Live Together, Die Alone

Not Great, Bob

Poor, despondent Bob goes through the motions of staying alive -- trudging through woods, eating pink goop with his hand, hiding from walkers, drinking off-brand NyQuil, generally making me wonder if this particular member of the living doesn't envy the dead -- until, one day, he sees a motorcycle and a truck pulling up behind him and realizes that he's not the last non-zombie in this whole shitty world! It's Glenn and Daryl, and this is how Bob hooked up with them in the first place -- but before they'll take him back to their camp, they want to know how many walkers he's killed (he hasn't kept track, but he thinks it's been a couple dozen) and how many people (one, because "she asked [him] to"). Doesn't Bob have any questions for Daryl and Glenn before he goes back to the camp for him? He does not, because it doesn't matter who they are. Bob's just happy to see people. Aw, Bob! Things do get better. (Then they get worse. But I guess you know that by now.)

Humans vs. Walkers

Or should I say humans vs. fog? It's time for us to see what Bob, Sasha, and Maggie have been up to since we last saw them, and it turns out it's just the same old same old: killing walkers. This battle has a higher degree of difficulty because they're being set upon by walkers during a foggy white-out, but superior human strategy triumphs over superior walker numbers: our heroes stay back to back and kill up the walkers one by one. Unfortunately, they use two of their tiny supply of bullets in the melée, but when it's over, there's good news: even though a walker did manage to get close enough to Bob to have a little nibble, it happened to get him right on the bandage covering the wound on his shoulder! To put that in non-apocalyptic terms, it's tantamount to not having a zombie put its mouth on you at all.

Winner: Humans.

A Major Misstep

Spending a lot of time with Daryl might make anyone curious about trying her hand at bow-hunting walkers, so as we rejoin him and Beth, we see that he's giving her a crossbow lesson -- and hey, as if Daryl had planted it there himself, they come upon a walker hanging out alone in a clearing, eating a rat. Since it's distracted and Beth is stealing up behind it (not even giving it a sporting chance), Beth figures this is the perfect opportunity to give her nascent skills a real-world tryout...but then she steps in a trap. She gets off one shot, but the bolt just goes through the walker's cheek and barely slows it down, so that Daryl has to take over and finish it off. Back to the simulator, Beth!

Bob & Maggie vs. Sasha

Our intrepid heroes are at a not-so-pretty pass -- Maggie's compass is broken and they're down to six bullets -- when they come upon something like...hope? They're the latest prison survivors to find a sign directing them to Terminus. Immediately, Maggie wants to go, and Sasha is against it, reminding Maggie that they're supposed to be looking for Glenn. But Maggie is certain that if Glenn is alive and saw a Terminus sign himself, he would go there and trust that Maggie would, too. Bob agrees with Maggie, so Sasha relents.

She's pretty pissy about it, though.

Winner: Maggie and Bob.

Even In An Apocalypse, You Have To Make Your Own Fun

When Beth and Daryl cross a graveyard and bust into a very nicely tended funeral home (suggesting that someone who isn't present at the moment has been living there and keeping it up), they find a couple of surprises: a cleaned-up walker in a coffin in a viewing room, and another downstairs, mid-makeup job. Daryl is disgusted that the resident of the funeral home ran out of dolls to dress up and turned to monsters, but Beth thinks it supports her thesis that there are still some good people around (contrary to Daryl's view that "good people" haven't survived the apocalypse): whoever did this recognized that walkers were people once, and wanted to give them the dignity of proper funerals. I don't agree with either of them: I think that if I were in this position (which I wouldn't be, because as soon as the cable went out permanently I'd have killed myself), and had the skill to turn walkers back into people -- or, at least, into human-looking corpses -- that might be a way I'd pass the endless, boring, TV-less hours. I am not a crackpot.

Oh Sit

I guess I was supposed to be paying attention to Beth's singing and piano self-accompaniment as evidence that even in a fallen world, beauty can survive (which even Daryl can't deny, as he symbolically takes his rest in a coffin, the most comfortable bed he's enjoyed in years). But I couldn't help noticing the chairs!

When we're looking at them from the side, they're all jammed up against each other.

When we're looking at them from the back, there's visible space between them. WHO MOVED THE CHAIRS?! Obviously, a wizard. Great, now there's another kind of creature our humans will have to stab in the head all the time.

Lone Survivor

Because Maggie is sensitive (and has good hearing, as we'll later learn), she can tell Sasha is still opposed to the idea of going to Terminus. And because she's heroic in a dumb way, she's decided to let them off the hook by going in search of Terminus on her own, and leaving them to whatever they'd prefer to do.

Overruled!

Because Bob knows what it's like to try surviving a walker-pocalypse all on your own and did not care for it, he decides that Maggie is wrong and that he and Sasha are going to go after her, despite her releasing Bob and Sasha from responsibility for her. Sasha relents, again.

Pissily, again.

Should You Stay Or Should You Go Now?

Alert Type: Philosophical Differences Alert.

Issue: Sasha is still REALLY not on board with the Terminus plan, even though she's going along with it.

Complicating Factors: She can see that Bob is visibly cheered by the idea of catching up with Maggie and saving her from his fate pre-Glenn and Daryl; in the Before Time, Bob had been part of two different groups of survivors and gotten separated from them both, so he knows that -- for him, at least -- being with people is better.

Resolution: When the tracks take them into a town Sasha likes the looks of, she starts describing what they could do there -- find a building, grow vegetables on the roof -- and reminding Bob that Maggie told them not to follow her, but Bob doesn't care: all that matters to him is that Maggie's alone. He tells Sasha she's resisting the Terminus idea because she's afraid, which she denies. So Bob's like, "I'm going to try something here," and kisses her. It's a nice kiss, and she's into it, but it doesn't change her mind, so Bob sets off on his own, after Maggie. "You don't have to be alone again," Sasha tells him. "I won't be," he replies.

Spoiler: He's right: he won't be.

Good Spread, Good Feet, Good God, Let's Eat!

After spending an apparently restful evening in the funeral home, Daryl carries Beth in for what he's already termed "white trash brunch" (but just a little; they've decided to respect the currently absent mortician survivor by only looting a little bit of his or her stash).

Diet Cola: Hey hey, there, label. You shouldn't promise to be "Frosty" in a post-ice world.

Peanut Butter: It's good on everything! Bread (if you have it), crackers (if you have them), your fingers (if you have those), maybe even...

Pig's Feet: Okay, maybe pig's feet don't pair well with peanut butter. Too bad this particular survivor didn't hoard any hummus.

But the feast is temporarily interrupted by the arrival of this guy...

...rudely setting off the walker alarm before taking off without so much as a single pig's foot. A dog that doesn't beg? He must be very sick.

Daryl & Beth vs. A Shitload Of Walkers

Damn that dog for lulling Daryl into a false sense of security -- so secure, in fact, that over dinner he suggests to Beth that maybe they should just hang out at the house for a while. If and when its current/most recent occupant returns, they can all try to make it work. Beth takes this to mean that Daryl's come around to her way of thinking with regard to whether there are any good people who survived, and asks what changed his mind. (He's grunty about it, I guess because he doesn't want to admit that she, and her beautiful music, are what finally soothed his savage breast.) But he's saved from having to say it by the sound of the walker alarm, and when he opens the door wide to what he assumes is the dog, of course it isn't the dog; it's a shitload of walkers. He gets Beth to throw him his crossbow and, in the scuffle, orders her to throw her shit out a window and follow it. She doesn't want to leave him, but he tells her to go up the road, and that he'll meet her. After a pretty hairy battle -- Daryl has to fight his way down to the basement, put the gurney between him and the walker horde, using the mortician's tools as his primary weapon -- Daryl makes it outside alive and unbitten...just in time to see a car peeling out. Assuming it's Beth behind the wheel, he screams and chases it...but whoever's driving doesn't stop.

Winner: Daryl, ish; Beth, maybe?

After spotting Maggie out the window (and...breaking said window, thus attracting hella walkers to Maggie's position), Sasha races downstairs and helps Maggie kill them all! Maggie explains that she ended up there when she was looking for another walker to leave a bloodmail for Glenn, but then found more than she could deal with! She had left because she overheard Sasha telling Bob that they should stay in a town, and that Glenn is probably dead! So she parked it in this town to wait for Sasha and convince her to join her on the journey to Terminus! Sasha finally admits that she doesn't want to go because she's afraid, but Maggie says she doesn't have to be! "So let's go get Bob," says Sasha, "and let's get there!"

Daryl has run after that car for as long as he could, and is sitting asleep by some train tracks when a gang of ruffians approaches! Daryl immediately takes a defensive position, whereupon the leader expresses respect! If Daryl's rocking a crossbow as opposed to a gun, it means that, in the Before Time, Daryl was actually tough already, and not some wimpy photographer or whatever! The leader introduces himself as Joe! And Daryl has a new crew! ...Yay?

Bob is walking the tracks all alone when he hears someone call his name!

NO, I didn't get choked up when Bob smiled! YOU did!

And then it's time for another Terminus sign! But who's spotting it now?!

WELCOME TO THE TERMINUS PARTY, GLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENN!!!!!