The title of this episode couldn’t be more apt, for a couple of reasons. First, when Carol was trying to justify her murderous deeds to Rick, the first thought that came to my mind about his reaction, or lack thereof, was that he seemed indifferent or at least less than impressed. (Note: I didn’t know the title of the episode while watching.) Second, I’m not sure how I feel about this dramatic episode. It’s clearly an important episode, so I’m not indifferent about it, but I’m definitely 100% sure that things were handled properly by the showrunners. Mostly where Carol is concerned.
The Villains of The Walking Dead, Season 4
This point hasn’t occurred to me until now, but we have no clear villains in The Walking Dead, Season 4. There’s no Governor, there’s no Merle, and there are no rednecks holed up in the woods. As a result, Gimple and company are creating villains out of ordinary people doing ordinary things in a post-apocalyptic world.
Bob is being villainized for his dependence on alcohol. Tyreese is being villainized for his ongoing anger, when previously he was a gentle giant. (Am I alone in wishing Tyreese would be killed off? I’m tired of him and, at this point, I have no sympathy for his loss.) And, perhaps our biggest villain of Season 4, Carol is being villainized for murdering two people who fell ill with a deadly virus.
Carol – Public Enemy #1
“Indifference” began with shifting scenes between Carol offering words of wisdom to Lizzie and Rick preparing to go on a run. However, there was an ominous tone and a suspenseful score, so, I was thinking that Rick was preparing to kill Carol — judge, jury, and executioner style. In a way he did end up doing all of that by the episode’s end, but instead of executing her he just exiled her — for himself and his family.
One of the points of wisdom Carol did get to share with Lizzie was that “we all change.” That’s a pretty transparent device since the majority of the episode focused on how much Carol has changed since her days of being an abused spouse. In my opinion she’s changed for the better and I’m not entirely convinced that she was wrong to murder Karen and David; her intentions were in the right place. Maybe she should have brought it up with the council first, but that would have taken too long.
Throughout the episode, Carol kept pushing or baiting Rick, trying to get a reaction out of him, but he never went for it. He remained “indifferent,” which certainly had to raise some red flags for Carol. One of the final tactics she deployed was to share her abused story and how much she’s changed since those days. She basically said she’s happier now, which provoked Rick to ask about her daughter, Sophia. Carol said that all that is “somebody else’s slideshow.” I think that was her “death sentence”; such that Rick wants people who remember, that care about the past, not people who are indifferent about the past or people that they come across needing help. That’s a major step forward for Rick’s character development.
I want to know how Rick will explain why Carol is absent. Will he say the Walkers got her? I don’t think he can admit that he exiled her for murder because that will only send Tyreese into a raving rampage. Perhaps that’s the writers’ intention. Also, what will Daryl’s reaction be? I don’t think it’ll be sympatico.
Lizzie, on the other hand, is truly “messed up” in the head. The writers must be planning something big with the way that they’re rolling out this character. The latest bit is that she believes that the Walkers still have some semblance of who they were, that they’re not really gone, that they’re just different now. I think Milton proved last season that they are not.
Tyreese and Bob – Both Are Needing 12 Steps
As I said earlier, I wish Tyreese would just get killed off. I’m tired of his self-pity and his expulsion of rage whenever he has a manual task in front of him, the latter of which almost cost lives in “Indifference.” It seems that Michonne got through to him though, and that he got through to her too since she admitted to Daryl that she was done searching for the Governor. How much you want to bet that the Governor shows up now?
Then there’s Bob, who, in a very Romero-type of scene, confessed to Daryl that he has a drinking problem and basically caused the Walkers to fall through the roof at the superstore in “30 Days Without an Accident.” This characterization seems to come out of left field since Bob has been a pretty even-keeled guy up till this point. Now, he’s risking his life for half a bottle of booze and getting busted by Daryl.
So, I guess there are two questions now: 1) Who’s the bigger liability, Bob or Tyreese? 2) Who will be the next black man to get 86’ed?
With all that to digest, let’s toast to next week’s episode being the final one starting with the letter “I.”
Rock Hard \m/
