'The Walking Dead' Recap: Going 'The Distance' with the most important resource in the world

Sometimes all you need to begin trusting strangers is a little applesauce at the end of the world. “The Distance” was a somewhat surprising episode of The Walking Dead. Not only was it the closest the show has gotten to Rick and company, especially Rick, being portrayed as “the bad guy”. More importantly, however, is the fact that it moved the storyline forward much further than what the audience has come to expect from the show. Just as recently as last season it took our group a half season or more to reach Terminus, so actually making it to Alexandria a mere two episodes after the group decided to go to Washington D.C. (at one point our nation’s capitol is visible from the road) is quite a feat.

“The Distance” picked up where last week’s “Them” left off with Maggie and Sasha bringing Aaron back to the barn to meet the rest of the clan. Despite Aaron making an impassioned case to Rick to follow him back to their settlement, Rick doesn’t trust him and knocks Aaron out cold before rifling through his bag to find out what he is really about. When Aaron’s bag reveals nothing malicious Michonne and Maggie are very quick to trust him, which is in direct conflict with Rick’s dubiousness. And so Michonne, Maggie, and Glenn go off to investigate whether Aaron is telling the truth or not about the two vehicles he brought in hopes of transporting Rick and company back to his settlement.

Rick’s distrust of Aaron is completely justified but it still doesn’t make his actions and attitude less villainous. Sure, he let’s Aaron live but his continuous threats and his quick jump to violence even after Aaron has been very cooperative puts Rick in a different light. It was important for Rick to remind Michonne, and the audience, of all the supposed utopias they have come across in the past but it was clear Michonne and many of the others were far too weary to not give Aaron and his settlement a chance. In fact Rick’s position as leader was more in flux than any point since he went temporarily crazy after Lori died. Michonne was the first to trust, or at least want to trust, Aaron and was the one who eventually made the decision that the group would be going to Alexandria without conferring with Rick first. This isn’t to say she is angling to take control of the group but it was still surprising to see her make decisions against Rick’s supposed will.

Even with all these developments (including the aforementioned applesauce for Judith) Rick still doesn’t trust Aaron and decides he will take his own route to Alexandria against Aaron’s advice. What transpires in one of the more tense moments of the season thus far. Rick, Glenn, Michonne, and Aaron are leading the way to Alexandria in front of the RV where everyone else is. As Michonne looks through the pictures Aaron took of his settlement, in hopes of convincing Rick a little easier, she realizes there’s not a single picture that has a person in it. And while this raises a red flag amongst those in the car, Glenn takes his eyes off the road and ends up running through a horde of zombies and makes everyone realize the RV is not behind them any longer.

Of course they car they were driving in won’t start because of all the zombie limbs stuck in the grill and the engine and they have to get out on foot. This zombie attack, unlike most of the others, comes when Rick, Glenn, and Michonne are completely unprepared, at night. It was one of the more intense zombie attacks in recent memory and because TWD has been so effective at killing off the characters, this zombie onslaught was more exciting than most during the entirety of the series.

After Glenn saves the still manacled Aaron and they reunite with Rick and Michonne, they meet up with the rest of the group. This also includes Eric, who is revealed to be the person from the settlement who came with Aaron and Aaron’s lover. That’s right, it’s the first gay couple after the apocalypse. And Aaron and Eric have perhaps the best on screen chemistry the show has ever seen. Perhaps this is because Aaron and Eric have been living in a settlement that allows hope and humanity where the survivalist world of Rick and his gang does not. It certainly is a breath of fresh air to see a real, loving relationship again (and Glenn and Maggie have not been like that since Season 2).

After the trying night everyone is much more at ease, including Rick (although he does hide a handgun in a blender somewhere near the Alexandria settlement). In a nice callback to the fallen Dale, Glenn knows exactly where to find the extra RV batteries once the RV battery in the engine fails. This callback also created a sense of hopefulness. A remembrance of a fallen friend in a way that helps the group somehow showed a bit more optimism than the previous two episodes had. At the end of the episode they reach the Alexandria settlement but the audience doesn’t get a peek inside until next week.

But the main question has to be, how screwed up will the Alexandria settlement be? As Rick’s aforementioned comment reminded everyone of how screwed up all the settlements they’ve before have been, it seems as though Alexandria cannot be as good as it seems to be. But TWD has an opportunity that the show has not yet used: A settlement that actually works. By this point in the story it could be very interesting to have a working, humane society and some of our character, like Rick and Daryl, not being able to fit into this society as they have become far too survivalist oriented and distrustful. It would be an excellent way to show how affected some of the characters have become by the world that they are no longer able to live in a somewhat normal society. Whatever the case may be it is exciting to have a place of hope again. And hopefully it will last more than a couple episodes.