The Walking Dead - Recap: Everything You Own In A Box to the Left
Recap video and review of The Walking Dead - Season 4 Episode 4 - Indifference:
Of all the characters on The Walking Dead, it's Carol (Melissa McBride) who has gone through the most radical development from when we first met her. Back in season one, she was a timid, meek woman at the mercy of an abusive, boorish husband. And in those early seasons, Carol's onscreen depiction was reflective of her characterization beneath the surface: her lack of substantial screentime correlated with how much of a ghost she was among her own people. It took a long time for Carol to come out of her shell, to find the strength to be something more than the shrinking violet she'd been. The death of her daughter, Sophia, was a seminal moment in bringing Carol to the cold pragmatism she now practices, as she talks to Lizzie at the start of the episode about the need for caution and vigilance, since walkers are not at all the people they were once they turn. Yet her survivalist ideology is one that's gotten her into more trouble than she might have expected, as Rick (Andrew Lincoln) exiles Carol from the group at the end of the episode. "Indifference" is interesting enough as a fetch quest with various bumps and hurdles along the way, but it's far more intriguing for the underlying subtext, depicting characters in search of a way to let go of the demons that plague them, sometimes in a very literal sense.
"Indifference" has far more focus than most episodes, since the story doesn't have to service too many different characters or subplots. This week, the narrative is divided between two separate camps: on one side, we continue to follow Daryl (Norman Reedus), Michonne (Danai Gurira), Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman) and Bob (Larry Gilliard, Jr.) on their search; on the other, we stick with Rick and Carol as they go on a supply run of their own and address the elephant in the room, namely Carol's confession last week to the murders of Karen and David. It's this latter storyline that carries much of the dramatic heft of the episode, because so much of the drama is couched in silences. Rick avoids talking to Carol about her confession, and it's that silence that slowly drives Carol crazy, as she simply wants the catharsis of being judged. But even now, Rick is still learning how to be a good leader, and so it takes him the better part of the episode to decide what he's going to do about Carol. Of course, one could argue Rick knew he was going to exile Carol before they even left the prison, and his silence with Carol is indicative of his own inner turmoil about what he feels he has to do. If that's the approach you accept, then the episode becomes a bit more poignant, as it suddenly becomes less about a supply run and more about Rick going on one last journey with this old friend of his.
Credit: AMC
But I don't really subscribe to that theory. I think Rick wasn't entirely certain what he was going to do when they left the prison. Naturally, since Rick refuses to address the matter for at least half the episode, the turmoil between Carol and Rick has to be conveyed in another way. Enter Sam and Ana, two hippie-types who've somehow managed to survive in an ever-perilous zombie apocalypse despite possessing no discernible survival skills whatsoever. As they explain to Carol and Rick, who've broken into their safehouse in search of supplies, neither Ana nor Sam is much of a crack shot, wasting five or six bullets just to bring down one walker. To make matters worse, they don't see the use in killing walkers with anything other than guns. They're genuinely surprised that Rick and Carol would risk getting up close to a walker to kill it with a knife, and so one would think their approach to survival was simply to avoid conflict altogether. And really, that's not a bad strategy to take. Which is why it's all the more confusing that Sam and Ana get a sudden burst of uncharacteristic bravery in Rick and Carol's presence.
Credit: AMC
Sam and Ana bring the conflict between Rick and Carol out into the open in subtler fashion than if they'd have just addressed it outright: Rick wants to admit them to the group, asking Sam and Ana the "three questions" for membership offscreen, while Carol thinks it's a bad idea to admit more people to the group, and she communicates this opinion by overruling Rick's objection to allowing Sam and Ana to put themselves in harm's way. Rick tells the pair to stay inside until they return from their sweep of the neighborhood, yet Carol indulges the couple's enthusiasm to help, despite Ana's leg injury and Sam's dislocated shoulder (popped back in by Carol, who learned how from the internet back when she was regularly suffering the injury at the hands of her jackass husband). Rick's desire to preserve emotional attachments is pitted against Carol's cold pragmatism. For her, it doesn't make sense to risk the group for the sake of two people, while Rick believes that there's always a chance in this world, right up until your heart stops beating and you become a walker. Their approaches are reflected in their conversation while picking fruit in a garden out back, as Rick poignantly recalls Lori making pancakes for the family every Sunday even though she was a terrible cook, because "She wanted us to be a family who ate pancakes on Sunday morning." The sentiment is reflective of Rick's attachment to the emotional connections that have carried him to this point. Even the pain of loss hasn't dulled Rick's capacity for feeling. Yet Carol's reflections in the garden scene are about how she's doing her best to forget about Sophia, since there's only pain there. It's the entire Karen/David conflict in microcosm, with Carol remaining cold to emotions because it impedes one's more rational survival instincts, while Rick doesn't think that survival should come at the expense of one's humanity.
Credit: Gene Page/AMC
Naturally, not everything can work out in this scenario. Ana is chewed to pieces by walkers within moments of splitting up with Rick and Carol. Meanwhile, Sam mysteriously never returns, and is presumed every bit as dead as his female counterpart. Sam and Ana aren't given much development, so their deaths don't have as big an impact as they might have had, but they did offer a refreshing portrayal of normal people in an apocalypse, since I don't imagine everyone in the world is an Automatic Headshot Machine like Rick and his crew. I also appreciated how eerily upbeat Sam and Ana were about everything, as they provided a much-needed sense of levity to one of the more dourly serious episodes of the season so far. After all, any episode that has one of the deeper characters of the series getting exiled from the group is going to need all the levity it can muster.
Rick doesn't really mince words about his decision: as he and Carol are about to leave back to the prison, he finally explodes at her over the Karen/David situation, saying that he thinks she made the wrong choice, since they very well could have recovered from their illness. However, Carol is convinced she did the right thing, not only for the group but for Karen and David, whom she claimed were doomed to suffer a gruesome death. She said she made it quick so they wouldn't feel a thing, and this isn't exactly comforting to Rick, who's searching for some sign that Carol is more than an unsettling efficient pragmatist. As her friend, Rick worries about what Tyreese is going to do to her once he finds out that she was the one who killed Karen. Yet as a leader, he has a decision to make. He explains that if everyone in the group had died, and it was just Carl and his kids with Carol, he couldn't allow her to remain with them. And so he gives her the car and some supplies, and basically sends her on her way, with assurances that she'll find another group. It's quietly devastating, as it's presented in such a matter-of-fact fashion. Carol fights to change Rick's mind, but only briefly, and without as much conviction as one might expect. Carol knows that Rick's mind is made up, that nothing whatsoever can be done about this. And so she leaves in the car while Rick leaves in his, parting to an unknown fate. Of course, the irony in all this is that Rick banished Carol over a decision she made without consulting any of the others, yet he made the decision to banish Carol without consulting anybody himself. It's a shocking development, as much for what actually happens as for what it will mean for stories down the line. I know I wouldn't want to be the one to have to explain to Daryl that Carol left, or why.
Credit: AMC
The other storyline this week centers on the search for supplies, and the narrative hits much of the same character beats as last week: Tyreese is still on a suicidal warpath, infuriating Michonne, who doesn't want him to die. Yet Michonne is wrestling with demons of her own, as she admits that she needs to let go of her obsession with The Governor. She resolves to stop going out on her hunts in search of him. However, Michonne's progress is not reflected in Bob, who fails to break free of his alcoholism. He admits the guilt he feels over his culpability in Zack's death in a conversation with Daryl, and Daryl quickly absolves him of any blame. But the friendliness between the two quickly changes for the worse when Bob foregoes getting the badly-needed antibiotics in favor of grabbing a bottle of alcohol. As the son of an alcoholic, abusive father, Daryl has no tolerance for people who lack the ability to control their demons, or the recklessness those demons compel. And so he gets in Bob's face and looks about ready to throw him to the walkers below. But Daryl maintains his cool, allowing Bob to live another day. It's all far more engrossing than it sounds, and nearly everything that works about it is due to Norman Reedus and Larry Gilliard Jr., who imbue this paper-thin friendship with something resembling genuine camaraderie. I don't know how much legs this plot has, going forward, but it more than gets the job done here.
Credit: Gene Page/AMC
"Indifference" is a strong hour of television, as exciting as it is thematically rich. Season 4 has a high bar to clear after the stellar third season, but there's no reason to think the show can't top itself, particularly when even the most seemingly-incidental episodes, like this, manage to be so deeply involving.