Absolutely nothing about this episode is going to convince those concerned about padding and decompression of the storytelling that they are mistaken.  Even fans of deep character exploration are going to be hard-pressed to argue that this wasn’t a sparse, slow-paced effort.  That it seems to underscore that the rest of the episodes in 2014 are going to center on Beth’s rescue and the post-Hunter lull is unlikely to make many fans happy.  (Granted, the ratings are still more than secure, so overall, the effect will likely be minimal in terms of the series’ longevity.)

 

Don’t get me wrong; Daryl and Carol are two of the best characters on the show, and so the notion of an entire episode with them as the focus gets a lot of mileage on that basis alone.  However, this wasn’t exactly what I was hoping to see out of the two badasses from Team Grimes; instead of taking on the hospital themselves to free Beth, they end up wandering Atlanta, killing a zombie now and then, and generally getting shown up by Noah, a kid with the survival skills of a guinea pig.

 

There was plenty of introspection on the part of Carol, in terms of how far she’s come from the battered woman who once visited that shelter, but therein lies the problem.  Daryl and Carol are characters that have a lot more going on under the surface, and it’s hard to have any of that erupt past those defenses.  Carol is perhaps less inclined to hide her feelings, but that was before Sophia and Lizzie.

 

The other problem is that the two of them made odd choices.  Why would Daryl be willing to let Noah die towards the end, forcing a moral crisis, when he foolishly let the kid run off with their weapons, rather than let Carol wound him enough to stop him?  It felt contrived, but not nearly as much as the bridge scene.  Daryl and Carol, with no weapons to speak of, see the mass of walkers coming their way, but act like it’s no big deal until they are overwhelmed.  It was all too clear that the writers were struggling to find a way to insert some action into an otherwise thin episode.