The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Season 1 Episode 6 Recap

The Last Time – The season finale begins with Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Dana Bethune/Michonne Hawthorne (Danai Gurira) in each other’s arms while laying out their plot to retrieve Jadis Stokes (Pollyanna McIntosh) and expose the CRM. Shortly thereafter they put those plans into action.

After debriefing with upper CRM, Rick reunites with an excited Pearl Thorne (Lesley-Ann Brandt). After sharing a somewhat ‘close to the truth’ version of his narrow escape, he’s surprised to learn that her priorities and views have shifted.

Thorne later escorts Rick to meet with Major General Beale (Terry O’Quinn), who is clearing walkers at the perimeter while Michonne sneaks into Jadis’s room. Beale spends several minutes reflecting on the past before telling Rick that the scientists still haven’t made any headway with the virus. Beale also explains how he likes to be left in solitude the day before a big operation, so he can bear the weight of his decision himself. Today is different due to Rick’s unexpected return.

After a frantic search, Michonne begins to panic before she finally discovers the dossier. She proceeds to tear it to shreds. After picking up the refugee and attempting to make her way out a piece of mail sliding under the door hits her foot and alerts the carrier of her presence. Michonne is left with no option but to kill the intruder.

Beale makes a big deal of sharing the Echelon Briefing with Rick by making him carefully remove his weapons, including the prosthetic. He then asks Rick to share the worst thing he ever did to ensure the survival of another person. After several recollections, Rick recalls killing Joe (Jeff Kober) with his teeth. Beal tells Rick that he’s given the very same briefing 2533 times but this time it’s much different because it’s the start of what’s next, a day completely about tomorrow. Before getting down to business, Beale seemingly also feels it’s necessary to share a bit about the origins of his military career. Rick relates Beal’s experiences to his father’s lesson that sometimes things have to burn to get a fresh start.

While carefully retracing her steps out of Jadis’s apartment, Michonne overhears the announcement for a mandatory CEP briefing and attends. Although to much greater degrees, she and Rick learn simultaneously that the CRM has a litany of spies/embeds planted in communities throughout the world to monitor, potentially sabotage, and influence politics whenever and wherever deemed appropriate. Rick appears to grow more disturbed as Beale tells him the CRM was responsible for destroying Omaha and in 18 hours, they plan on doing the same thing in Portland.

Beale tells Rick that the CRM will write the incident off as another tragic, mysterious incident but ultimately gives them a justifiable reason to declare Marshall Law on the city, enabling them to overthrow the council. Rick is incensed to the point that he already has his knife drawn when he learns that this action will be followed by the CRM’s further elimination of anyone who resists them. Beale eventually gets around to asking Rick about the hardest loss he’s ever had to endure. Ricks’s response is Carl Grimes (Chandler Riggs). Although he only refers to him as his son, Rick tells Beale that it was saving him that caused him to use his teeth to kill Joe.

Despite Rick’s agreeing with Beale, he appears lost and confused when Beale points out that he couldn’t save him in the end. Beale then asks Rick what he would say if he could promise he never had to suffer a loss like that again. Rick doesn’t respond but Beale continues his rambling. At nearly the same time, Michonne has apparently heard enough of the CEP briefing and had to rush outside to get some fresh air. While she does that, Beale asks Rick to swear on the sword. (The sword that kills is the sword that brings life.)

After an intense stare-down, Beale apparently reads something in Rick’s eyes that reveals he doesn’t truly believe. Rick already having the knife out under the table also gives him a slight advantage. Although it sticks in Beal’s right shoulder, he turns out to be resilient. Despite a short fight, Rick easily kills Beale with the sword. After dispatching Beale, Rick immediately calls Thorne over the radio and claims Beale went to the woods to be alone before the operation. Rick puts Beale’s body in one of the CRM’s transport carts to wheel it out of the building undetected. This appears to be a fairly decent idea until a fellow CRM member notices it leaking blood in the elevator. This leads to another fight and Rick kills the soldier. When the elevator finally touches down Rick is surprised to see Michonne standing on the other side of the gate.

Rick tells her about the Echelon Briefing while she tells him about the entire tent full of bombs that the CRM plans to use to destroy Portland. As they make a pack and strategize to take down the CRM, Thorne realizes Rick lied to her. Although their plan is not revealed, the crate of grenades and wiring, suggest they have a plan. Much to Michonne’s surprise, Rick tells her that they could just walk away and go home. She practically says it’s not who they are, they have to do something because they can do something. Thorn’s suspicions are confirmed when she visits Rick’s room, only to discover him AWOL.

Thorne eventually puts the pieces together and realizes she has been misled by Rick this entire time. Unfortunately, it’s too late for her because Rick and Michonne are right at the last step of sabotaging the tent with explosive gas. Thorne does manage to head off their escape and not knowing what they did orders them back inside to fix whatever they have done. Rick and Michonne suspect they are about to be walking to their deaths while Thorne thinks they are merely on their way to stop some kind of intel leak. It takes her a minute but she realizes what’s going on when she sees Beale’s corpse stumbling out of the tent full of bombs. Rick and Michonne manage to make it under a tarp and slice open a water tank that begins to rain down water on top of them.

Seemingly minutes later, Thorne is shown to have survived the explosion as well. A fight quickly ensues when the three of them meet back up and Michonne ends up ultimately disabling Thorne while Rick finds himself in a compromising situation with several walkers. He narrowly manages to escape just as Michonne stabs Thorne in the side. Rick and Michonne leave her alive and consult with her before they make their escape. She basically gives them her blessing and gas mask.

When Rick and Michonne do make it to safety a news broadcast overplays against the footage. The newsreel basically reveals that all of CRM’s corruption came to light, forcing the CRC to disband the remaining troops and take immediate action.

As the footage continues to unveil, the CRC’s future plans, Rick and Michonne have a tearful reunion with Judith (Cailey Fleming) and Junior Grimes/RJ (Antony Azor).

 

The Ones Who Live Review

What utter and total tripe. I guess, all in all, it wasn’t entirely all that bad but for something years in the making, this was depressing. Rick, Michonne, Beale, and even Thorne’s performances at times weren’t bad. Despite how disappointed I was, I was quite surprised that I still felt slightly emotional at the final scene.

What troubled me most was the way Rick, Michonne, and Thorne survived the explosion. Not only that, but Thorn seemingly changes her whole outlook on life and the military in a matter of seconds. Yes, she did have the initial belief that the CRM was corrupt but the fickleness of it all was just a bit unbelievable for me, although this is how most people are today.

I can certainly appreciate the creator’s attempts to do something a little different with Rick and Michonne’s escaping the blast. That was quite clever, although anyone surviving a blast like that is a hard pill to swallow. I imagine the shockwave alone would have decimated everything within close range. Clever nonetheless. I give the finale a 5 out of 10 based on the performances, the throwback to earlier seasons throughout, and the emotional reunion. A happy ending can be a powerful thing sometimes.

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