If last week's episode of The Walking Dead was the worst ever episode (it definitely was), this week's episode was maybe the best. And it was still terrible! Because this fucking show.
But let's start with what was great about it: It was full of Carol and Daryl and basically nobody else! Just a screen full of mutually respectful badasses with the most stylish dystopian grey garb and THE BEST HAIR. Pow!
Also, I genuinely dug the first five minutes of this episode, which were a flashback to when Grimes (of course his stupid head had to squeeze itself into the episode somewhere!) had banished Carol from Grimes Gang for making better decisions than he makes.
Down the road, Carol pulls over to have herself a good cry, and of course some wretched zombie has to come slam his gurgling corpse against the passenger window. She screams at him to go away and leave her the fuck alone, in the way that you might unleash on some dipshit who tells you to "smile" when you're sitting at a bus stop crying after being fired, and I love this moment, because it shows just how goddamned annoying the constant onslaught of zombies is, and how emotionally exhausting to never have a moment of peace just to have a private, interrupted moment in which to sob.
Note to Self: Write a post about how The Walking Dead might be an unintentionally brilliant metaphor for street harassment.
Anyway. Back in the recent past, Carol and Daryl fly down darkened roads in a darkened car after the car with the white cross like the one which abducted Beth. (Remember that? If not, it doesn't matter. Because this show is stupid and who cares.) They follow the car all the way to Atlanta, where their car runs out of gas at a super inopportune moment, forcing them to abandon their vehicle and lose track of the white cross bandits.
Luckily, Carol knows a place nearby where they can hunker down for the night. It's temporary housing in the back of a social services building (nope), where Carol once stayed with her daughter Sophia (RIP Sophia) once before the zombiepocalypse. In case you forgot, once upon a time, at the beginning of the show, Carol was married to an abusive fuckhead, who died fully one million episodes ago.
In the corridors of the social services building, Carol and Daryl see on the other side of a frosted glass door the silhouettes of a zombified mother and daughter. Carol looks pained. Daryl tells her she doesn't have to kill them. The next morning, Carol wakes up to find him burning their corpses. She thanks him, and we are treated to a flashback of Carol and Tyreese burying Lizzie and Mika, in case you forgot why she was bothered by the thought of killing a zombie child.
Because you know how you need a special reason to be upset by having to kill a child whose brain has a virus that has turned it into a literal monster.
Carol and Daryl decide they need to get a better vantage point to look around the city for where Beth might be, so they make for a tall building.
As we follow them on their adventure, we see so much scattered cardboard everywhere. (Whut.) In humankind's nightmare future, the currency will be cardboard and flannel, so stock up! You heard it here first.
Carol and Daryl make their way into a building, where a bunch of zombies are trapped in sleeping bags and tents. They kill the ones in the sleeping bags and leave the ones trapped in the tents. I'm sure this won't come back to bite them in their collective ass!
Spying out a window, they spot a van trapped on the precipice of an overpass. It has a white cross on it, which Daryl says is a clue. So they head back out to make for the van.
But they're stopped by Noah, the kid Beth helped escape, who relieves them of their weapons and then slashes open the tents to let loose the zombies.
OH NOES! IF ONLY THERE WERE TENSION HERE BUT THERE IS NOT BECAUSE WE HAVE SEEN SCENES OF THE FUTURE IN WHICH BOTH OF THEM ARE ALIVE!
Fight fight fight. Kill kill kill. They reach the van, and climb inside it to look for clues, as it teeters precariously over the edge of the overpass. They figure out what hospital it's from, like a real pair of Holmes & Watsons, then are just about to leave when—you guessed it!—zombies descend and send them plummeting over the side of the overpass.
OH NOES! IF ONLY THERE WERE TENSION HERE BUT THERE IS NOT BECAUSE WE HAVE SEEN SCENES OF THE FUTURE IN WHICH BOTH OF THEM ARE ALIVE!
The van lands right side up, with a colossal thud, and they're both okay, except Carol's shoulder is fucked up. Run run run. Then they take a quick rest, during which Carol tells Daryl about staying in the battered women's shelter with Sophia, but then returning to her stupid husband. This entire conversation is the woooooorst, with elements of victim-blaming women who don't/can't leave, as well as elements of the Surviving Gendered Violence Turns Women Into Superheroes Trope.
In case we didn't get the message, a book that Carol took from the social services office about surviving abuse falls out of her pack. Oy.
When they continue on to the hospital, they discover a zombie pinned to a wall with one of Daryl's arrows, so they know the kid who stole his crossbow must be close by. They find him, Noah, struggling to barricade a door with a huge bookshelf, and Daryl fights with Noah, who then gets pinned under the shelf.
They have a small angsty moment of whether to kill Noah or let him live, and they decide to let him live. Then with the cunningly deployed question, "Have you seen a blonde girl?" they find out Noah knows where Beth is.
Noah leads them to the hospital, where Carol suddenly gets run down by a car driven by the evil hospital cops. Holy shit! They strap her onto a gurney and drive off.
Daryl wants to immediately rescue her, but Noah tells him to let them take her, because they can fix her up. Good point, since she's now been in two serious automobile accidents in the last hour or so.
"We can get them back," Noah tells Daryl, who asks him what it's going to take to do that. Noah tells him it will take "a lot," because they've got guns and people.
"So do we," replies Daryl, and that is, presumably, when they take off back toward Grimes Gang, and it will be Noah with whom Daryl appears emerging from the woods back at the church. If you remember that whole thing from three weeks ago.
Next week: Carl the Hat continues to wear that stinking hat.
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