Archive

“The Walking Dead” recap (5.6): Consumed

In this week’s episode of The Walking Dead, we are treated to our favorite duo (at least mine.) (Sorry Glenn and Maggie!) An exiled, past-season Carol is squatting at an office for the night when the next morning, she sees smoke billowing into the air. What she doesn’t know is that it’s the Governor and his followers wreaking havoc on Rick and company back when they were making a life behind prison walls. Carol had been banished by then, but decided to race back to help-which is telling, in case you hadn’t put her together yet. I look at Carol as a survivor-not a victim, not a woman who was weak and is now strong, but a Phoenix rising from the ashes. So, what else is this Phoenix supposed to do whenever she sees smoke rising?

In the next scene, Carol and Daryl are synced up and we’re brought back to near-present time when they high-tailed it out of the woods in the hopes of finding Beth, or at the very least, catching up with the white-crossed car to find out what these people want. They head north on I-85. As reference, that freeway in Georgia runs northeast-southwest, from the Alabama border, running straight through Atlanta proper, and into South Carolina, across the Savannah River, up through North Carolina and Virginia. If Carol and Daryl didn’t have this mission to find Beth, they could easily take the road clear through the city, and put action to their declarations about starting over.

It’s nighttime and the white-crossed car stops ahead of them. A guy gets out and clears a driveway, but why? Carol asks if the guy who got out of the car is a police officer. We already know the situation here and what’s taking place back at Grady Memorial Hospital. A walker is intent on getting Carol’s attention and Carol’s like, “Bitch, don’t kill my vibe!” They don’t want this dude to spot them, and hey, maybe he does and pretends otherwise, because he definitely gives their whip the one-two before getting back in his ride and leaving the scene. Carol and Daryl’s getaway car is out of steam, so they get out on foot and find their way into a tall building that Carol seems a little bit familiarized by. Still, it’s business as usual: blocking doors, securing the area so they can get a little sleep and wait this mission out until morning. But something is blocking Carol, and Daryl knows it. In between all this talk of “you take bottom bunk, I’ll take top bunk” Carol admits without much dialogue that she’s been here once before. This place is a women’s shelter. For Carol, this place was a possibility, a choice, a haven, a hiding spot, a rescue site, her moment of reckoning and calm from the storm-and there were no walkers then, no cannibals or post-world Southern men with guns and bad attitudes, no zombie daughters, no killer children-just abusive husbands. Hers.

Carol says she’ll take first watch. They don’t really need to, Daryl says. They’ve made sure they found the most inner spot in the building to hunker down for the evening. For Carol, this place will continue to be the same, in a way: A place that is supposed to provide some element of safety, but can’t possibly give her certainty. Hey, the woman says she’s still trying to save people, because that’s what’s important. And, for her, maybe redeeming. That’s when they hear noises from out in the hallway. Behind doorways with number labels, they see a couple of walkers. Carol knows this only means one thing: These were women who were staying at the shelter and turned. She doesn’t have the heart to kill them, but she will. Daryl eases her back into the room, telling her she doesn’t have to. The next morning when Carol wakes up, she sees Daryl handling the situation with all the grace and dignity she could have ever wanted-he’s covered the women in sheets and his burning them outside. A smile overcomes Carol’s face in a flash, just for a moment. She must wonder: Did she really save herself? And when? Was it there on the banks of that river so many seasons ago when we watched the husband who beat her die? Was it on that night she found herself here, seeking refuge, but going back home eventually to the abuse? When did her choices become lifesavers?

I see so many memes across the internet that say things like: Carol the savior, and there she is in her Ewok cape saving the day at Terminus, or riding in with fire and bullets blazing to save Beth at the hospital. Everyone just expects Carol to rise to the occasion now, to be the knight in shining armor. You know what, she so is. And, I love that she has Daryl to walk with her down these hallowed halls. They leave their spot and take to the Atlanta metropolitan streets. A few burnt out cars and a gaggle of walkers are all they find, but when they make their way into a ritzy office building, they notice one of those white-crossed cars parked outside in the distance. Another thing: As they made their way into the building, did you catch those few seconds when we see Noah out there? Carol fills up her water jug with maybe the last half-full Culligan (remember, we’ve gotta be glass half-full people here) in the entire southeast. This guy’s office is just as he left it-his laptop open, and some artwork on the wall that Daryl says looks like a dog smeared it’s poopy ass all over it. Carol likes it.

They go back through the building and into an area they came across on their way in-a bridgeway filled with tents and sleeping bags where it looks like a group was squatting for a long time until they died. On their way in, they’d only killed the ones in their sleeping bags but stepped around the tents, which, could easily be confused for a hot box of music festival trippers instead of walkers. Carol shimmies through the doorway, back first. OH NO. I already see what’s coming. As Daryl makes his way through, Carol shouts, “Daryl, no!” It’s Noah-our favorite member of the lollipop guild who left Beth behind after escaping the hospital. He slashes open the tents, noting how tough Carol and Daryl look, so you know, they’ll be able to take on a couple of walkers. Carol shoots for Noah’s ankles with the pistol she was hiding as he runs away, but Daryl stops her.

A fight ensues between C and D-more like an unloading. No one really “talks” like they used to. Remember, all the trauma from their past-lives (the lives they had before this one, where they just hope they’ll find clean water and a place to lay their heads for an hour) is stacked up against all the trauma (and complete distrust in anything or anyone) in this new life. That said: There is a lot of psychological chaos that doesn’t just go away or transfer into something else, at least not without some breakdown or admission. They’re all coping. So, Daryl echoes what Carol said before-that he’s trying, to save people. Noah was “just a kid,” he says. But this is a trigger for Carol, who’s killed kids. She rattles on about how she doesn’t want anyone to die, not herself, not Daryl, not Beth, not the pack back at the church. That’s when a book falls out of Daryl’s backpack: It’s Treating Survivors of Child Abuse: Psychotherapy for the Interrupted Life. Carol just looks at it like, “Whatever.” Did you guys catch that glimpse of “Tom Sawyer” in Carol’s backpack before they left the shelter, too? If you remember back to when the little girls were still alive, Carol was walking along the railroad tracks comparing them to the likes of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Does she hold onto this book as a constant reminder of Lizzie and Mika? Carol strikes me as the kind of person who forces herself to live with her shadows and demons, not her scars and her regrets, but her decisions, all of which have been pointed at one thing: her survival.

Back on foot, Carol and Daryl find that truck, the one with the white-crosses. They look inside but they don’t find anything but a stretcher. It tells them one thing though: This group is operating out of the hospital. So, now they know. Sort of. Before they can get away, the truck is overrun with walkers! They buckle up and get in the front seat. Daryl says to hold on tight, so they grab hands and Carol squints her eyes, staring briefly at the holy figurine planted on the dash. The force of the walkers pushes the truck over the bridge. It falls flat and C and D only suffer a few minor injuries. AS IF this is supposed to be their Thelma & Louise moment. Nah, they’ve got more work to do.

There’s only three blocks separating them from Grady Memorial. They hunker down in an office building across from it so they can get a clear shot of any weird activity. Daryl finds them a couple bags of chips, and that’s when Carol’s hunger to talk settles in. She explains that her daughter Sophia was with her at the women’s shelter for a day and a half before they went back to Ed. She just kept hoping something would happen-but did nothing. Then, the world quite literally ended. Of course that didn’t mean Ed would die, or that the abuse would stop, or that she’d eventually lose her daughter. It just meant that now she had to adapt to being an abused woman in a post-society world where the threat of dying at any moment was already looming in her life previous. Is there anything worse? She says, “It consumes you.” To which Daryl replies, “We ain’t ashes.”

Then, one of the most badass Daryl moment happens in Walking Dead history. Carol and Daryl hear some weird sounds (per usual) so they go out into the hallway to see one of Daryl’s bows. They know Noah is nearby, and for the record: Kid has bad aim. He didn’t even spear this walker’s head. Carol gets caught behind but Daryl finds Noah fiddling around in the next room and he pins him down under a bookshelf, noticing a carton of cigarettes on the ground. Noah is pleading for help. But Daryl picks up a pack of cigs, lights one, and mutters under his breath, “I already helped you once. It ain’t happening again.” Puff, puff.

Carol doesn’t like this one bit, so she asks Daryl to spare this guy. Daryl’s like, “You almost died because of him,” but Carol explains she was fine. At the last moment, just as a walker is about to eat Noah’s face off, Daryl shoots the walker square in the skull with one of his bows-showin’ us how you do it right, cigarette hanging out of his mouth and everything. Hey, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. They help Noah out from under the shelf. This guy is not doing so hot now-he’s fallen down an elevator shaft, he’s gotten his legs crushed under a shelf, damn if he can run straight without his legs giving out. Carol’s in the lead and as she runs out the door to cross the street, a station wagon that looks like it’s picking me up for elementary school carpool crashes into her. I literally just shouted out loud and jumped up off my couch, you guys. CAROL IS HIT! It’s all coming together though.

Daryl, of course, wants to rush out to her aid. He could take these guys. But Noah explains she’ll get help where she’s going-she’ll get medicine and proper care. Daryl asks what it will take. “A lot,” Noah responds. I want to like Noah, I really do. Maybe we all do? He left Beth behind, but he’s just told Carol and Daryl that he knows Beth and she helped him out, big time. We also know that Beth was all smiles when Noah got out, even if that meant she had to go back in. Beth’s lesson in all of this has been learning to be selfless. She gave Noah his freedom, and like every single ripple in TWD, now it’s clear what’s led us here and what has to happen. It’s also clear Noah’s clueless, so kid needs to get schooled in the art of survival: Daryl Dixon 101.

Noah is the one who Daryl brings back to the church when the group discovers Carol and Daryl are gone and decide to wait for them while Abraham and the others go off on their big fail mission to D.C. They find a truck (because Daryl is a super human) and get the hell out of dodge. Noah looks on at Daryl as they head out in to the woods away from the city like, “MAN, who is this guy?” Meanwhile, as we already know, Carol is getting wheeled into the hospital. Damn, the next episode is going to be on fire.

Follow me on Twitter, @the_hoff! We can chat about #TheWalkingDead, #TeamTara and anything else your zombie-loving hearts desire.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button