'The Walking Dead' Recap: Love, and Sex, in the Apocalypse
Warning: This recap for “The Next World" episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.
A few weeks in post-apocalypse time have passed between the events of the midseason premiere — i.e. the wipeout of the Anderson family and Carl’s right eye — and my, how things have changed. Rick’s suddenly become Mr. Sunshine, and the lightened moods of everyone in Alexandria almost make the episode feel like a sitcom. A Walking Dead comic book favorite could be the newest town resident. And, in one of the more shocking storylines ever that doesn’t involve a death, two major characters decide they’re going to turn friendship into romance. And no, we’re not talking about Rick and Daryl.
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The Road Trip
Not that the Rick/Daryl bromance isn’t in full swing. With everyone in town pitching in to try to rebuild after the destruction caused by the tower falling and the quarry walker invasion, Rick and Daryl are going on a supply run. They’re armed with wish lists: Dr. Denise has asked Daryl to look for soda for her girlfriend, Tara, and Eugene has advised them that sorghum is a “criminally underrated grain that could change the game with our food situation, from scary to hunky-dunky.”
So with a grumpy Daryl begging him not to, a playful Rick pops a CD into the car’s sound system (the appropriately road trip-themed rockabilly tune “Action Packed” by Ronnie Dee) and begins to snap his fingers and sing along to the music, and they’re off.
The first stop: a sorghum farm, where they find a commercial truck loaded with cans of food and other goodies like toothpaste (the item Michonne requested Rick bring home). “Law of averages,” Rick says, repeating his earlier sentiment to Daryl that, after everything they’ve been through recently, it’s their time to find supplies and new people.
The truck starts, and they drive off, taking a new way back home. They spot a gas station and stop to check it out, and while they’re talking about the contents of a vending machine Daryl found, someone comes from behind and tackles Rick. He and Daryl pull their guns quickly, and the man, who’s wearing a bandana mask, says he was just running from walkers a half a mile away. There are about 10 of them, he says, and they’re about 11 minutes away.
“Thanks for letting us know,” says Rick. New guy: “Yeah. There’s more of them than us, right? Gotta stick together.”
New guy then asks if they have a camp, and Daryl says no. He apologizes for running into them, and says he’s leaving. “If this is the next world, I hope it’s good to you guys.”
Rick interrupts and tells the new guy his name, then asks his.
“Paul Rovia,” he says, pulling his mask down to reveal a neatly-trimmed beard and long hair.
“But my friends used to call me Jesus,” he adds, while standing with his arms spread out at his sides, cross-style, just to put a point on why his friends called him Jesus. “Your pick.”
Daryl’s still suspicious of this stranger who crashed into Rick, but Rick starts asking him the questions — “how many walkers have you killed?” etc. — to suss out whether he’s worthy of being recruited. Jesus, meanwhile, is already running away. And as the pals continue to debate, they hear gunshots behind the gas station. Except they’re not, gunshots, that is… they’re firecrackers, which Jesus lit to distract them, so he can use the keys he lifted from Rick when he “ran into him” to steal the truck full of food and supplies. The truck also has the candy and soda machine still chained to it, which Rick and Daryl see as they run back to the front to watch Jesus drive away.
Daryl and Rick see the truck has left a trail of tire marks on the road, and they begin running all out to try to catch up with Jesus. They find the vending machine along the route, and Daryl smashes the glass and retrieves some snacks and cans of Orange Crush. He tells Rick it was a special request from Denise, and Rick agrees they should try to get her anything she wants after she saved Carl’s life. They share one of the sodas for quick hydration, and Rick grabs something from inside the machine and puts it in his pocket. They resume running along the tire mark trail, and catch up with Jesus, who has stopped to change a tire. Rick and Daryl sneak through the woods and attack him, tie him up, and prepare to leave him in the road. He suggests they talk, but Rick says he’ll be fine, the knots aren’t that tight. They get in the truck, feeling pretty clever about retrieving the truck, but Jesus just chuckles at them.
“So long, ya prick!” Daryl yells at him as they drive off. “Today is still the day,” Rick adds, as Daryl shares snacks with him while they drive towards home. Rick spots a barn along the way and pulls off the road and into the field to check it out. Just then, Daryl hears a banging sound on the roof of the truck and thinks it might be Jesus. Rick slams on the breaks. Yep, it’s Jesus who falls to the ground.
Rick chases him in the truck, and Daryl jumps out and chases him around the field. Rick parks the truck and gets out to deal with a pack of walkers who’ve broken free of the ropes tethering them to some vehicles, and Jesus runs into the truck and grabs Daryl’s gun. Daryl jumps in, and Jesus points the gun at him and tells him to duck; there was a walker right behind Daryl, and Jesus shot it.
“Thanks,” Daryl says, and then punches Jesus. “That’s my gun!” They continue to tussle, and accidentally knock the truck into neutral. It starts to roll, right towards a lake, and as they jump out, the door hits Jesus’s head and knocks him out. The truck — with all those supplies — goes right out into the middle of the lake, where it sinks, with one last giant “glurg” in the water ending Michonne’s chances of getting that toothpaste.
“You all right?” Rick asks.
“Yeah, law of averages,” an even more pessimistic Daryl says. He just wants to see if any of the vehicles in the field will start so they can go home. And he wants to leave Jesus there, until Rick points out that Jesus saved him from the walker and never pulled a weapon on him.
Daryl: “Fine. Let’s put him up a tree.”
They don’t, of course, and on the way back to Alexandria, with Jesus still unconscious, Rick teases Daryl that he never would have left Jesus there. “I woulda!” Daryl insists. “Right up in the tree. I woulda.”
“No, almost as soon as we got to Alexandria, you got it,” Rick says. “You saw. You, and Michonne, Glenn… you all tried to tell me, so shut up. ‘Cuz I’m finally listening.”
When they reach Alexandria, they carry Jesus to Denise’s so she can check him out. Daryl tells her he wasn’t able to bring back soda, and it’s Jesus’s fault. After Denise examines him, Daryl and Rick put Jesus on a mattress, with a cup of water and a note from Rick beside him.
Rick: “It is pretty stupid of us to go out there, isn’t it?”
Daryl: “Yeah. Do it again tomorrow?”
Rick: “Yep.”
Rick and Michonne
After Rick and Daryl’s not-so-excellent adventure, Rick goes home and collapses on his couch. Michonne comes in carrying the baby monitor, kicks his arm, and tells him to move. He sits up and makes space for her, and she shows him Judith being cute on the monitor. As he takes off his boots, they share how they’ve both had crazy days, and they lounge back into the deep sofa. “You wanna talk about it?” she asks him, but he says he just wants to turn his brain off for a minute. Does she want to tell him about her day? She says no, and he reaches into his pocket.
“Oh, I got you something,” he says, handing her a roll of mints he took from the gas station vending machine.
She laughs. “Is this instead of the toothpaste?”
Rick: “Mmhmm. Well, I do have a crate of toothpaste for you. It’s currently at the bottom of a lake.”
Michonne: “Oh, so you had a day?!”
“All on account of your dental hygiene. Have your mints,” he says, patting her hand, which turns into hand holding, which turns into them interlacing their fingers, which turns into him leaning towards her, which turns into them kissing, slowly, which turns into a full makeout session on the couch.
Which turns into them in bed, naked, sleeping, with her arm across his chest, and their weapons beside them on the nightstands.
Then, a voice: “Rick… Rick, wake up!”
It’s Jesus, standing in the bedroom. Rick and Michonne wake up and jump right out of bed, standing in front of him, still totally naked, holding a gun and katona.
Jesus: “We should talk.”
Funniest Moments
Sure, Abraham and Eugene can be counted on for comical moments, but the average episode of TWD does not include a lot of laughs. Not so with this one. Our favorite lighter moments:
— Denise has a habit of moving her arms a lot when she talks. So when she awkwardly asks Daryl to find “pop” for Tara, he mimics her and waves his arms when responding to her: “What the hell is pop?” (“Soda,” if you’re not from Ohio.)
— After Eugene’s speech about the potential of sorghum, he tells Daryl and Rick to “think about it.” They both just stare at him, Rick while slowly letting the car drift away.
— When Rick and Daryl pull guns on Jesus after catching up to him and the stolen truck, he asks them, “Do you even have any ammo?” They both answer by firing a round at a nearby walker.
— On the way back to Alexandria, Daryl is riding in the back seat with a still unconscious Jesus. Rick keeps swerving the car so Jesus will fall over into Daryl, who’s still crabby about “D” and Honey stealing his motorcycle and bow and arrow, and about the fact that they made him doubt his assertion that more new people should be recruited into the town. Rick does the swerve trick again, and Daryl gives Jesus a hard shove to the other side of the car.
Zombie Bites:
– Michonne also bonds with Spencer. When she sees him heading off into the woods alone, with a shovel strapped to his back, she follows him. Turns out he’s trying to find his mom, or rather the zombified version of her, so he can be the one to kill her. Carl, out in the woods with Enid, finds Deanna first and leads her to Spencer and Michonne. No one, after all, understands losing your mom, and being the one to prevent her from becoming one of the walking dead, like Carl does. Spencer does stab Deanna in the back of the head, and buries her while Michonne carves a giant “D” in a nearby tree to serve as a grave marker.
— And though she’s unhappy with Carl for taking chances in the woods, she tells him he should have killed Deanna. He tells her he couldn’t, because it wasn’t his place. “It should be someone who loved her, someone who’s family,” he says. “I’d do it for you. I would.” Michonne, touched, hugs him, and says, “Me, too.”
— Maggie approached Enid, who’s writing in a notebook, about why she hasn’t been interacting with the rest of the group, especially after helping Glenn get home and helping save Maggie when she was trapped on the lookout perch. Enid doesn’t have a good answer, but could her standoffishness with the Alexandrians have something to do with that comment she made to Carl in “JSS,” the one that seemed to tie her to the Wolves? Maybe she’s feeling guilty about something and is afraid of how everyone will react if they find out more about her past?
— Jesus/Paul Rovia is the comic book’s Paul Monroe. But that last name had already been used for Deanna’s family, so he’s Paul Rovia in the series.
— There’s a new sign on the Alexandria gate: “Welcome to the Alexandria Safe Zone. Mercy for the lost, Vengeance for the plunderers.”
O.K., Dead-heads, let’s hear your reactions to “The Next World.” Is Jesus destined to be the newest Alexandrian? Do you think his charm is masking some sinister intentions, or is he genuine? How many times did you laugh out loud during the episode? And at what point, exactly, did you realize Michonne and Rick were gonna, you know, do it? Are you on #TeamRichonne?
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
