We pick up with Al following her escape from the hospital. She makes her way to a parking garage after being trapped by a pack of walkers in an alley. Inside she catches her breath and as fate would have it inside is a news van stocked with a new camera and tapes. She is also able to find and hot wire a police vehicle and heads back to the hospital to look for the others. Sadly, meeting her is just Martha and walker Jim. Martha wants Al to give Morgan a message, she won’t kill Al because Martha likes Al. Al says that she can tell Morgan her message herself. Martha sicks walker Jim on Al, she gets him off with a shotgun blast to the chest, and kills another walker coming towards her. With Al out of bullets Martha knocks her out. Martha leaves Al in the road for the others to find, she wakes up in the back of the SWAT van.
With everyone back together Morgan thinks he can still help people and wants to go and find Martha and help her. John doesn’t like it and says he is going to find him if he isn’t back soon. Morgan is able to get a hold of Martha who says she knew he would contact her and she is at mile marker 54. Everyone else is at the truck stop planning the next move, where to go, what to do. John and June are falling in love and it’s gross.
Morgan gets to mile marker 54, he sees walker Jim in Martha’s old car. Morgan kills walker Jim and sees Martha laying in the field in the distance. Martha is laying near her buried dead husband. She is all weak and beat up, she doesn’t want Morgan to see her like that. Morgan gets Martha into the police car and is heading back to the truck stop. John is trying to reach Morgan on the radio, Morgan can hear the message but Morgan’s doesn’t make it back. Martha wants to know where Morgan is taking her. Meanwhile Al is working on her van, walkers are coming in fast, Al is trying to fight but is weak and starts to faint. Alicia is able to shoot the walkers before they get to Al. Everyone gets inside as more walkers are coming.
Inside a time later, June reaches out on the radio to Morgan. Morgan is still outside of the range to get a signal back, but she says that Al got sick, but it’s not the sickness that she already had, it’s everyone. She says that something is just not right and they need his help. Morgan starts hauling back to the truck stop, Martha is in pain and pleads for him to pull over, he refuses, so she says she will take the medicine. Morgan reaches back to hand her the medicine and she grabs his arm and causes him to crash the car. After the break we see the carnage, Martha is in control, Morgan has a spike in his leg, this poor guy gets all sorts of leg injuries. Martha reveals that she purposely got bit so Morgan couldn’t save her. Martha wrote on Morgan’s face, “I lose people I lose myself”.
At truck stop, June goes to get some water, but she notices the bottle is loose, so she checks another bottle, it’s also loose. Followed by another and another, and she realizes that all the seals have been broken and someone poisoned them. They send a message to Morgan that they have been poisoned and need his help. Martha says she did it the last time she was there. She didn’t know any of them at the time. But you help people you make them weak. She admits that she put antifreeze in the water. Morgan knows they can’t hear him, so he handcuffs Martha to the car and starts heading back to the truck stop as fast as his busted leg can take him.
Super karate is always the best idea when you have a bad leg. Photo Credit: Ryan Green/AMC
Al is watching all her old tapes, she is watching tapes I haven’t seen before, and it’s obvious she knows who these people are, as she is crying while watching them. I wonder if we find out who these people are in the future. Al is refusing to let Martha win, so she musters up some strength to get back to the radio to call for Morgan. Finally Morgan is in range to answer the call, Al wonders what took him so long. Morgan tells them that it’s antifreeze, June knows that the antidote for that is ethanol, their happens to be a crashed tanker full of it outside, all they have to do is just go out and get it.
Everyone musters up their strength and game plan to get the walkers out of the way so Strand can open the valve on the truck, however he struggles to open it and the walkers are coming to fast. Al makes a decision to shoot the walkers with the gun on the SWAT van, sadly though it also hits the tanker and causes the liquid to come spilling out, admitting defeat everyone goes back inside to save strength. Morgan and John talk over the radio, John says that it’s the end for them, they can’t make it, no fault to his own, Morgan doesn’t want to accept that at all.
Morgan finally arrives! He kills all the walker buildup outside, he comes in to talk to everyone and says ethanol is just a fancy word for beer? He found a beer truck on his travels and drove that in. As fate would have it Jim is going to save the group yet again. My favorite part and maybe of the season is seeing Charlie go straight BEAST mode on curing that poison. Strand and Alicia have a nice moment, Strand thought he would never have a drinking buddy again, and it was a touching moment for sure.
Drinking buddies version 2. Photo Credit: Ryan Green/AMC
Morgan cleans up and seems to have convinced everyone to go check on Martha. Martha cut, or chopped off her own arm to get out of the handcuffs and is a walker. Morgan kills her walker version and buries her in the rocks. Morgan thinks that Alexandria isn’t the move to make anymore, he says that Martha got this way because she needed help and nobody helped her. He asked Luciana if she still has Polar Bear’s journals. Later we see them at a factory and that Polar Bear was trying to set up a system that lasts, he started it here at the denim factory. It’s out of the way, and has a big water area on one side, fences and built like a fortress.
Morgan wants to start a colony or something bigger here, Luciana tells Sarah and Wendell if they want to make it up to Curtis this is where they start. Alicia says it has to be more than boxes, they have to do what her mom would do and help people. Strand wonders where these people will come from as a limited resource, Al says that she has tapes of people from all over the area, some are not doing so hot so they can start with them. Everyone is shocked at Al and she says she has layers.
Some time later, we see them all settled in and they are inside a convoy of trucks, they have tapes of people, places like a Dog Shelter, and hospital among others, Morgan thinks these are a good place to start. Morgan gets on the radio and says that if anyone is out there listening, they are coming so hold on.
