THE WALKING DEAD: Harvey & Adair Are CONSUMED

 

Season 5, Episode 6 “Consumed”

Dustin: SOOO today I decided that instead of watching Once Upon a Time, a show we all –

Anne-Marie: HATE!!

Dustin: Yes… hate… we’d watch The Simpsons, a show we all like instead.

Timothy: Yes, and Dan Handley already covers Once Upon a Time for the site, so… he can suffer alone, I guess.

Dustin: And there doing a Burning Man thing this week, so, that’s nice, I guess. I am too repressed for Burning Man.

Anne-Marie: Yes. You’re practically straight.

Dustin: Lisa, on the other hand, loves Burning Man.

Timothy: They are her people.

Anne-Marie: And… Marge is hooked on hallucinogens.

Dustin: She really does have more addiction problems than Homer. Let’s be real.

Timothy: Lets not think too much about The Simpsons, shall we?

Dustin: But… but.. that’s what we do…

Timothy: To The Walking Dead. We do that to The Walking Dead.

Anne-Marie: It is why we’re here.

Dustin: Speaking of…

Yessss. Greetings ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our latest look at the post-Zompocolyptic world of AMC’s The Walking Dead. As always, Mr. Dustin Adair provides our recap in his own inimitable style, while I chime in with occasional commentary. Miss Anne-Marie, our Studio Audience of One and Mistress of the Tweet is also with us, and shall be conquering the Twitterverse on our behalf. Mr. Smith is away this week, and so is missing all the pizza we’re currently eating. There are, of course,  SPOILERS and much that is inappropriate to be found here, and so you have been warned.

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Are you done?

Yessir. Take it away.

RECAP!!

We’re back with Carol on the day she was kicked out of the Prison by Rick. If we are going all the way back to that, this is gonna be a long episode.

Later that night, she cries in her car because she loved those people.

 

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Walker at the window. She screams at it and drives away.

She goes into a law office to see if her human rights have been violated. She sorts some recycling and catches up on her People Magazine… I wonder what the Kardashians are doing during the Zombie Times? What is Kim doing without Photoshop to make her look like an alien from the planet Bootytron? Is Khloe finally over Lamar? How did Kourtney deal with putting down Zombie Scott Disick? I know a lot of you are gonna say the Kardashians would not survive, but let’s be real. In the End the only thing that will be left will be cockroaches, Cher, and the Kardashians. Looking for cell service. Complaining about the heat.

Now there’s a thought to haunt one’s dreams. It does raise the question though: If the Kardashians don’t have an audience, then who are they? Do they, in fact, exist without one? Not the best of reasons to instigate a Zombie Apocalypse, but if one must, then that would perhaps be an experiment to consider.

Carol sleeps, or tries to.

She actually has a pretty good set up. She’s safe, she has a window where she can air out her delicates. But then she sees smoke coming from the prison and she has to go back and see.

Once again presenting us with the fact that pretty much everywhere is safer than the places Team Zombie decides to call home.

She drives back to the prison and it’s on fire.

Did she just… abandon that car? When she picked up Tyrese & the girls? Because a car would have made things a lot easier.

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Yeah, I know. Blah blah indeed. Look, yes, gas goes bad in about six months, so no one in The Walking Dead or Z-Nation or any of the movies or hell, most post-apocalypse movies should have running cars, and yes, I know that it’s one of those things that everyone just ignores for story purposes. 

The truth is, I just want an episode of Team Zombie on bicycles.

Rick on some grungy old dirt bike, Carol on some vintage model with a basket. Michonne on some sleek racing bike, and Carl on a tricycle. Tyreese on one of those big tricycles. Glen and Maggie on a “bicycle built for two”. 

Daryl on one of these:

 

And yes, it looks like she just abandoned that car. Because it ran out of gas.

In the Nowtimes: Daryl tells Carol about what happened to Beth. They run over a walker. Ain’t no thang.

Carol wants to run the guy off the road and find out what he knows. But Daryl would rather not… maybe murder someone and not actually learn anything? He says they are gonna just, like, follow the dude and see where he goes.

I guess that’s 2 solid plans there.

The interesting thing, of course, is that Carol is now the one to want to rush into things, and Daryl is the one thinking strategy and patience. The evolution of these two – the best, true reason to watch this show, hell, the reason we went from hating season 2 and loving the show now – really is something that the writers have somehow managed to keep consistent, no matter the missteps of various seasons.

Annnnd it’s back to Atlanta. They take the route into Atlanta that Rick took in the first episode. It’s so completely amazing I can barely stand it.

It is a great shot. And for a show that uses CGI as sparingly as this one, when they do, it’s usually pretty impressive, but this is excellent work here.

On the street in Atlanta, the car stops and one of the guys in it gets out. It’s a cop!! Daryl and Carol watch as he moves some stuff out of the road.

Carol pulls out her gun as the cop walks back to the car. A walker approaches Carol’s window and for a second it looks like the cop is gonna come back to the car, but in the end, he just gets back in his car and drives away.

Almost thought that gave our two away. Think about it. If you’re alone in a city, and suddenly walkers are trying to get into a building or a car or whatever, it’s a sign that people are in there, isn’t it?

Of course Daryl and Carol’s car is out of gas.

Bikes. Bikes, I tell you.

Carol tells Daryl she knows of a place they can hole up for the night, they will have to try and find a car in the morning.

When they get to Carol’s secret hiding spot, they have to break in. Walkers slowly start to come out of the darkness and towards them. It’s kind of amazing.

It especially works with these two, as they are just the best at being quiet together, but man, this show really is using nice long stretches without dialogue, so very well.

The inside of the building is actually kind of nice. Daryl pulls some keys off the body of a janitor. Carol leads them to a place with “Service Center” on the door. Daryl asks her if she used to work there or something.

Carol says “Or something”.

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Considering what we know about Carol’s life before the world went to hell…

‘Tis a small office.

Yeah, sometimes this show is best when there is no dialogue.

Carol leads Daryl to a door you almost don’t notice in the small office, through the door, it’s dark, but empty.

Oh, and it’s a shelter for battered women.

Carol and Sophia the First stayed there for about a day before she went back to Ed, her bastard husband.

So much here that doesn’t even need words to sell the pain underlying this… this is just really excellent storytelling. Yes, we can really dive into bashing this show when it gets all Hand of the Writer, but then they give us this, and you remember how good this show can really be.

Carol offers to take the first watch.

Daryl asks her what is what exactly is her damn deal. Carol says she doesn’t have time to save people anymore. She lies on the bed next to Daryl.

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Daryl asks what she would have done if he hadn’t found her when she was getting the car prepped. She says she honestly doesn’t know.

Wow. OK. So remember how much Carol has been through… First the abusive from Ed, then losing Sophia in Season 2. She lost her faith in Rick, got it back and got close to Lori, only to lose that friendship with Lori’s death, and built this amazing relationship with Daryl. She became one of moral centers of the show, along with Hershel, and had that amazing scene with Merle in Season 3, only to have it turn to ashes with the death of Andrea. She then became harder, more survival-at-all-costs in Season 4, training the children to fight and killing Karen and David when it looked like the superflu would spread to the people she really loves. Rick kicks her out, and she ends up with Tyreese, Judith and the Little Girls of Doom, and we all know how that turned out. Of course she doesn’t know.

Rick may be the “main” character in this ensemble cast, but c’mon folks, we’ve said it before, we’ll say it again… Carol has the best arc.

As they lie together, there is a crash out in the shelter. They go to check it out.

Of course there are the walkers of abused women and children in the shelter. OF COURSE THERE ARE!!

If thinking about this doesn’t hurt you inside – just a bit, if not a lot – then there is nothing we can do for you.

Daryl tells Carol she doesn’t have to do anything; she protests a bit, he convinces her that he can take care of it himself. So she heads back to their room.

Sleep.

She wakes up and Daryl is gone. He’s out in the back burning the bodies of the walkers from the night before.

Carol thanks him in a voice that is barely a whisper and I cry a million tears.

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Here is the thing about Daryl and Carol for me: Everyone either wants Daryl to be with Carol or Beth or to come out as gay. There was a lot of talk about Daryl being gay before the season started; and there was a lot of queer baiting about it and a lot back and forth about whether or not Norman Reedus was down with playing gay or not.

Frankly, I don’t care about that. I think it would be great to have a strong gay character on this show, and I would not mind (and in previous recaps have petitioned for) Daryl to be that character. Norman has said, of Daryl’s sexuality, that he felt like Daryl was stunted by the abuse he suffered at the hands of his brother and his father, and therefore probably had no sexual desires to speak of. I actually like that. I like that Daryl is basically asexual and it’s because he was @#$%ed up.

Now it’s painful to say, because Daryl Dixon is one sexy mother@#$%er and people want to see him bed down with another sexy mother@#$%er. At this point in the series, I think both Carol and Beth qualify as sexy mother@#$%ers. So I totally get it.

So what does this all have to do with Daryl and Carol and what have I taken so much time out of this recap to talk about it now instead of being snarky about the damn episode like I’m supposed to be doing?

Finally, here it is. Carol and Daryl have a relationship we never see on TV or in popular media for that matter. They are friends. They are pure and beautiful partners. Their relationship is about so much more than sex. It’s about love beyond physical desire. Their relationship is perfect like it is now, sex would just mess it up. Just ask Sam and Diane. Just ask Mike and Maddy. Just ask Buffy and Angel. Sometimes sex ruins something good.

Therefore: Let’s not, okay?

The fact that an incredible act of friendship in this world is killing the undead so your friend doesn’t have to is… well, actually, it’s pretty wonderful. Yes, they do have a true friendship, and Daryl’s gift here is beautiful, in a way. And I do mean gift: For Carol to have to kill the walkers here, these women and children who were just like her and her daughter, would be like killing herself and her own child, over and over. For all Carol has been through – for all she has become and is becoming – that might just be more than she could bear. Certainly it would be brutal as hell to her emotional state, and Daryl, because he is her friend, doesn’t want to see her hurt, if he can help it.

And while I would ship Daryl and Carol like a lot of people, if I actually shipped, I can’t and wouldn’t argue with any of what you said here. I think that Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride have enough knowledge of who Daryl and Carol really are to keep the writers from screwing them up if they did end up together, and yes, both characters deserve to be happy, but I’m really OK with them being the best friends they are.

And that’s what really makes so much of Daryl’s few questions about what’s bothering Carol a little heartbreaking. He’s just gotten his friend back, and yet she was thinking about leaving, and he doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t want her to go, obviously, but he’s also not the kind of person, due to his own history, to open up about how he feels in much more than what we see here. But he can feel his friend slipping away and see her hurting, and it hurts him.

No one wants to lose a friend, whether it’s because they leave or because they are changing and leaving that friendship behind.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

In the Past: Carol digs graves for Sophia II and Puppy. She looks up and sees smoke in the air.

OK. Just have to point out how close everything is in The Walking Dead, once again. Everything.

Now: Daryl and Carol start out to look for the cops, running the around on the streets of Atlanta. It’s pretty amazing.

There are walkers in the cross walk. Ain’t they know jaywalking is dangerous? Daryl lights a legal pad on fire and throws it unto the street to attract the walkers.

You know, for all that I’ve complained about the walker/fire thing before, it does seem to be a function of heat, motion and sound that is attracting them. Here it makes sense, where it didn’t seem to before. Huh.

Daryl and Carol sneak into a parking garage and use a skywalk to access a building. As they enter the skywalk, someone pokes his head up over the back of a car. It’s too dark to see who it is.

Noah? Is that you?

There are walkers in the skywalk, but they are all in sleeping bags and tents and can’t get out. It’s kind of funny actually. Carol and Daryl put down the walkers in the sleeping bags, but don’t bother with the walkers in the tents because… plot? And it’s a bad idea because whoever is in the garage is watching.

Zombie burritos. Heh. And yes, they should have killed them, and this is foreshadowing, isn’t it?

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Daryl is just full of the one-liners today. It’s pretty great.

Into a fancy office the dynamic duo goes. They look out over the city.

I think that’s actually the first computer we’ve seen in a couple of seasons. Interesting how quickly we’ve adjusted to not seeing such things on this show, considering how much they are all over our world.

Carol tells Daryl without telling him, what happened with Sophia II and Puppy. Daryl sees something out in the city, he uses the rifle scope to get a closer look. It’s a van with crosses on the windows.

Again, so much, with so few words. Bravo.

Oh, and it’s perched precariously on the bridge about to fall over the edge.

Which seems a little… arranged, but eh, it’s still a cool visual.

It’s quite a hike, so Carol suggests they fill up on supplies there.

There is a weird, post-modern painting on the wall, Daryl compares it to a stain that a dog may make wiping is ass on the carpet. Carol says she likes it.

She also tells Daryl that he doesn’t really know her, and if that is true at all, it’s because she is holding back from the one person who will not ever judge her and find her wanting.

They come back to the doors of the skywalk, Carol does the dumbest, most ‘Girl in a Horror Movie’ thing ever and passes her gun through the gap in the chained doors and then slipping through the doors backwards.

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Aaaannnd…

And of course OF COURSE the mystery person who has been following them gets the gun. And of course OF COURSE it’s NOAH!! He takes their guns and Daryl’s crossbow, which is like the death penalty on this show. He slices open one of the tents and uses the walker inside as cover to get away from Daryl and Carol with all their weapons.

 

Pretty impressive for a kid who just got his ass beat and fell down an elevator shaft.

Carol aims to shoot Noah in the back, but Daryl stops her. They kill the walkers and go after Noah.

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So now Daryl is a little pissed at Carol for maybe wanting to murder Noah for their guns. Carol tries to convince him that she was only gonna murder him a little. She says that she’s tired of watching people die and that’s why she almost left.

Carol says the she doesn’t necessarily believe in God or heaven anymore, but if she is going to hell, she is going to hold it off as long as possible.

And I really don’t believe her. I love Carol, but I think that if she had shot Noah and killed him, she wouldn’t have had a second thought. Well, OK, that’s not quite true. She would have, and it would be eating her alive along with everything that is tearing her apart already. She’d just be trying to convince herself that she didn’t have a second thought about it.

Daryl drops his bag, inside is a book on surviving child abuse.

And another moment where words simply aren’t necessary.

You know, I was just Googling Scott Disick, I’m not sure he’s not already a zombie. He has cold, dead eyes. A shark’s eyes. A walker’s eyes. Maybe the Kardashians have been our first line of defense for a long time now… something to think about.

If the Kardashians are the saviors of humanity, we’re so very, very screwed.

In the past: Carol burns Karen and that one guy who no one ever knew or cared about. Smoke is in the air.

You know, I’m starting to get a little worried about where they might be going here. “Carol’s Greatest Hits” and her scene in the last episode are not a good combo.

They walk along the road to the van on the bridge.

Walkers are sneaking up behind them. They climb into the van. Looking for clues. The van is not in the greatest place, and every time they move it moves. Walkers are closing in on the van. Carol and Daryl take one more look around, just to make sure they didn’t miss anything, Daryl looks at the gurney in the back of the van and sees the name of the hospital on it.

Beth’s hospital. They’re coming for you Beth!

Of course, now they are trapped in the van with Walkers surrounding it.

With nowhere to go, and no options, Carol and Daryl strap themselves into the seats of the van and tip it over the edge. It’s pretty amazing.

 

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Both Carol and Daryl survive the fall, then, after a few seconds, walkers follow. It’s raining walkers!!

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Oh God, I laughed so hard here. After the fall, the walker splatting on the windshield was just perfect.

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They get out of the van; Carol is hurt, favoring her right arm. They head off towards the hospital.

It is a great, tense scene, and I have one complaint. Having been airbagged in a car accident once myself, Daryl should be in a lot more pain than he is, and have flashburns all over his face. When those things go off, they are incredibly hot, and burns are common, and especially since they smashed into the ground, he should have whiplash at the least.

In an office park near the hospital, Daryl liberates a machete from a fallen survivor, and then puts the poor bastard out of his misery.

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They look at the hospital. And eat chips.

Preservatives. Gotta love ’em.

Daryl asks her how he was before she and she says he was a kid, now he’s a man. Daryl asks if she thinks she has changed. She says she and Sophia stayed at the shelter for a day and a half, but then she went back to her abusive husband. After the world went to hell, who she was with Ed was “burned away” and then she got to move on and be the person that she always thought she was supposed to be, then the prison was destroyed and that person was “burned away” and all that’s left of her is the ashes.

Daryl says they aren’t ashes.

Shorter Carol: I don’t know who I am anymore.

Longer Daryl: You’re alive and so much more than what you believe.

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There is a banging, so they go to check it out.

They find a walker with one of Daryl’s crossbow bolts in its neck. They kill the walker and pull out the bolt.

Down the hall, Noah is trying to push a large bookshelf in front of a door where a walker is pinned.

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Daryl basically body slams the poor kid and pushes the bookshelf over on him. Daryl tells him that he’s gonna leave him to die the way that he left them to die. Noah begs for his life.

At first Daryl seems to want to allow Noah to die. But finally Carol begs for him to help the kid. The words are barely out of her mouth when Daryl kills the walker.

This was, it’s clear, a bit of performance by Daryl for Carol’s benefit. Him acting like what she says she has become, and making her see it in him, and reject it. Gotta hope it sinks in.

In the past: Carol sees the smoke from the destroyed Terminus in the background. She cleans the gore off herself and without hesitation walks the other way. She seems to have no intention of returning to the group.

“If I just don’t get close to anyone, then I don’t have to hurt anymore.”

Carol and Daryl pull Noah out from under the bookshelves and after a little aggression, it comes out that Noah escaped from the hospital and he knew Beth. They are just about to formulate a plan, when Noah sees a car from the hospital outside.

They run out the doors and CAROL GETS HIT BE THE MUTHER@#$%ING CAR!!

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Ah hell.

The cops hit Carol with their damn car.

Of course, Daryl wants to go out there and kill those dudes dead, but of course, that would not be practical. Noah stops him and tells him that would need an army to take the hospital… luckily… Daryl knows where to get one of those.

Yeahhhh, the hospital folks are screwed. Hey guys, have you met Rick? He just hacked a guy to death the other day. And don’t even think about what happens when Carl’s Hat gets there.

Daryl steals a truck that looks remarkably like the truck Rick drove into the city to save Meryl all those seasons ago…

Nooo, it can’t be, can it?

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Yes, it’s true. Anne-Marie will be traveling on the night of the mid-season finale. She is…

Not pleased. I am not pleased.

No?

Not. Pleased.

I can understand why. I mean, we have this storyline with Carol, Daryl and Beth, and Rick’s part of the group all coming together against the hospital crew, and then there’s the Abraham/Eugene storyline to deal with…

You are not helping. Stop with the not helping.

I’ll just step in here to say I loved this episode, and Carol and Daryl are the best. Honestly, I would be OK if they just had their own show.

I would watch that. We all would. They really are the two characters who have grown the most over the last five season, and considering Daryl isn’t a character from the comic, and Carol died pretty early on in its run, well. For all the grief we’ve given the writers over the last few seasons, these two they really have gotten right.

And that’s us for this episode. We’ll see you next week!

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