Rick, Michonne and Carl

Carl is having breakfast while Michonne models the shirt she found in the house.  It all looks like a happy family, enjoying things the way they used to before the apocalypse.  They chat about soy milk, which Carl turns up his nose at.   He begins to list all of the things he’d rather have, stopping when he gets to Judith’s formula.  He mistakenly thinks  she’s gone, and, with that, the here and now kicks back in.  Rick thanks Michonne for getting Carl to laugh, even it was for only a moment.   She wants to know what Rick has planned – whether the house is going to be a home or just another place to stay until it’s time to move again.

Michonne wants to go out and find supplies and when Rick offers to go with her, she tells him that he should get some rest because he’s not going to do anyone any good until he’s stronger. She and Carl head off, while Rick lies down on a bed and reads a book.   After gathering some supplies from one house, Michonne tries to get Carl back into the mood he was earlier, even filling her mouth with Cheez-wiz and imitating the walkers, but Carl doesn’t laugh.  She tells him about her son as they enter another house.  Carl wants to know her son’s name, whether she had any more children, if she was married, but Michonne tells him that he gets one question at a time and only after they’ve cleared each room.

Eventually he gets most of the answers.  Michonne had one son, Andre Anthony, who, according to his mother, was handful, just like Carl.  She says that he’s the only person she’s told  and he says that her secret if safe with him.  Michonne says that it really isn’t a secret, but Carl insists that it’s safe with him, anyway. It may not be a secret, but, then again, Michoone really hasn’t revealed much about herself to anyone.   It wasn’t until her dream, when she chose to live, that she also decided to be more open and a little happier, even content, if that’s possible in their world.

As they go through another house, Michone opens a closed door, leading into a bathroom, then into a child’s bedroom. Laid out on the beds and in a chair are the bodies of the family that lived there.  They made the decision to go out as a family, saving themselves from a nightmarish future.  When Carl approaches, Michonne closes the door, telling him that there’s a dead dog behind it.  He’s not convinced and then tells her how his Dad let him name Judith.  He tries to reassure Michonne by telling her that her son and his sister are together somewhere.  They head back to their house, so that Rick won’t be worried about them.

Sergeant Abraham, Glenn and Tara

Tara and Glenn are in the back of Sgt. Abe’s truck when Glenn wakes up.  He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there.  When Tara tells him about Sgt. Abe and company, he asks if they’ve passed the bus.  She says that they did, three hours ago.  He panics and begins screaming for the truck to stop.  When it does, he gathers his belongings and starts to head back down the road to find the bus and, hopefully, some clue as to where Maggie might be.  Sgt. Abe isn’t about to let Glenn go anywhere, in fact, he’s adamant about it.  He reminds Glenn, and Tara, that they’re better off sticking with a group like “wet on water”.  He says that “we need people, that “the fate of the whole damn human race might depend on what they do.”    Sgt. Abe introduces his two “comrades” as Rosita Espinoza, who’s wearing the latest in post-apocalypse chic, and Dr. Eugene Porter.  Right now, I’m about as confused as Glenn is.

It seems that  Dr. Porter knows what caused this whole mess and he has the answers for making it all better.  When Glenn asks him what happened,  the good doctor tells him it’s classified.  Classified? By who?  Are our survivors (and the viewers) really supposed to  believe that anyone is still in charge of the world?  Not only is it classified, but Sgt. Abe says that they’ve been talking to the “muckity-mucks” up in Washington D.C. and they’re headed that way now.  Okay, so maybe that makes sense – leave it to the folks in Washington to f**k things up.  Dr. Porter is on a mission to save the world and Glenn should get on board rather than wasting his time looking for his wife who, according to Sarge,  is probably gone, just like his loved ones are.  Faced with that, it does seem like Glenn’s mission is nothing in comparison.   Who wouldn’t want to be a part of saving the world?  It just might explain the voices Daryl heard on the car radio on the way to the veterinarian hospital, though.  Or, it might just be that the whole bunch of them are just crazy and hear their own little voices.  I’m still not convinced that Sgt. Abe is anything more than another Governor, seeking to save the world, but still marinating in delusion.

While they’re arguing and fighting, the zombies of the corn come out of a field towards the truck and Dr. Porter.  We can only hope that he’s a better doctor than he is a marksman, because he manages to put more bullets through the truck than he does into the walkers.  How he didn’t kill the rest of the group is a question for the ages.  They run to help, and finish off the zombies.  The problem is that the truck has also been rendered useless, with gasoline leaking all over the road.  It can’t be fixed, so they take off down the road, following Glenn back to the North and the bus.  Barring unforeseen circumstances, they should be hitting I-95 in about two weeks.  I did like Dr. Porter’s reason for killing the truck though, – “A fully amped-up state and an ignorance of rapid firing weapons.”

Rick

Rick wakes up to the sound of voices in the house.  He reaches for his gun, but it’s with Carl and Michonne.  The only thing he can do is to hide under the bed and hope nobody sees him.  It gets a little more tense when one of the intruders starts poking around the bedroom, the just flops himself down on the bed.  Another one of the men wants the bed, too, because he doesn’t want to sleep in a kid’s bed.  The two start to fight, and the first man begins to choke the other, while Rick watches, still praying they don’t spot him.  As the second one is being strangled, he make eye contact with Rick and whisper “Help”, before he dies.  The winner of the bed battle takes his place again and falls asleep.

When Rick hears hims snoring, he eases his way out from under the bead and makes it to the hallway, then to the kid’s room.  There are more men in the house, upstairs and down.  They’re doing dumb stuff, like bouncing a ball around, next to the hidden Rick.  When he leaves, Rick goes into a bathroom where he finds another one and they start to fight.  Rick strangles him and takes his gun.  He then makes his way back to the child’s bedroom, opens a window and climbs onto the roof.  He falls to the ground and hides just below the porch.  One of the men is eating something there, so Rick can’t make his escape.  He spots Michonne and Carl headed right for the house and almost shoots porch guy.  Before he pulls the trigger though, the guy hears a scuffle and goes inside to investigate.  The man Rick strangled or the one strangled earlier or both have become zombified.  As Rick runs towards Michonne and Carl, gunfire is heard from inside the house.  There’s no place like home and there’s no place to call home.  The three of them walk along the railroad tracks and see a sign on a train – the same kind of sign that Carol and Tyreese found pointing the,way to a safe community.

Something to think about: We didn’t see little Lizzie Borden this week, but a friend of mine on Facebook raised an interesting question about her.  She suggested that Lizzie was responsible for the deaths that cost Carol her right to return to the prison.  In some ways, it makes sense.  We all know that Lizzie has some issues, especially when it comes to killing things.  (The look on her face as her hand was over Judith’s mouth sent chills down all our spines)  Carol would cover for her, feeling that she was ultimately responsible as she was the one who taught the children how to use knives and guns.  Rather than throw the kid under the bus, she takes the blame.

Empress