'The Walking Dead' Recap: 'I Know What I Think You Should Do'

Warning: This recap for the “Forget” episode of The Walking Dead contains storyline and character spoilers.

Describing this week’s Walking Dead feels a little like describing one of Stefon’s parties on Saturday Night Live. This episode has everything: Rick Grimes in a clean button-down shirt, Daryl slurping down spaghetti after bonding with Aaron, Bee Gees music, Sasha losing her s—t, drunken philosopher Abraham, Rick kissing a girl, and what’s that over there? Zombie kid kebob… you know, when Carol threatens to tie a little kid to a tree and let zombies eat him alive if he tells his mom he caught her trying to steal guns.

Sasha Has Left the Building

The building we call sanity. Understandably, of course, with the loss of her boyfriend Bob and big brother Tyreese coming back-to-back, but Sasha has definitely gone to the dark side, as she makes a trip to the woods outside Alexandria, where she proceeds to shoot up a pile of photos that feature smiling (former?) residents of the town.

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Later, when Deanna throws a welcome party for the gang, Sasha begrudgingly shows up (only because Deanna promised to consider her for the job of watchtower sniper if she would), but then freaks out on a woman who offers to cook her favorite meal. All Sasha wants to do now is shoot at things, and it’s tough to see how she’s going to bounce back from that with all her loved ones gone and anger as her sole motivator.

Sheriff Rick

When Rick isn’t patrolling the mean streets — i.e. nicely manicured lawns — of Alexandria, he’s off meeting with Carol and Daryl about a secret project. Carol’s going to sneak into the pantry, where the guns are kept, and pilfer a few. Rick’s whole group is trying to fit in inside Alexandria’s walls, but he, Carol, and Daryl want to stash a few weapons just in case things take a different turn, and in case Rick and company are forced to protect the town.

“They’re the luckiest damn people I ever met, and they just keep getting luckier,” Rick says about Deanna’s community.

Daryl: “How’s that?”

Rick: “We’re here now.”

Look Who’s Coming to Spaghetti Dinner

Out hunting in the woods, Daryl runs into Aaron, and the two bond while trying to capture Buttons, a horse who’s been roaming around the area for some time. Daryl is almost close enough to lasso him when a pack of walkers scare Buttons away, and before Daryl and Aaron can get close enough again, the walkers surround Buttons and eat him alive. Aaron puts him out of his misery with a gunshot to the head, but seeing how much he cared for the equine seems to seal Daryl’s opinion that Aaron’s a good dude.

When Daryl’s walking by Aaron’s house that evening, Aaron invites him in for spaghetti dinner with him and Eric. The way Daryl hoovers down the pasta amuses the fellas, but Aaron soon reveals the reason he sought out Daryl: Like him, he thinks Daryl feels like an outsider much of the time. He also thinks Daryl (again, like him) can tell the difference between a good person and a bad person, so he wants Daryl to replace Eric as his new Alexandria recruitment partner, and Daryl signs on. There’s a motorcycle involved, which did not hurt Aaron’s pitch.

Daryl’s so invested in his new gig that later, when Carol’s gun grab works, Daryl refuses to take one of the boosted weapons, telling Rick and Carol he’s really making an effort to make life in Alexandria work. Does this mean he’s finally going to agree to take a shower?

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Party People

The gang at Deanna’s welcome party: Noah stands around looking extremely uncomfortable until Maggie and Glenn arrive and form a little group with him; Abraham drinks way too much and drops some beer-soaked philosophy on Michonne (“I am a large man, and I have had many beers to make up for that”); Rick (in the aforementioned preppy button-down) flirts with Jessie, whose husband Pete is also in attendance (and pretends not to have met Rick earlier), and Rick ends the evening by kissing Jessie on the cheek after she gets him to agree that there are some very nice things about living in Alexandria.

S-Carol

Carol, whose ensemble this week includes a floral cardigan, sneaks out of the party and into the pantry, and is swiping some guns when a voice asks her what she’s doing.

She turns around and sees Jessie’s son Sam, who followed her because he thought she was going off to make more cookies. She tells him she will make more, lots more, just for him, if he doesn’t tell anyone he saw her there.

He protests that he has to tell his mom, because he tells her everything. But Carol tells him he can’t. Because if he does, one day he might wake up alone in the woods, tied to a tree, where the monsters will eat him alive, which means he’ll still feel it. And no one will ever know what happened to him.

“Or,” Carol offers in her alarmingly calm voice, “you can promise never to tell anyone what you saw here, and then nothing will happen, and you’ll get cookies. Lots of cookies.”

“I know what I think you should do.” (We do, too, and it’s run, run away fast from Stepford Carol, Sam.)

Zombie Bites:

* Did you notice one of the streets in Alexandria is named Morgan Street? As in Rick’s old friend Morgan, who still hasn’t caught up with Rick yet, but who we’re betting becomes an Alexandria citizen before the end of Season 5?

* That red “A” stamp Sam put on Rick’s hand: Think there’s more meaning behind it than it standing for “Alexandria”? Did it remind you of Gareth and Terminus and the “A” on the train car?

* That “W” carved into the forehead of the walker out by the blender house in the woods: What’s that stand for?

* The song at the end of the episode: the Bee Gees’s “Spicks and Specks.”

* No official stats, but did it seem like Rick smiled more in this episode than he has throughout the whole series?

* Carol’s chat with Sam is an instant classic, and two thumbs up for her snagging that extra little piece of chocolate for herself. The woman has carried out selfless act after selfless act for seasons, and if she wants one extra quarter bar of chocolate, you go, Carol!

* So Deanna plans a whole new world in Alexandria, complete with a government and commerce, and Maggie, Michonne, and Rick all say they agree it’s possible. Maggie, probably; Michonne, maybe… but do you think Rick truly believes it?

* That recipe for mashed lima beans and cocoa powder that Erin shared with Stepford Carol: Is that a thing? Do people really eat that, or did the TWD writers just think of two random foods that would be gross together and make it up?

* Michonne has been issued her own law enforcement outfit, but more importantly, she’s put down her trademark weapon: She hangs her katana over the fireplace, where it’s out of the way (yet still easy to grab in the emergency that is almost certainly coming).

OK, Dead-heads, what do you say? Are Rick and the others getting too quickly acclimated to life inside the relatively safe environs of Alexandria? Is it going to leave them vulnerable if — OK, when — some major threat appears? And what about Rick’s flirtation with Jessie? Is it going anywhere? Do you also get a bad feeling about Pete? How much further downward will Sasha spiral? Did Rick look almost — dare we say it? — happy to be sheriff-ing when he ran over to the wall at the end? And, for the love of fettucine, will Mrs. Neudermeyer ever get her pasta maker?

The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.