'The Walking Dead' Recap: 'What Are You Afraid Of, Carol?'
Warning: This recap for “The Same Boat" episode of The Walking Dead contains spoilers.
Rick’s group managed to take out a few more Saviors in this week’s adventure, but their victory may have come at a very big price: kidnapped Carol and Maggie are both so traumatized by recent events and the things they’ve been tasked to do in their daily battle to survive that both women seem to have reached a point where they need a timeout on all the killing.
But with the impending arrival of ultimate TWD villain Negan, Carol and Maggie’s crisis couldn’t come at a worse time for their friends.
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Kidnapped
A voice on the walkie-talkie had informed Rick that Carol and Maggie were in the custody of Saviors at the end of last week’s episode, and we meet the voice right away: she’s Paula (guest star Alicia Witt), who quickly establishes herself as the leader of a Saviors offshoot group that also includes Molly, Shell, and Donnie. The group snuck up on Carol and Maggie as they were on lookout duty outside the Saviors’ main hideout — the one Rick and the others successfully attacked — and though Carol manages to shoot Donnie in the arm, Paula and the others take Carol and Maggie hostage.
Paula, via her walkie-talkie chat with Rick, negotiates a swap: Carol and Maggie for Primo, the Savior who Rick and the others captured after he tried to get away on Daryl’s stolen motorcycle. Paula’s not sold on the trade; it’s not a good deal, she tells Rick, her getting just one hostage back for the two she has. But Rick tells her she has no choice; otherwise she would have made a move already. Donnie’s also desperate to get Primo back, because Primo can patch up the hole “that b—h” left in his arm. “You lost your balls, Paula,” Donnie says. “You should have shot her in the head so they could hear her die!”
Paula tells him to shut up, while Molly, another member of their crew, tells him, “You should be glad she doesn’t have a sack of gonads to trip over.” The women not only outnumber Donnie in this splinter group, but they’re completely in charge, too. Rick continues to urge Paula to make the trade, and Shell says he must think they’re stupid.
“That’s a good thing,” Paula replies, and then tells Rick she’ll get back to him about the hostages.
She and the group spirit Carol and Maggie out of the woods, with hoods over their heads and duct tape keeping them securely wedged into the car that transports them to what appears to be an old meatpacking plant — “Kill Floor, Raw Processing” is painted on the concrete inside. Paula had told her Savior cohorts, via a different channel on the walkie-talkie, that she was heading to the “breakpoint,” and that they should meet her there. Paula tells Molly the place is going to “save our a–es.”
Getting to Know You
Paula kills a walker — knife from the back of the head straight through the face — just as it’s inches from Maggie’s face, and then tells the gagged and bound Maggie and Carol to sit on the floor, on opposite sides of a small room in the plant. “You’re wondering if there’s a way out of this,” she tells Carol. “There isn’t. Not unless I say so.” As the Savior women drag the body of the walker Paula killed out of the room, its rosary beads catch on Carol’s leg. Carol picks them up and stashes them in her pocket before they notice.
Paula threatens her hostages before leaving them alone in the room, and Maggie immediately starts looking around for any escape possibilities. Carol starts to hyperventilate, loudly, and Maggie looks confused.
Paula, Molly, and Donnie come back in the room, and Molly says the plant is no longer a good place for them, as the ammo and food supplies have been depleted, and now there are “growlers” roaming around. Paula argues that the walkers are “free security” in case Rick’s group gets to the plant before the other Saviors, and Donnie is focusing on his arm, which he says he will not lose. And Maggie is growing more worried about Carol, whose hyperventilating is getting worse. She begs Paula and her friends to help Carol.
“She’s a nervous little bird, ain’t she?” Molly says, while Shell has less patience. “B—h, how did you make it this far?” she asks the distressed Carol.
Molly: “Honey, you need to take some yoga breaths and calm your a– down.” She sees the rosary beads sticking out of Carol’s pocket and hands them to her. Carol calms down.
“Oh, you’re one of those,” Molly says.
All three women have concluded Carol is a weakling.
“What are you so afraid of? Are you actually afraid to die?” Paula asks her. “All this, and you’re scared of getting your ticket punched?”
Carol tells them it doesn’t matter what happens to her. “Just don’t hurt Maggie,” she says. “Don’t hurt the baby.”
Both Shell and Donnie scoff at the idea that Maggie’s “got a bun in the oven,” because she’s not showing. She’s only two months along, she tells them.
Paula tells her she’s “some kind of stupid getting knocked up at a time like this,” but Maggie tells her women used to die in childbirth, so when was it ever smart to get pregnant? Paula mockingly says yeah, children are the future… they’re “bite-sized snacks for the dead.”
“The point is to stay standing,” Paula argues.
“No, walkers do that,” Maggie says. “I’m choosing something.”
“That’s right, you are,” says Paula. “You’re dead.”
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She leaves the room, and Molly comes and lights a cigarette. She’s standing near Maggie as she puffs away and begins coughing. Carol asks her to move, which Molly finds amusing. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve got a lot bigger problems than secondhand smoke,” she says. Shell also asks her to move away from Maggie.
“You’re all worse than a bunch of evangelical second graders,” Molly says, hacking up blood into her handkerchief. “Those things will kill you,” Carol tells her, and Molly tells her they already have.
Molly: “I’m a dead woman walking… which puts us exactly in the same boat.”
Donnie, who’s been mostly on the sidelines moaning in pain, says he feels like his arm is on fire. Molly tells him not to remove the tourniquet Paula put on, lest he become “nothing but a spigot.” Paula assures him their Savior cohorts, “the scout crew,” are 30 minutes, maybe less, away.
Maggie interjects and says he doesn’t have 30 minutes. His nerves are dying — she knows because her dad lost his leg, she says — and Donnie’s about to lose his arm, maybe his life. She encourages Paula to talk to Rick and work out the hostage swap.
Donnie is beside himself now, and walks over to Carol. “You know my problem?” he says. “She did this to me, and she’s just sitting there, right as rain, fully intact… if you’re not gonna make the trade, then we’re just gonna do ‘em both, now!”
Paula says no, they need to keep them as insurance. Guy wants to at least shoot Carol, then, an arm for an arm. Paula nixes that, too, and Donnie doubles over in pain. He’s ticked off Paula is choosing Carol over him, and Paula tells him to shut up. He tells her not to push him, and when she tells him to shut up again, he backhands her across her face.
He walks over to Carol, and Maggie swings her feet around to knock him down, but he gets up, grabs her, and calls her a “dumb, uppity b—h.” She headbutts him as Carol grabs his leg, but he gets free and starts kicking Carol, hard, and clearly doesn’t intend to stop.
So Paula stabs him in the head.
She then tells Maggie she’s some kind of stupid, and tells Shell to take Maggie into another room and interrogate her.
“You got nice clothes. Time to make babies. You’re holed up somewhere good,” Shell says to Maggie. “Tell me where.”
Maggie vomits.
“Don’t draw this out,” Shell says. “Help yourself. That baby in your belly? The way you stay alive is you produce for us. You’re not the good guys. You should know that.”
Getting to Know All About You
In the other room, Molly looks at Paula’s face and tells her Donnie got her good. Carol tries to bond with them, telling them she wants to say something to Paula, “for helping Maggie, for helping me. My husband Ed, he….”
Paula cuts her off.
“Yeah? I don’t care if your old man used to ring your bell,” she says. “I know exactly who you are, Carol. I know… you’re pathetic. You wanna think we’re just the same? Go ahead. You’re wrong. [Donnie’s] just a warm body in my bed. That’s it. I could kill him in his sleep.”
Carol plays with her rosary beads.
“Do you really believe in that crap?” Paula asks.
“My faith got me through the death of my daughter,” Carol says.
Paula: “Well, the good news is, maybe you’ll see her again soon.”
Maggie and Shell are still chatting in the next room, and Shell starts wrapping a bandage around one of her fingers, which has been cut off down to the second knuckle. Punishment for getting caught stealing, she says. She stole gas, from the building they’re in now, so she could go look for her boyfriend’s body.
“Did you find him?” Maggie wonders.
“He was blown up,” Shell says. “Not much to find.”
Yes, her boyfriend was among that motorcycle-riding crew who tried to steal a truck and supplies from Daryl, Abraham, and Sasha earlier in the season. Until Daryl, you know, showed them the power of an RPG.
Maggie sees a tattoo on Shell’s arm that reads “Frankie.” She asks if that was her boyfriend.
“No, I barely knew him,” Shell shares. “He was a d–k. Frank was my dad. And that’s what I was gonna name the baby.”
Maggie tells her she’s sorry about the baby, but that she’s not planning to die today.
“Yeah, me neither,” Shell says. “Thing is, one of us is wrong.”
Meanwhile, Rick contacts Paula again on the walkie-talkie, asking if she’s made up her mind about a swap. She’s annoyed he didn’t wait for her to contact him, and tells him she thinks she’s taking the bigger risk, to get just one hostage back. He tells her “the other option” won’t work out for her.
Carol jumps in and tries to goose her along, telling her she doesn’t have to fight.
Molly interjects, “Your people killed all of my people. Of course we gotta fight.”
Carol says they didn’t want to kill all the Saviors. But they had ambushed members of Rick’s group on the road, tried to take everything they had. “You wouldn’t have killed them?” Carol asks.
“Well, damn,” Molly says. “So now we know what happened to T’s group. Those idiots. Probably put on a big show.”
Paula says that’s fair, but wonders why Rick’s group didn’t stop there, after dealing with that pack of Saviors on the road, blowing them up. Carol tells her they said they were working for Negan, and that he sounds like a maniac. They were scared, she says, and they had to stop him.
“Sweetie, sweetie… we are all Negan,” Molly says.
Carol wants to know what that means, but when Molly doesn’t answer, and starts choking on her cigarette again, Carol asks if she can have one, even after just admitting she doesn’t approve of smoking.
“You are weak,” Paula tells her. “What are you so afraid of? You’re so scared you can’t even stick to your own principles.”
Carol, telling the women the truth for maybe the first time all episode: “You don’t want me to stick to my own principles.”
That inspires Paula to share her backstory with Carol. She was a secretary before the apocalypse, spending her days fetching coffee for and stroking the ego of her boss, while reading inspirational emails to feel good about herself. There was a particularly popular one about a woman who got advice from her mom when she was having a tough time. The mom boiled three pots of water, and put an egg in one, a carrot in one, and ground coffee beans in the last one. They boiled for a while, and then the mother told her to look: they all went through the same things, but one, the egg, went in fragile and came out hard; the carrot went in strong, but came out soft; the coffee changed the water itself.
“You’re supposed to wanna be the coffee beans,” Paula says. “See, to me, coffee was just something my boss would drink up, no matter how many times I refilled his damn cup. It was just never enough.”
She tells Carol she was at work, in Washington, D.C., when the Army took over. They evacuated the “important people” — politicians, etc. — first, so she was stuck at the office with her boss, “not my family, my husband, my four girls,” she says. Her boss was weak and stupid, and he was going to die and take her with him, she says, explaining why he became the first person she killed so she could live. “I stopped counting when I hit double digits,” she tells Carol. “That’s around the time I stopped feeling bad about it. I’m not like you. I’m still me, but better. I lost everything, but it made me stronger.”
Carol: “You sure about that?”
Paula: “I’m alive.”
Carol: “With those people. Those killers.”
Paula: “Your people are killers, Carol. Makes you a killer.”
Carol: “You. You’re the one… you’re the one who’s afraid to die. And you’re going to. You will die. That’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t work this out.”
Paula: “Are you going to kill me?”
Carol: “I hope not.”
“I Was Afraid of This”
Paula finally decides to arrange for a hostage swap with Rick, and tells him via the walkie-talkie to meet with her group in 10 minutes, in a large field — near a sign that says, “God is dead.” He agrees, but then she worries the deal was too easily made. She heard less static across the walkie-talkie, and thinks maybe that means Rick and the others are much closer than she thought. She contacts the other Saviors, who say they’re about 10 minutes away, and then she and Molly prepare to leave.
Carol prepares, too: she sharpens the bottom of the cross on her rosary beads into a sharp point, i.e. a stabbing implement. She frees herself from the binds — as, clearly, she could have at any point — and runs into Maggie. They hug, and then Carol wants to flee the building. Maggie says they can’t; they have to kill everyone, “to finish this.” They take weapons from Donnie, who’s about to turn, and tie him up — with a slack amount of rope — to an anchor, so when Molly comes back into the room, she doesn’t see walker Donnie until he’s already bitten a chunk out of her. Maggie and Carol run back in, and Maggie stabs Molly, over and over and over, in a vicious fury. Carol looks on in shock.
Paula discovers Carol has broken free and goes after her. As Maggie and Carol run down a hallway, towards the entrance/exit, they see Paula and company have positioned walkers along the path, to keep them in and others out. As they begin to deal with that, Paula comes from behind them and starts shooting.
She misses, and Carol takes her gun out and points it at Paula. “Just run,” she says to her, and Maggie is yelling for Carol to shoot Paula.
“Go on, do it,” Paula says. “You killed Donnie, you killed Molly. Your people have destroyed my home… You have no idea the things I’ve done. What I’ve given up. What I had to do…”
“Just run,” Carol says, almost begging her, as a walker gets free and lunges at Carol, who fires the gun in the process and hits Paula. Maggie kills the walker, and Shell comes around the corner looking for Paula and Molly. Maggie attacks her, and in the ensuing fight, Shell’s knife slashes near Maggie’s belly. She pulls her shirt out to find it was cut (but, presumably, her stomach is okay), just before Carol runs in and shoots Shell in the head.
They turn their attention back to Paula, and Carol says, “I told you to run!”
Paula: “If you could do all this, what were you afraid of, Carol?”
Carol: “I was afraid of this.”
Paula laughs and attacks Carol, but impales herself on a rod in the scuffle. A walker starts eating her face, and she screams as Carol looks on in horror. Carol then takes the walkie-talkie, and, imitating Paula’s voice, tells the other Saviors to meet her at the kill floor.
Carol and Maggie hide out, with Carol telling Maggie none of this would have happened if she’d just killed Donnie in the woods. Maggie tells her to forget about it, as the other Saviors come in. Carol and Maggie shut the door of the kill floor behind them, locking the men in the room. The Saviors mention the floor is slick… Carol and Maggie poured some containers of gas on the floor, and once the men are inside, Carol lights it with a cigarette, and Carol and Maggie think they are burning alive what remains of Negan’s group.
The women walk past the hallway of walkers, and Maggie opens the door to daylight… and Glenn, with his gun raised. They hug, and, in a moment that will soothe Caryl shippers upset by last week’s Carol/Tobin smooch, Daryl goes to Carol, puts his hand under her shin, and asks, “You good?” She says no, and he grabs her, hugs her, and puts his hand on her head. Maggie tells Glenn all the Saviors are dead now, and he asks if she’s okay. “I can’t anymore,” she tells him.
And there’s just Primo to deal with, or so Rick’s group thinks. Rick tells him all his friends are dead, so he should just talk to them. Daryl wants to “let him burn” — he’s still angry about his motorcycle — but Rick tells him, “I’m going to ask you one last time: how’d you get the bike?”
Primo says, “We found it.” Rick then asks if Negan was in the building the group attacked last night, or was he in the meatpacking building they’re in now.
Primo: “Both. I’m Negan, s–thead. There’s a whole world of fun we can talk about. Let’s have a chat…”
“I’m sorry it had to come to this,” Rick says, and shoots Primo, who was not portrayed by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the man we know will be Negan.
Carol watches the exchange, still shocked, and still clutching those rosary beads so tightly blood drips from her hand.
Zombie Bites:
— That scene-stealer who played sassy, chain-smoking Molly? She’s Jill Jane Clements, a TV, movie, and Atlanta theater actress who will also have a role in TWD creator Robert Kirkman’s upcoming Cinemax demonic possession drama Outcast (adapted from his comic book of the same name).
— Speaking of Molly, she was right, of course, about T’s group putting on a big show. T, we can assume, is, er, was the leader of the motorcycle pack of Saviors, the one played so fantastically by Christopher Berry in the midseason premiere.
— O.K., Dead-heads, let’s hear your reactions to “The Same Boat”: we know Negan is still out there… how many Saviors do you think are still alive with him? Do you think Carol and Maggie can bounce back in time to take on everything the last three episodes of the season will bring? And even though the Savior women were a danger, did you kinda find them entertaining, too?
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC .
