“I’m not who you think I am,” says Daryl (Norman Reedus) to the man who has taken him captive after he was ambushed and split up from Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Abraham (Michael Cudlitz) in season six episode six of AMC’s horror/drama series, The Walking Dead.
Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham have successfully led a little more than half the herd of walkers away from Alexandria and have just started to head back when they’re ambushed by mysterious men in cars and jeeps shooting at them. Daryl races ahead on his motorcycle, dodging bullets while being chased by the men in the jeep. Sasha and Abraham end up crashing their car and have to make a fight of it.
Daryl ends up losing his pursuers by driving into a part of the forest that’s has been burned down and is littered with the corpses of walkers all around. He tries to get Sasha and Abraham on the walkie-talkie but to no success. Daryl realizes he did get wounded during the chase and covers his motorcycle with some dead branches, hiding it while he attends to his wounds. He has to cut short treating his wounds when he hears someone in the woods. Grabbing his crossbow, Daryl goes to investigate and finds two women (one still just a teenager) who say they did what they had to and took what they had needed. Daryl turns just as a man comes up and knocks him out.
Daryl keeps coming in and out of it consciousness that night, tied up and seeing images of the man and two women going through his stuff while sitting near a campfire. Finally, Daryl passes out until morning.
Abraham and Sasha come out guns blazing and kill whoever is in the car that was pursuing them. They regroup and try to get a hold of Daryl on the walkie with no luck. Figuring he’ll be doubling back for them, Sasha and Abraham head to a small suburban area and hole up in an insurance building. Sasha seems okay but Abraham is edgy, wanting to go and kill a single walker who is not even close to them. He has to be talked down by a much-calmer and collected Sasha. She asks Abraham why he came along on this journey to lead the walkers away and he tells her he had no choice since she seemed only days earlier to be less than steady. She assures him she’s in control now and presses him on why he feels the need to kill every walker. Abraham tells her it’s because the “sh%$# has hit the fan.” Sasha doesn’t buy his excuse and reminds him that as long as there is a roof over his head and walls and food, he is accountable and has to answer for his actions. Abraham answers by saying he’ll take the first watch while she gets some rest.
Back in the burned out forest Daryl is being made to walk with his new companions who have his hands tied and are still holding him at gunpoint. The man and two women are a talkative bunch and reveal that it was they who burned down the forest and took out the walkers trying to fight them. The man lets Daryl know he doesn’t trust him or his group – it’s obvious to Daryl they think he is with the men who ambushed Daryl, Sasha and Abraham earlier – and tells him maybe they will turn over Daryl to them if necessary.
They come across a garage and the man and two women get upset because across the way behind the fence are a bunch of walkers but no “Patty”. The man says she must be gone and just then the younger woman faints. Daryl uses the distraction to grab his big bag of supplies and run into the woods away from his captors. He keeps running and finally stops to check in on the walkie to see if he can reach Sasha or Rick, but still nothing. (These walkie-talkies don’t seem to be worth Sh&%*). Daryl hears a walker coming his way and begins to dig through the bag to find his crossbow. He can’t find it and the hungry walker has now seen him and is walking over. Daryl finally finds his crossbow but it snags on part of the bag and other supplies. Daryl looks over his shoulder to see the walker closing in on him. Finally able to free his crossbow, Daryl turns and while falling back and hitting the ground shoots the walker in the head with his arrow…WHEW!! Daryl undoes his ropes, freeing his hands. He goes back to the bag and discovers a medical container that has insulin in it.
Realizing the young girl is in need of insulin Daryl heads back and holds the group at crossbow point, telling the man to give him the gun which he does. Daryl asks what else he has and the man pulls out a wooden carved soldier. Daryl takes the carving as a trade for the insulin. Their reunion is short-lived when a truck breaks through the tree line. It seems the group that ambushed Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham are back. A man whose face is not shown tells the man and two women they have to repay what they took as well as all the time wasted looking for them. The women says they only took what they were entitled to and the man says they won’t kneel before them anymore. Daryl distracts one of the men who ends up walking up to an unseen walker who bites his arm. Screaming he’s been bit, the other man who had been doing all of the talking uses his sheath to cut off the guy’s arm. Daryl decides to help his former captives and leads them away during the chaos, giving the man back his gun.
Back at the insurance office, Abraham has left and gone looking for supplies when he comes across RPG ammo and a walker stuck on a wire fence. He notices the RPG is on the walker’s back so he tries to get it off of it without killing it with no luck and end ups screaming at it. Abraham then goes back to the armored jeep with supplies, lights up a cigar he found, and has a relaxing smoke. He returns to Sasha with the supplies and tells her that he has been living his life via “point to point” but he sees maybe a long life ahead of him and that he has been wanting to make some plays. He tells her he wants to get to know her better and he thinks she wants that too. Sasha tells him he has some stuff to work through before that happens.
Back in the woods, Daryl and his new willing companions come across a greenhouse that has two corpses in it from a fire. They knew these people and so the young girl goes to honor their memory by putting flowers by the corpses. As she lays down the flowers, the walkers wake up and attack her. She’s bitten and the other woman cries out, saying, “I’m sorry but we had to try,” while Daryl takes care of the two walkers.
As Daryl and the man dig a grave for the young girl, Daryl asks him the questions he used to ask when he would go out looking for survivors. 1) How many walkers have you killed? 2) How many people have you killed? To the first question the man answers a dozen, maybe. The second question he says none because there is no coming back from that. Daryl believes him and tells him about a place where he and others live like they did before all this happened.
Daryl leads them back to his motorcycle, telling them he’ll go on ahead and find his friends and come back for them. The man asks Daryl how many friends are out here and Daryl says two. It’s then that Daryl sees via his rear view mirror the man point his weapon at the back of his head. They force Daryl to give up his crossbow and his motorcycle, and the woman tosses him some bandages before they leave. She says sorry to which Daryl replies, “You’re going to be.” The man and woman drive off and Daryl continues on foot, coming across a gas truck that he drives to Sasha and Abraham’s location. The episode ends with the three of them back together heading down the road and Daryl trying to get in touch with Rick on the walkie-talkie. He hears some static and then a timid voice saying, “Help.”
The Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 6 Review:
Suspenseful although slow at times, season six episode six titled “Always Accountable” of the zombie series finally reveals what happened to Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham after they led the parade of walkers away from Alexandria while having no idea what’s been happening to the rest of their group. The stand-out performance once again goes to Norman Reedus as fan favorite Daryl who, even when he is held at gunpoint and kidnapped by strangers, ends up saving his captors from their true enemies. It’s easy to see why Daryl is a favorite character on the show with viewers – yes, including this one – because he’s the classic anti-hero. He’s also the one character who is most likely to survive and keep some form of his humanity in this apocalyptic world. The fact that he’s still willing to take the man and woman back with him to Alexandria and have them join his group after threatening to kill him speaks volumes about his character. Reedus owns this role and it would be hard to imagine the show without this character.
Michael Cudlitz delivers a solid performance as Abraham, who in this episode deals with some of his inner demons while beginning to look at having a new relationship with someone he’s drawn to. Unfortunately, the scene where he tells Sasha he wants to get to know her better comes off stilted and forced.
With Alexandria still cleaning up after the attack, the fate of Glenn still unknown, and Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham hearing a faint call for help from the walkie-talkie, episode seven should be jam-packed.
GRADE: B-
