Synopsis for 4×05: After finding out about Laura/Naomi’s death at the stadium, John Dorie explains their relationship to Morgan — from when he first met her to the day she left.
But when he hears more shambling infected on his shores, John gets up and discovers a wounded Naomi instead. She’s delirious and can’t do anything to prevent him from taking her inside and trying to tend to her injuries. In the morning, however, she tries to steal his car and he helpfully tells her where to find the keys and how to ensure it stays working for her. When the car ends up with a dead battery, he offers to give her a place to rest up for the time being or supplies to leave.
She instructs him on how to stitch up her wound and he makes her fish stew. When he introduces himself and she doesn’t offer her own name, he decides that she looks like a Laura. He gives up even more of his past by telling her about his hobby of performing in wild west shows on the weekends — which explains his sharpshooting ability and his cowboy antics. John even rigs up the bed with a privacy curtain, which Laura sleeps in after some initial arguing.
In the morning, he does his normal routine and admits to her that there are more infected than usual washing up on shore. He plans to go to the store and see if he can figure out the issue along the way and she wants to go with him. He tries to give her better boots for the canoe journey, but she again refuses.
Laura wants to know why he didn’t bring his guns on the trip, to which he says they’re more trouble than they’re worth. Before they can dig into that issue, they find a bridge where someone had driven off the side, causing a hole for the infected to fall through into the river. That’s the issue that needs fixing, but not before they head to the store.
They show up at Bill’s and John tells her about the owner before letting her loose to pick up whatever she wants. She grabs some things for herself and then helpfully moves some atypical splint materials closer to the other medications. He fills out the rental list and takes a new movie for himself before heading outside and finding some corrugated roofing to patch the bridge hole.
Later that night, Laura can hear him watching his movie on the couch and quietly joins him. After he falls asleep, she admits that she lost her child and he immediately wakes up. They look at each other before she gets up and goes back to the bed. In the morning, she asks him to teach her to fish.
Life becomes rather stable after that olive branch is extended. They fish together, eat dinner together, play Scrabble, and generally spend their time together making a life for themselves. When she’s finally healed up, he takes care of her stitches and she still makes mention of leaving. Their conversation is interrupted by more of the infected washing up on the shore — obviously what they’d done to patch the hole didn’t work.
Together they head back to Bill’s and she hotwires a car to push in front of the hole. John discovers that she has brought one of his guns, which upsets him enough that he storms out of the Jeep and takes care of the infected by axe. As they move the car into place, one with a machete stuck in its chest cuts through the canvas door. Laura urges him to shoot it, but John angrily stabs it and covers them both in blood.
When they get back to the cabin, she’s pissed that they could both be infected because of the blood, but quickly realizes that John has a thing about guns. He admits to her that he shot someone who was holding up a gas station. He only wanted to knick the man, but he moved unexpectedly and with John’s sharpshooting skills, he nicked an artery and the man bled out. Everyone else thought he was a hero, but he moved to the cabin to get away from all of that.
Up on the bridge, the infected are attracted by the sound of another infected trapped in the submerged vehicle that initially caused the hole. Enough of them congregate that they end up moving the Jeep out of the way and all fall into the river. This means that a large group end up on John’s shores at the same time in the middle of the night.
He wakes Laura to help him dispose of them, but they’re quickly overrun. When she falls into the ditch and they begin to fall down on her, John has no choice but to get his pistols. He expertly shoots every single one of the infected around her and saves her life. Later, they sit on the porch and she thanks him for everything that he’s done for her. He hands her one of the pistols because she’s still planning to leave.
Inside, she joins him on the couch while he’s watching a movie, but he moves to get up. When she confronts him, he admits that he loves her and they kiss. In the morning, he wakes up to find that she left, but left him with a message in Scrabble tiles admitting that she loved him too and that she was sorry.
John reveals to Morgan that he still has those Scrabble tiles with him and he believed they’d have a second chance together. He’s still dejected, but Morgan is suddenly filled with inspiration fire and urge John not to waste another second as they get up to catch bac up with the other group.
English