What's Up With "The Walking Dead": Recap of episode "Indifference"

After last week’s multiple storylines, crushing revelations, and batshit crazy Tyrese this week seemed like a bit of a reprieve from the tension and death, don’t get me wrong, there was still plenty of blood, gore, and zombie kills…it just seemed really toned down. 

The biggest question going into this episode was how Rick would react to Carol’s revelation that she killed Karen and Bob. The answer came at the end of the night’s episode when, after a scouting trip for emergency supplies in the absence of Daryl and co’s return, Rick sends Carol packing. Rick and Carol had gone on the trip alone and ran into a couple holed up in a neighborhood house. Carol’s obvious indifference toward the survival and well-being of the newly found survivors pushed Rick’s decision, there’s no doubt there, but it was something a long time coming. Throughout the first three episodes, culminating in last week’s admission of murder, we've been treated to little glimpses inside the mind of a woman slowly loosing grip on her humanity. The secret combat training of the camp’s children was a bit disturbing, but understandable. Honestly, I can even follow her logic on why she killed Karen and Bob. Her complete lack of empathy toward the death(s) of the two newbies they find on their scouting trip…well, honestly, who can blame her. These three things seperatly do not condemn a person to exile…put together they make a strong case. Topped off by Melissa McBride, the actress playing Carol, giving an amazingly cold performance, showing a look in her eyes that can only be shown by someone with no humanity left. So with that, in a very non-walking dead way, Carol exits the group. No anger, no shouting, no fighting. Just putting some provisions into a found station wagon and driving off. Though I don’t think we’ve seen the last of her, I know the quick thought is to say she’s going to show back up with the governor. While that is a likely scenario I really don’t see it happening, there didn’t seem to be any ill will when she was asked to leave….hell she even gave Rick a watch that she had been keeping.

On the other end of the episode was the continuing adventures of Daryl and his merry band of survivors. When we last left them Tyrese had just gone Babe Ruth on about 30 walkers with a hammer…the group was forced from their car by a horde of walkers and were still a good distance from the college that had the medicine they needed to save the prison. I wish I had more to say about this half of the episode but really it was all kind of underwhelming, with the biggest bombshell being that the other new guy named Bob is an alcoholic. Even when it got tense it was all diffuse fairly quickly, there comes a point where the group is apparently trapped between the hall they just came from which is now swarming with zombies and the door they have to go through which appears to be swarming as well. They take their chances and go with the new door….3, 3 zombies…that’s it. They make their way out and Daryl sets Bob straight on his love of the sauce. Weird Dawson’s Creek-like song plays over introspective shots of the survivors thinking in their respective cars, fade to black, episode over.

Needless to say this was far from the most exciting episode of TWD to date. As weird as it sounds I did really enjoy the Rick/Carol part of the episode and there were a few really tense moment’s during the college medicine raid…even if the payoff was less than spectacular. This season has left a lot to be desired action wise but I’m sticking by my feeling that something big is on the horizon….I just hope that something big isn’t the flu. 

A Dash of Dissent: Rocky's Thoughts on "Indifference"

I don’t want to go the expected route and say I was indifferent to our fourth episode of this “Walking Dead” season, “Indifference,” because that would be pretty clichéd. And, actually, inaccurate. I had some feelings! I gasped some. I nodded along some. Then, at the end, I grimaced. A montage set to a morose, really-obvious-lyrically song (“Serpents” by Sharon Van Etten, in case you were wondering)? You’re better than that, “Walking Dead.”

So here, have some thoughts. You know the drill by now: Good, meh, and just plain awful.

Good: Get up in more faces, Daryl! Daryl’s loyalty to the group is one of my favorite things—who doesn’t love Daryl Dixon?!—and so I understood his rage at Bob’s uselessness. How long do we think Bob is for this world, raging alcoholic that he apparently is? At least we got a conversation between him and Tyreese; all I kept thinking during that exchange was, “Oh hey, Cutty and D’Angelo are talking to each other!” And I also thought, “Fuck, ‘The Wire’ was so much better than this.” And that’s just fact.

Also good: Two close-ups on Rick’s hands in two back-to-back episodes? Excuse me while I cackle maniacally over here. Just saying.

Meh: Peace out, young couple hiding in a room with fruit! Maybe if Carol and Rick hadn’t been so busy talking about Lori’s awful fucking pancakes, they would have realized that walkers were coming to eat your faces off. In all reality, this is another (expected) example of characters introduced during an episode, interacting with our group, and then getting killed off, and the show expecting us to be aghast or unsurprised, varyingly, with how fast people can die in this world. Truthfully, I don’t think the prison group needs to be bigger, so I was fine with the girl dying and her boyfriend disappearing—and I loved the trail of fruit and blood that led Rick and Carol to discover her body. But again, she didn’t scream? They didn’t hear her struggle? Or the grunts and mumbling of the super-excited walkers obviously lumbering up to a kill? Again, this show fails at its own logistics.

P.S. to the previous “Meh”: I’m sorry, why are Carol and Rick ONLY PICKING RIPE FRUIT? You’ve stumbled upon an unguarded vegetable garden. It is clearly full of delicious tomatoes and cucumbers and other fresh produce. Why wouldn’t you pick everything, as much as you can carry, and just take it back with you? If it goes bad later on, fine, but at least you have it. This kind of choosiness from these people who may be starving for food soon is just so absurd to me.

Bad: “They might have lived, and now they’re dead.” Such eloquence, Rick! I get that kicking Carol out of the group was a tricky thing to figure out, and Rick isn’t the strongest when it comes to speeches anyway. But the obviousness of that line stuck out to me in a frustrating way. However, the fact that Rick got to make the call of banishing Carol—a decision he made single-handedly, without the council or discussion with anyone else—is a good thing. It repositions him as leader, which is what we’ve all been waiting for anyway. But do we think Carol will make a return at some point? How will Rick explain this to the group? I didn’t agree with how Rick phrased his “peace out, Carol” speech, but I like the implications for the group moving forward.