'The Walking Dead' Recap: So That's Where the Horn Was Coming From
Warning: This recap for the “JSS" episode of The Walking Dead contains storyline and character spoilers.
The second episode of Season 6 wasn’t so much a new story as it was one that happened parallel to the events in the season premiere. And just as Rick’s implementation of The Plan to lead the quarry pit zombies away from Alexandria shed new light on how ill-prepared the safety zone’s residents are to defend themselves, “JSS” enlightened a whole new group of Alexandrians on the dangers that lurk outside the Reg-designed walls. Unfortunately, it’s a lesson some of them learned too late.
There’s Something About Enid
Backstory alert: We got some on Enid, the quiet teen who’s already created even more of a rift between the Grimes and Anderson fams as she’s drawn the affection of both Carl and Ron. We’ve gotten hints going all the way back to Rick and the group’s arrival at Alexandria in Season 5 that there was more to Enid than meets the eye, and “JSS” suggests she might have some ties to one of the biggest threats to Alexandria’s safety.
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First, how Enid got to Alexandria: In flashback, she was in a car, which her parents were trying to start, when a pack of walkers attacked. Mom and Dad became zombie chow, which Enid witnessed after she locked herself inside the vehicle. Next, still in flashback, we see her walking alone towards a wooded area, where she sits, sobs, and writes in the dirt the letters “JSS.” She wanders off alone again and happens upon another car, occupied by a zombie. She stabs him, and again locks herself in the safety of the car, where she writes the letters “JSS” on the steamy window. Later, yet again walking alone, she spots a turtle, cracks it open, and starts eating it raw, her face smeared with Yertle’s blood. Revealing that turtles are a lot bonier than one might think, she uses the turtle’s carcass to spell out the letters “JSS.”
We see her travel solo once again, and she stops right outside the main gate to Alexandria. She looks at it, and then starts to turn away, before writing something on her dirt-covered hand and walking to the gate. As she enters the safe zone, we see her hand, which reads “JSS.”
Cardigan Carol and Her Casseroles
Rick told Carol to stay behind in Alexandria and suss out how the townsfolk are feeling about the newest residents, and Carol, for one, is a huge hit with her fellow food pantry shoppers. She made a cola canned ham that Erin is raving about, and is planning to use up the oversupply of cream of celery soup to whip up another treat. Mrs. Neudermeyer, still, is going on and on about wanting a pasta machine, and Carol tells her if she agrees not to smoke, she’ll teach her how to make her own pasta. “Miss Peletier, you are one honest-to-goodness hero,” Erin says. She has no idea.
Back at the house, Carol slides her casserole into the oven and sets the timer for 45 minutes. She glances out the kitchen window and spots Mrs. Neudermeyer, smoking a cigarette. But just as Carol furrows her brow in disapproval, a man comes running up on Mrs. N and attacks her with a machete.
Carol knows something bad has just begun, and runs upstairs to tell Carl to stay in the house and protect Judith. Carl’s already seen from the upstairs window, and he’s already got a rifle in his hands.
Carol runs outside and into chaos. A kid’s bicycle is lying upside down on the sidewalk, in a pool of blood, while wild-looking strangers run through the streets yelling, and attacking people with knifes and machetes. The Wolves, with Ws on their foreheads, have arrived.
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They’re chasing and killing Alexandrians and chopping up their bodies into pieces. Carol stealthily sees one Wolf poke his finger into his victim’s innards and use the blood to draw a “W” on his own forehead. She sees another Wolf leading one of the townsfolk around in handcuffs and a chain. She gets to Erin, her cooking fan, just as a Wolf stabs her. Carol takes him out, but Erin dies in her arms.
In the guard tower near the gate, Spencer has a rifle and is trying to take shots at the Wolves, but he misses. He turns around just in time to see a semi-truck barreling towards the gate, and the shots he fires do nothing to stop it. It hits the gate, knocking the tower over and starting a loud horn noise that, as we know from the season premiere, resonates far out into the woods, where Rick, Daryl, Sasha, Abraham, and some townsfolk are trying to lead the quarry zombies away.
Spencer rushes to the truck and finds a zombie wedged inside to make it go, and Morgan pops in on the other side. Which is a good thing, because Spencer is too paralyzed with fear to kill the walker and reach around him to turn off the blaring horn. Morgan does both, then tells Spencer to hide when it’s clear he isn’t capable of going inside the safe zone to help deal with the Wolves.
Morgan and Carol
Right inside the gate, Morgan runs into an ax-wielding Wolf. Morgan asks him to leave, which angers the Wolf, and as the ax vs. bo staff battle is about to begin, a black-hooded figure arrives and stabs the Wolf.
It’s Carol in Wolf’s clothing, but Morgan’s not happy that she saves him, because he didn’t need to be saved, he tells her. He catches her up on Rick’s plan and how they had to set it in motion earlier than expected, and she tells him about the Wolves and their attack, which they’re carrying out without guns. She says they need to get to the armory, and the guns, before “they” do.
Morgan: “You don’t have to kill people.”
Carol: “Of course you do.”
Mimicking Wolf behavior she’d seen earlier, Carol hides her face with a bandana, and paints a red W on her forehead. She pretends to be leading a handcuffed Morgan towards the armory, until Morgan spots one of the Wolves attacking Gabriel. He runs off to save him, using his bo staff skills, which impresses Gabriel. “A cheese maker” is the source of Morgan’s skills, he tells Gabriel, and the two tie up the Wolf Morgan just took down.
Carol, meanwhile, makes it to the armory, but a pair of Wolves follow her there, her non-Wolf identity exposed. She kills one inside the weapons room, and chases another out with gunfire, before giving pantry monitor Olivia a quick lesson in how to shoot a gun and leaving her to protect the rest of the stash.
Carol meets up with Morgan and Gabriel just as the Wolf they captured tells them, “Friend … a trap … you need to know you people don’t belong here anymore.” She shoots him in the head and hands Morgan and Gabriel a gun each. Morgan gives his to Gabriel, who stands awkwardly with a weapon in each hand. “I’m not very good with guns,” Gabriel says.
Morgan: “Me, neither.”
Aaron and Rosita are out and about, and they kill Wolves coming out of one of the houses, while Carol kills another who’s chopping up a dead body. Morgan’s walking down the street when five Wolves surround him. He begins knocking them down with his bo staff as he tells their leader, “Leave. My people have guns. Yours don’t. They may be aiming them at you right now … You keep choosing this life, you will die.”
“We didn’t choose,” a blonde Wolf says, and as he and his friends run away, Blonde Wolf sees a gun, picks it up, and runs out of Alexandria with it. Morgan shuts the gate behind him.
Carol has taken a break on her porch, right across from Mrs. N’s dead body. She has one of Mrs. N’s cigarettes in her hand, and as the weight of what has happened to the unprepared Alexandrians hits her, she cries and begins trying to wipe the red “W” off her forehead. She looks over to her left and sees a big red “A” in a circle … Sam left his stamp of approval on the porch after her chat with him earlier.
Morgan is walking towards home when he sees one of the townhouse doors standing wide open. He slowly goes inside, and is attacked by a sickle-wielding Wolf. They get into a fight, and this Wolf proves more formidable against Morgan’s bo staff than the others. Realizing Morgan is holding back, the Wolf says to him, “You can’t, can you? … You should have.” They resume fighting, and the Wolf is not giving up. He takes out a knife and stabs at Morgan, who says, “I’m sorry,” and stabs at the Wolf with the bo staff.
Morgan leaves the house, and passes Carol, as they walk in opposite directions down the blood-covered street, which is littered with burning and dismembered bodies.
Jessie!
Jessie, taking Rick’s warning about Ron’s recklessness and ill-preparedness to heart, tries to talk to her son, but he runs off. When the Wolves begin their attack, she plans to go find him, but she and Sam hear a noise inside the house and run upstairs — gun in Jessie’s hand — and lock themselves inside a closet.
Worried about Ron, Jessie decides to get proactive; she tells Sam to lock the closet door behind her, and she goes downstairs with the gun. She yells out to Ron to stay outside, just as a female Wolf cold-cocks her. They tussle, and Jessie falls to the ground, but just as the Wolf picks up Jessie’s gun, Jessie gets up and attacks her with a pair of scissors. Jessie stabs her again and again and again, until she and the wall are covered in blood splatters. Ron walks in to find her yelling and taking out years of frustration on the Wolf as she plunges the scissors into her again.
Dr. Denise
The death of Pete left a hole in town for, well, a “porch dick,” as he came to be known, and for a town doctor. Denise, a psychiatrist, is the closest thing to medical care Alexandria has now, and as she gets to know Tara and Eugene, it becomes clear she’s very unsure of her abilities to handle anything more than a scrape or any ailment that can be treated with an aspirin.
That’s a shame, because the melee outside in the streets results in a stab wound to supply runner Holly, who’s brought into the office by Aaron and Rosita. Denise determines Holly is bleeding internally, and only surgery can possibly save her, but Denise is too afraid to attempt it. “You don’t want to be a coward. I know,” Eugene tells her, and with encouragement from Tara, Denise tries to save Holly. Unsuccessfully. Tara tells her at least she tried, but Denise takes no comfort in that, and the town may be without a doctor again, at least one who has any confidence in her life-saving skills.
Enid and Carl
Carl’s defending his group’s house, and hears someone trying to get in the front door. He’s ready to shoot, until he sees it’s Enid, using what looks to be a Dwayne F. Schneider-worthy set of master keys to let herself in. Carl asks why she didn’t just knock. “I have these, and didn’t want them to have ‘em,” she tells him. Why does Enid have a set of master keys for Alexandria? And the way she refers to the Wolves as “them” … what would make her think they would even know about the master keys?
She tells Carl she just came over to say goodbye to him, which he ignores. He asks her to help lookout, and asks her if she saw “them.”
“They’re just people,” she says. “This place is way too big to protect. Too many blind spots. That’s how we were able to…”
To WHAT?! We don’t know, because Carl isn’t really listening to what she’s saying, and instead tells her not to tell him goodbye.
“OK, I won’t,” she responds.
Later, they hear a commotion outside the house, and Carl runs out with his gun and saves Ron from the Wolf who’s chasing him. Carl tells Ron to come into the house, that he can keep him safe, but when Ron sees Enid standing in the doorway, he runs off.
Back inside the house, things have calmed down, and Carl looks around for Enid. She’s not there, but he finds a piece of paper she left on the floor: “Just Survive Somehow.”
Carl reads it and goes to the kitchen, where the timer is going off. All that destruction took just 45 minutes, the same amount of time it took Carol’s celery soup casserole to bake.
Zombie Bites:
* Yup, using cola to bake canned ham is a thing.
* Deanna backed Rick’s plan for the quarry walkers, but still seems to be holding back on giving him and the group her full trust. But when the Wolves attack, she wisely tells Maggie she’ll remain outside the gates — with son Spencer protecting her — because inside, without a gun or fighting skills, she would just be another thing those who can defend themselves have to protect.
* Ron asked his mom if Rick is her friend. She said yes. So, hope’s alive, ‘shippers.
* We may — may — have to stop calling Gabriel Father Weasel soon. He approached Carl and apologized for telling Deanna she shouldn’t trust Rick and company, and admitted he was really ashamed of his own behavior. Hmmm. He also asked Carl to help him learn some survival skills, and they had a date for a machete lesson, which will now have to be rescheduled, because, Wolves.
* The Wolf who ran out of Alexandria with a gun: Morgan is almost certainly going to regret allowing that to happen.
* Aaron found a package of his photos of Alexandria, the ones he used to recruit Rick’s group to the safe zone, among a dead Wolf’s things. He assumes that’s how the Wolves found their way to Alexandria, but… see below.
OK, Dead-heads, let’s hear your reactions to “JSS”: Enid… she’s with the Wolves, right? She was the “trap” the Wolf who tried to kill Gabriel was talking about? That’s why she hesitated outside the Alexandria gate the first time she arrived there, because she knew what the Wolves had planned? That’s why she’s been sneaking outside Alexandria since Season 5, to rendezvous with the Wolves? And that’s why she has to keep reminding herself to “JSS” — it’s her coping mechanism, how she’s able to get through her Wolf assignment (not to mention noshing on that turtle)? Thoughts?
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
