smoke. “Not for you,” she says. And when he asks why not: “’Cuz, a–hole,” she tells him. He tells her he’s worried about tomorrow, when the group goes off to take care of the Saviors. He’s not going, he says, but he’s worried about her, even though she “can do things that just terrify me.”
It’s because she’s a mom, he tells her. “It’s not the cookies or the smiles, it’s the hard stuff. The scary stuff. It’s how you can do it. It’s a strength. You’re a mom to most of the people here.”
“You, too?” she asks.
“No,” Tobin tells her. “You’re something else to me.”
She smiles, and they lean in and kiss. “It’s not tomorrow yet,” Carol says.
Another couple, Maggie and Glenn, are talking, and she tells him she has to go along on the mission to massacre the Saviors. She made the deal with Gregory, so she feels obligated to be a part of the payment for the food.
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And from the potential beginning of one couple, and an ominous moment with one of the gang’s most beloved pairs, we go to a harsh breakup, as Abraham has finally worked up the nerve to end things with Rosita. She doesn’t take it well when he packs a bag and says he’s leaving. “It happens,” he tells her, as she gets angry, crying, yelling, hitting him. “This is how I want it.”
“After everything we’ve been through, you are not walking out that door unless you can tell me why,” she yells at him. “Tell me! Tell me why!”
Abraham: “When I first met you, I thought you were the last woman on earth,” he says. “You’re not.”
Another new couple follows the downer scene with a milestone moment: Tara tells Denise she loves her; Denise tells Tara she’ll tell her she loves her when Tara gets back from her Saviors mission and supply run.
The Battle
After getting some intel on the Saviors from Hilltop resident Andy — who says there are two guards at the entrance and only one way in and out of the Saviors hideout — Rick and the others take off in a caravan that includes the RV and two other vehicles full of people (which also includes Michonne, Daryl, Glenn, Maggie, Tara, Aaron, Heath, Rosita, Abraham, Sasha, Jesus, Andy, and Carol). The plan is to attack the Saviors’ hideout at night, but first the caravan needs to stop for supplies. Rather, supply: Gregory’s head. That’s what Negan demanded of The Hilltop residents, so Rick says they’re going to give it to him, via a walker head they’ll tszuj to make it look like Gregory’s.
While looking for a suitable Gregory head substitute, Glenn and Heath bond over how lucky they’ve been that they haven’t had to kill anyone yet. They’re both worried about what they’re about to do to the Saviors. “Have you ever seen something that, afterwards… you didn’t want to sleep?” Glenn says. “And you weren’t hungry, because when you close your eyes, you could see it? And then you you try to eat… Killing somebody has gotta be worse than that.”
Rick gives further instruction about the attack, which they’ll carry out at midnight, but Carol takes issue with the fact that pregnant Maggie’s involved, and that she’s along for the trip at all. Rick says it was her choice, but Carol insists that she stay outside the Saviors compound, with Maggie, as they act as lookouts.
With a passable Gregory lookalike head found, Rick makes it more believable by punching the head a few times to break the nose. Andy, whose hand was damaged and bandaged after the fight with Daryl at The Hilltop, will deliver the head to the Saviors, telling them Gregory broke his hand fighting back, and he broke Gregory’s nose before the beheading, to explain away any suspicions about why the head doesn’t exactly match up to Gregory’s.
And that’s how the group gains entry to the Saviors hideout; Andy drives up and presents “Gregory,” and the two guards — after mocking him and calling him lots of names, as we quickly learn the Saviors are wont to do — agree to turn over Craig, the Hilltop resident they’d been holding hostage until they got Gregory’s head.
As one guard goes in to get Craig, Daryl sneaks up behind the other and slits his throat. Rick and the others run onto the scene, and they take away the dead Savior’s body before the other returns. When Guard 2 comes out with Craig, Rick’s group quickly kills him and enters the hideout. It’s a dark, prison-like structure with lots of closed metal doors. Rick’s goal is not only to kill the Saviors, but to find their arsenal storage room, so his group breaks into smaller groups and methodically goes through the place room by room, quietly opening doors, sneaking inside, and plunging knives into the brains of the sleeping Saviors.
Glenn and Heath are a team, and both dread when they open their first door and find a pair of sleeping Saviors inside. Glenn approaches one first, kneels on the floor beside his bed, and stabs his knife into the sleeping dude’s head. Then he starts to cry, having killed his first living human. Teary Heath approaches the other Savior, but Glenn steps in and kills him instead. He looks above the Savior’s bed and sees a collection of gruesome Polaroids, each depicting bloody corpses with various body parts removed. This was the Savior’s collection of souvenirs of his handiwork, apparently.
Unfortunately, Glenn’s efforts to prevent Heath from having to kill are for naught. While Abraham and Sasha are trying to break into a locked room, a Savior sneaks up on them and stabs Abraham. A fight ensues, and before the Savior goes down, he pulls an alarm. Other Saviors swarm, and Rick’s group engages in a gun battle with them. Glenn and Heath run into a room that turns out to house the arsenal supply. They shut the door behind them and begin shooting through it at the Saviors who were following them, and when they open the door, they see they — Glenn and Heath — have killed several men.
Outside, Carol and Maggie hear the alarm and Maggie says they have to go help. Carol angrily tries to stop her, asking her why she came on the mission. “What am I supposed to do?” Maggie asks.
“You’re supposed to be someone else,” Carol answers, and tells Maggie to stay outside the compound while she goes in to help the others.
Jesus, Tara, Gabriel, Andy, and Craig have also been waiting outside, and when the alarm sounds, Jesus tells Andy to take Craig back to The Hilltop, so Gregory can see Rick’s group saved him and the deal between the two groups will stand. Then Jesus heads inside — disguised, so the Saviors won’t recognize him — to help, and Gabriel sees an injured Savior lying in the grass outside the compound. The man sees Gabriel’s collar and may think he’s safe, but Gabriel points his gun at the Savior, and cites scripture to him. “Let not your heart be troubled.” The Savior: “You’re just as dead as me.” Gabriel continues to quote from John 14, and the Savior tells him, “You’re all dead… blood’s comin’.”
And Gabriel shoots him.
Inside, Rick’s group opens a door that reveals it’s daylight. They walk out into a yard, where several vehicles are parked. Heath and Tara get in a camper truck, and bid everyone goodbye as they head off on their two-week supply run. Heath’s still shaken by his actions, and when Glenn suggests he come back home with them before going away for two weeks, Heath tells him, “No man, I just wanna get out of here.”
Michonne talks to Rick, and tells him she wonders which one of the dead Saviors was Negan. She, and the rest of the group, think their mission is complete, that they’ve killed all the Saviors. Just then a guy comes out of the compound on a motorcycle — Daryl’s motorcycle, the one “D” and Honey stole from him. Daryl yells “Sonofab—h!” and, after the rider is shot and falls off the bike, Daryl makes a flying tackle at him. He begins beating him, asking him where he got the bike, and Rick puts his gun in the guy’s face. “Just do it! Like you did everyone else, right?
Before anyone can say anything else, a female voice comes out over the walkie-talkie the motorcycle rider was carrying.
“Lower your gun, prick!” she says, obviously watching the action in the yard.
“You, with the Colt Python… all of you, lower your weapons right now!”
Rick, picking up the walkie-talkie: “Come on out. Let’s talk.”
“We’re not coming out, but we will talk. We’ve got a Carol and a Maggie… thinking that’s something you want to chat about,” the woman says, as Rick and the group realize just how quickly the situation has turned.
Zombie Bites:
* The perfectly haunting song playing at the end of the episode: Hozier’s “Arsonist’s Lullabye.”
* Obligatory Eugene moment of levity following the Abraham/Rosita breakup and Rosita dissolving into sobs: Eugene, wearing a “Virginia is for Lovers” T-shirt, stands outside Rosita’s bedroom door, extolling the chewiness of Carol’s beet acorn cookies.
* Raise your hand if you would have guessed in the first half of the season that Rick and Father Gabriel would become pals who joke with each other. Rick asks Gabriel why he’s wearing his clerical outfit and priest collar for the mission to kill the Saviors. “I’m still who I was, I think,” Gabriel says. “And it’ll be harder for them to see me in the dark.”
* Andy, to Rick, after Rick punches fake Gregory head to break its nose: “The Saviors, they’re scary, but those pricks got nothin’ on you.”
* While the others are off fighting the Saviors, Morgan’s in Alexandria constructing something with metal bars. A better jail cell, perhaps, since the one they had didn’t prevent the Wolf or Jesus from escaping?
OK, Dead-heads, let’s hear your reactions to “Not Tomorrow Yet”: How badly did Rick and his crew underestimate the Saviors? Will the next episode be the one in which we’re introduced to Negan? Will Maggie and Carol survive the Saviors? Who else in the group do you think is in the most danger? And on the romance front, which was more shocking: Carol starting a little somethin’ somethin’ with Tobin, or the harsh way Abraham ended his relationship with Rosita?
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
