Always Accountable

"Always Accountable" is the sixth episode of the sixth season of AMC's The Walking Dead. It is the seventy-third episode of the series overall. It premiered on November 15, 2015. It was written by Heather Bellson and directed by Jeffrey January.

Plot
Getting back to Alexandria proves difficult.

Synopsis
Daryl, Sasha and Abraham arrive at the 20-mile marker, which was set to lead the herd away from Alexandria. As they pull away from the herd and begin the journey back to Alexandria, a group of gun-wielding assailants ambushes them in cars. As they flee, Daryl crashes on his bike, and is separated from Sasha and Abraham.

Sasha and Abraham crash their car, and emerge from the wreckage with guns blazing. They defeat their attackers, but flee when they hear reinforcements arriving.

Daryl eludes his attackers, and quietly walks his motorcycle through a burnt-out forest, littered with charred walker bodies. He tries to radio Sasha and Abraham, but gets no response. As he inspects a wound on his arm, he hears a noise nearby. He hides his bike under a pile of branches, and finds two sisters, Tina and Sherry, with their hands up, telling him they took what they deserved. Just then, a man knocks him out from behind.

As Daryl drifts in and out of consciousness, he sees his captors rummage through his supplies and put his crossbow in a bag. The man pegs Daryl as a soldier from an outpost – one of the men who originally attacked Daryl, Sasha and Abraham.

The man, who refers himself as "D", wakes Daryl at gunpoint the next morning. Daryl insists he isn't who they think he is, but D doesn't believe him.

Daryl's captors march him through the woods. D declares that they are not returning to the community they came from. "You feel you gotta kneel? Fair enough. We don't." D tells Daryl.

As they keep moving, D lays out a plan to find "Patty" and then leave immediately. He describes how he and Sherry burned the entire forest with the walkers in it. He then explains that they joined up with a community, thinking naively that they would rebuild society together. Daryl argues that they should let him go, but D refuses to listen. Shortly after, Daryl suggests that they're making a mistake. D holds him at gunpoint, and angrily demands that Daryl tell him whether he poses an immediate threat, and whether he should be killed. Daryl says no.

They arrive at a gated parking lot, full of walkers. "Patty", D says. "She's gone." The women begin to panic, and Tina faints. As they tend to her, Daryl grabs their duffel bag and runs back into the woods, evading gunfire from D.

Safe in the woods, Daryl tries again to radio Sasha and Abraham, but without luck. He frantically searches the duffel bag for his crossbow, as a walker begins to close in on him. After dispatching it, Daryl looks down at the scattered contents of the duffel bag. He notices a small cooler filled with insulin, which suggests that Tina's fainting spell was due to diabetes.

Meanwhile, Sasha and Abraham deduce that their attackers had intended to ambush someone else. Sasha insists that Daryl will try to regroup with them, and that the best way to find a tracker (like Daryl) is to let him find them.

In a nearby town, Sasha writes "Dixon" on the door of an office building. Abraham eagerly takes out his knife to slay a walker down the block, but Sasha warns him against leaving evidence for the attackers to trace their whereabouts. Inside the building, Sasha situates herself in an office, as a walker pounds on the glass wall of an adjacent conference room. She asks Abraham if he wants to stand watch, or sleep. Abraham opts to stand watch.

Abraham later tells Sasha that he's eager to kill the walker in the conference room. Sasha calls him out for being reckless. "You have choices," Sasha says. "And without walkers, and bullets, and shit hittin' the fan, you're accountable for them." Abraham shrugs her off, and insists on standing watch throughout the night.

In the woods, Daryl sneaks back to where the three strangers are, and points his crossbow at D. He proposes that in exchange for their handgun and a wooden figurine (that D carved), he will return the duffel bag. D hands over the gun and figurine, and Daryl gives them the bag with its contents intact. They're interrupted by the arrival of several men in a truck. Wade, the leader, orders D to return what he took (which is Tina and Sherry). The women state defiantly that they are not going back. In response, the truck begins to plow through the forest, in an effort to flush them out. Daryl helps them find a hiding place, and gives the handgun back to D. He lures one of Wade's men into the path of a walker, which bites him. Wade hacks off the man's arm, and calls off the search. Referring to their unidentified leader, "He only wanted to take this so far", Wade tells his men. "He only wants ass that's willing."

The next morning, Abraham is searching the roof of a building when he finds an abandoned military vehicle containing RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and a box of cigars. He spots a walker impaled on a bridge fence, and eyes the RPG launcher strapped to its back. Climbing onto the fence to get the launcher, Abraham dangles precariously over the edge, and grapples face-to-face with the walker, tearing his shirt in the process. The walker snaps at him, and Abraham finally backs off. He yells in frustration and returns to the Humvee to smoke a cigar.

As he sits, Abraham watches the impaled walker's rotted shoulder slide completely through the fence post. The walker falls to the ground, leaving the launcher dangling from the fence by its strap. He brings the weapon and RPGs back to the office, and admits to Sasha that she was right about his recklessness. He commends her for calling him on his bullshit, and declares he would like to get to know her better.

"What makes you think I want that?" Sasha asks..

"A man can tell", Abraham replies. Sasha smiles, but says, "You have some stuff to take care of first." Abraham agrees.

Daryl, D, Tina, and Sherry come across a greenhouse that has been burned down. Tina recognizes two corpses inside, both of which are encased in melted glass. As she lays flowers at their side, the corpses reanimate, breaking through the glass and killing her. Daryl kills the walkers as Sherry breaks down, and D looks on.

Daryl and D dig a grave for Tina. Daryl asks him how many walkers he's killed, how many people, and why. Satisfied with D's answers, Daryl invites them to come live in Alexandria. D acknowledges the offer, and seems interested.

Daryl brings D and Sherry to his motorcycle, and explains that he doesn't know where Abraham and Sasha are, but that he's going to find them. Suddenly, D turns his gun on Daryl and orders him to hand over his crossbow. Daryl complies, and D and Sherry get on his bike. Sherry throws some medical packs at Daryl's feet, and says she's sorry. Daryl says, "You're gonna be," before they ride off and disappear.

Daryl finds a fuel truck in the woods branded "A.A. Pattrick Fuel Co." Its license plate reads "Patty". He kills the walker in the cab, and drives to pick up Abraham and Sasha.

Daryl, Sasha and Abraham drive down the road in the fuel truck. Daryl tries to radio Rick. An unfamiliar voice replies, saying, "Help".

Co-Stars

 * Darin Cooper as Wade
 * Matt Lowe as Cam
 * Liz E. Morgan as Tina

Uncredited

 * Unknown as Carla
 * Unknown as Delly

Deaths

 * Tina
 * Carla (Alive, Confirmed Fate; Zombified)
 * Delly (Alive, Confirmed Fate; Zombified)
 * At least 2 unnamed Saviors

Trivia

 * First appearance of Dwight.
 * First appearance of Sherry.
 * First appearance of The Saviors.
 * First (and last) appearance of Tina.
 * First (and last) appearance of Wade.
 * First (and last) appearance of Cam.
 * First (and last) appearance of Carla. (Zombified)
 * First (and last) appearance of Delly. (Zombified)
 * The title of the episode, "Always Accountable", comes from Sasha's speech to Abraham about being always accountable for his own actions.
 * Dwight and Sherry, are credited as D and Honey. This was probably to mislead the fans.
 * This episode marks the first mention of Negan, although not by name. While camping in the forest with Daryl as prisoner, Dwight, who thinks he's one of Negan's soldiers, says "He probably hates him too".
 * AMC accidentally uploaded the promo for episode 6 on their website and on their YouTube channel instead of episode 5. AMC took the video down when they noticed their mistake.
 * The walker that Daryl kills in the woods after escaping contains a Cherokee Rose on its body. This is an Easter egg to both Daryl and Carol from Season 2's fourth episode, "Cherokee Rose"
 * The line "Self-awareness is a beautiful thing" said by Sasha to Abraham in this episode are the same words Bob told Sasha in "Alone".
 * Daryl asks Dwight the same questions that we saw previously several times, starting with "30 Days Without An Accident", but also in "Indifference", "Alone", "Strangers", "The Distance" and here in "Always Accountable". The rationale behind the questions has never been revealed on-camera in the TV series itself, but it would appear that they were chosen as a quick way of gauging the attitude of survivors. There seem to be no true "right" or "wrong" answers as such. Most of the actual gauging comes from peripherical signals, such as how promptly the answers are given, with which attitude, and how much sense they make when taken together.
 * The van that Daryl found at the end of the episode had the license plate named "Patty", revealing that the "Patty" Dwight's group was looking for was not a person after all but this truck, as a means of escape. Since escape was their primary motivation throughout the episode it makes sense that they turned on Daryl as soon as they were presented with a choice between the motorbike and a dangerous trip back to an unknown community.
 * Given the walker in "Patty's" cab, someone most likely stole the truck, explaining why it disappeared and then later died and turned.
 * Daryl can be seen with Beth's old knife during the entire episode.
 * This is the first episode since its introduction that the Alexandria Safe-Zone does not appear.
 * It is revealed in "Start to Finish" that the person who said "help" at the end of this episode was Eugene.