Recap / The Walking Dead S06 E02 "JSS"

Season 6, Episode 2:

JSS

When Alexandria comes under attack, Carol and Morgan lead the resistance to repel the invaders.

In a flashback, Enid and her family are attempting to fix a blown fuse in their car on the side of the road. As she stands outside the door of the vehicle, she notices walkers coming towards her from the front and back and yells.

Some time later, she sits inside the vehicle, bloodied and terrified. Walkers feast on the remains of her parents and brother outside. She eventually makes her way out of the car after the walkers leave and travels alone, searching for supplies from abandoned cars and avoiding walkers while scrawling out the symbol "JSS" on the ground.

She eventually comes to the outskirts of Alexandria and hears laughing from inside the walls. Despite being initially unsure of what to do, she makes her way to the front gate and is let inside...

In the present, Carol is explaining to a group of Alexandrians how Ed taught her how to make a recipe. She listens to one of the residents, Shelly, talking about how she smokes. Carol tells her to smoke outside and offers to teach her how to make pasta as a trade. Soon after, Carol leaves and comes upon Sam pouting on the front step of her house. She tells Sam not to focus on his father's death and move past it before heading inside.

Elsewhere, Tara and Eugene visit Denise, the community's new doctor. She tells them that she was promoted in the wake of Pete's death, and admits that she isn't sure she's up to the task. They assure her that she'll do fine.

Jessie calls Ron down to the kitchen of their house and tells him that he needs to get a haircut. When he resists, the conversation turns to how Pete physically abused both of them. When Ron tells her that Rick is dangerous, she tells him that he is her friend.

Carl is walking Judith when Gabriel comes up to him. He apologizes for telling Deanna that Rick and the others were "bad people", and tells him it was more about him than it was the group. Carl relents and invites him over later that day to begin on weapons training. As Carl walks away, he sees a distraught Ron hugging Enid, who stares at Carl in response.

Carol is cooking some food in the kitchen. She looks outside and Shelly get attacked and killed out of nowhere by a member of the Wolves, who is running down the street wielding a machete. Carol ducks back inside in shock, then tells Carl (who has arrived back home) to protect Judith while she springs into action.

At the same time, Jessie and Sam hear the Wolves outside their home and hide in a closet, while Maggie and Deanna (who were working on a garden) see a sentry get hit with a Molotov cocktail and fall down from the wall in fire.

The Wolves run through the streets, attacking Alexandrians indiscriminately. Carol runs out and takes down a Wolf from killing Erin, but realizes her wounds are fatal and reluctantly puts her out of her misery. At the same time, Spencer is manning the town's guardtower and attempting to fire at the Wolves when he sees them driving a tractor-trailer down the road towards the wall. It smashes into the barrier and the horn goes off.

Carl is inside the house and hears noises. When he moves to the door with an assault rifle and opens it, Enid walks inside. She tells him that she's planning to flee the community, but Carl tells her that she's staying and needs to protect Judith. He promises her that they can protect the community, despite her uncertainty.

Spencer pushes his way past debris blocking the guard tower door and goes to stop the horn, but is impeded by a walker in the passenger seat. Suddenly, Morgan appears and dispatches the walker before disabling the horn. He tells Spencer that they need to go inside and stop what's happening, but the latter leaves to go check on his mother.

Rosita and Aaron carry the wounded Holly to the medical clinic. Despite Denise's insistence that she's not ready, Tara and Eugene calm her down and tell her that they have to try and save her. Aaron tells Eric that he has to go help take back the town before leaving.

Carol dons the outfit of the Wolf who attacked Shelly and starts making her way through the town, executing Wolves as she goes. She shoots down an axe-wielding Wolf that was going to attack Morgan in the street, and tells him they need to go secure the armory before the other Wolves get there. Despite his shock and disgust at what she's doing, he reluctantly follows. He disguises himself as her prisoner and they sneak past several Wolves, but are forced to separate after they come upon the armory and the Wolves see through her disguise. She assaults it by herself and kills several Wolves, then tells Olivia (who was hiding) to stay hidden.

Ron is sneaking through the town when a Wolf charges at him. He's saved by Carl, who shoots the man in the leg. Ron sees Enid standing behind Carl and walks off in anger, while the Wolf attempts to take the latter's weapon before he shoots him down.

Jessie thinks she hears Ron outside and leaves the closet, but is attacked and knocked down by a Wolf. When the latter goes to pick up Jessie's fallen gun, she picks up a pair of scissors and stabs the Wolf repeatedly while screaming. Ron comes inside and looks on in shock.

Morgan saves Gabriel from being stabbed by a Wolf and ties the attacker up. When the man attempts to tell both of them that they don't belong in the town, Carol appears and executes the man and leaves as they look on in shock. At the same time, Aaron and Rosita take out another group of Wolves looting a home.

Morgan is confronted by several Wolves, and knocks most of them down while telling them to leave. The one leading the group chastises him for his inability to act and rallies the group to leave, but not before taking a weapon for his own use. Soon after, Morgan walks into a home and is surprised by the leader of the Wolves, who attacks and knocks him down. The lead Wolf rails at him for not killing him when he had the chance, but Morgan effortlessly dodges one of his attacks and beats him into unconsciousness.

In the aftermath of the attack, Denise mourns for not being able to save Holly, Carol sits on the front step of her house and cries, and Aaron discovers the photographs he had in his bag when it was lost at the cannery plant. He reels back in shock.

As Maggie, Deanna and others walk around surveying the damage, Rosita tells Spencer that her, Abraham and the others continue to fight because they have something to live for. Carl also discovers that Enid has fled the house, only leaving behind a message that reads "just survive somehow"...

Morgan walks down the street in a daze and passes Carol, who is also walking by. He stares at her before continuing down the street...

Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Pete is finally revealed to have indeed abused Ron, to the point that he can't even raise his left arm up.
• All There in the Manual: The lead Wolf (the long-haired man Morgan encountered in "Conquer") is only referred to by his alias, "W Man" in the end credits, and is never mentioned by name on-screen otherwise. Scott Gimple eventually revealed his name is Owen.
• The Atoner: Gabriel still feels guilty about telling Deanna that Rick and the others were bad people, so he decides to make amends with them and start learning how to fight in order to be more productive in the community.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The Wolves literally just rush in Alexandria slashing people.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Rosita and Aaron team up to take down several Wolves attempting to flee one of the houses.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Enid is visibly bloodied and dirty in her flashback, and gets herself covered in blood while eating a tortoise she found on the side of the road.
• Best Served Cold: Carol coldly executes a member of the Wolves that was attempting to talk to Morgan after being subdued.
• Blatant Lies: Morgan claiming he's not good with guns.
• Break the Cutie: As shown in the flashback that opens the episode, Enid is reduced to a wanderer who has no qualms about eating wild animals and stabbing walkers after she witnessed her parents get attacked and eaten by walkers in front of her.
• Brick Joke: Just before the Wolves attack Alexandria, Carol sets a 45-minute-long timer for a casserole she puts in the oven. At the end of the episode, Carl is momentarily spooked by the same timer going off and ringing, and remembers to pull the casserole out of the oven.
• Broken Tears: Despite her status as The Unfettered, Morgan correctly assumes that Carol hates all the killing. At the end of the episode, after witnessing the Wolves' mindless violence, she finally breaks down.
• Brutal Honesty: Carol tells Sam that Pete caused his own death. She then tells him to get over it.
• Camera Abuse: Blood gets spattered on the camera when Carol assaults the armory and shoots a female Wolf through the stomach.
• The Cavalry: Happens multiple times throughout the episode.
  • Morgan shows up to dispatch the walker pawing at Spencer in the truck and the Wolf attacking Gabriel in the streets.
  • Carol saves Morgan from the axe-wielding Wolf attacking him. She also saves Shelly from being killed outright by a Wolf, but after she realizes the woman's wounds are too severe, performs a Mercy Kill.
• Chekhov's Skill: Subverted. Jessie's weapons training with a gun seems like it will come in handy when the Wolves attack, but she barely gets a shot off before she's knocked to the ground by one of them. She ends up using a pair of scissors to dispatch the woman who attacked her.
  • Although, after the woman knocks her down, Jessie feigns unconsciousness, a tactic she probably picked up from life with Pete.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The Wolves make their first appearance as a unit, having learned of Alexandria's existence thanks to Aaron accidentally leaving his recruitment bag back in their trap.
  • Gabriel tries to make amends with Carl after betraying the group in "Spend", and also recalls the first time Carl tried to teach him to defend himself in "Coda".
  • Denise knows of Eugene's myth regarding the cure, and Eugene asks her not to be a coward like he was.
  • Carol makes deft work of disguising herself as the enemy when she leads the charge against the Wolves, as she did in "No Sanctuary".
  • Enid was seen carving something into a tree during "Try", and it's likely the "JSS" is what it was.
  • Maggie takes up her late father's job when it comes to planting crops for the group to eat.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Several of the Red Shirt Alexandrians are shown being brutally stabbed over or hacked and over by the Wolves, who laugh maniacally as they do so.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Alpha Wolf's Dragon cryptically states that the Wolves didn't choose their current, murderous lifestyle.
• Death by Adaptation: Both Holly and Erin are currently dead in the comics, but they survive the arc equivalent to this episode and get killed much later into the storyline, particularly Erin.
• Death by Irony: Carol tells Shelly to smoke outside in the future, as it's a habit that personally bothers her. A few minutes later, Carol sees Shelly (who is on her front porch smoking) get executed by one of the Wolves.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Carol.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: The Wolves seem to get along pretty well if one of their members' friendly compliment to Carol (who they believe is Aphid) is any indication.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Alanna Masterson was pregnant during the filming of this episode and Tara here is mostly shown from the chest up, though the actress' weight gain from her pregnancy is still visible.
• Hope Spot: Maggie and Deanna's conversation about getting past Reg's death and expanding the walls of the community, which happens just before the Wolves show up and start wreaking havoc.
• How We Got Here: The first part of the episode is dedicated to explaining the source of the car horn (caused by the Wolves attacking Alexandria).
• Idiot Ball: Enid's parents are too busy trying to figure out how to change a fuse on their car when she tells them there are walkers coming, and don't bother to flee until a pack is right on top of them. As a result, they're attacked and killed while Enid watches from inside their vehicle.
• Improvised Weapon: Jessie uses a pair of scissors to execute the female Wolf who attacked her in her home.
• Incendiary Exponent: The Wolves use Molotov cocktails to take out an Alexandrian sentry during their attack on the community.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Rosita implies Abraham and the group are this for her in the horrific world she lives in.
• Mauve Shirt: Erin and Shelly. They get a tiny bit of characterization before being brutally killed by the Wolves during the attack.
• Mercy Kill: Carol does this to an Alexandrian who is severely wounded (just like Carter) and is screaming in pain.
• Montage: Of Enid's travels before she arrived at Alexandria.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers for the episode made it seem as though the horde had reached the gates of Alexandria and breached the walls. In actuality, the characters reacting in surprise is in response to the Wolves attacking the community.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Morgan attempts to talk down a group of Wolves attacking him, and effortlessly beats them while attempting to talk sense into them. They end up fleeing, but not before stealing a weapon. This was in response to him expressly warning them against doing anything because they didn't have any ranged weapons.
• No Name Given: Other than the late Aphid, whom Carol killed, no other Wolf is named in the episode.
• One Woman Army: Carol, who kills at least six members of the Wolves during their attack, and is the one who secures the armory by herself.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When the Wolves being their attack Alexandria, Enid quickly decides to leave and asks Carl to go with her but he convinces her to stay and help protect Judith. Later, after the threat is over, Enid leaves anyway.
  • A group of Wolves decides to call it quits when Morgan reminds them they have no firearms and bluffs that his people have their firearms pointing at them.
• Smash Cut: Used several times during Enid's flashback.
• Survival Mantra: Enid's "JSS" motto, which stands for "just survive somehow".
• Tempting Fate: The lead Wolf goads Morgan by telling him he won't be able to kill him, just before Morgan brutally beats him down.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • Carol comes across members of the Wolves repeatedly stabbing people or hacking people over and over while laughing maniacally.
  • Jessie also repeatedly stabs a member of the Wolves with a pair of scissors while screaming.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Morgan's philosophy is called into question by both Carol and the Wolves.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Spencer, who mans the guard tower during the attack (Though he's also then too shaken up to dispatch the driver-turned-walker in the truck once it crashed into the wall, blasting the horn heard in the previous episode. Further, he elects to stay outside Alexandria with Deana instead of try to help, as the both of them recognize they'd still be a burden).
  • Jessie brutally executes a member of the Wolves who attacks her in their home.
• Unwanted Assistance: Eugene continually interjects during Tara's conversation with Denise, to the point that Tara has to tell him to shut up when he overanalyzes her comments about having a headache.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Morgan and Aaron realized their actions from "Conquer" have caused trouble for Alexandria when Morgan spared the two Wolves who tried to kill him and Aaron losing his backpack at the walker trap which allowed the two Wolves to find his photos of Alexandria.
  • Likewise, by shooting the truck driver, Spencer has unwittingly caused a horde of walkers to be lured to Alexandria. In "Start to Finish," they kill his mother.

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