The Walking Dead, Season 4, Episode 4: Indifference
The entire episode is mostly just a focus on two groups -- Carol and Rick's conversation about morality and what Carol is revealed to have done; and Team Daryl going off to get medication. And neither, honestly, is any interesting. The former really is the meat of the episode, with a deep conversation as to responsibility and whether it's right for Carol to do what she did, but the latter was... very boring.
There was zombie slaying, for sure, and there were some scenes of Tyreese being angry and borderline suicidal, but really the only thing that seems to be relevant is showing us that Bob is a piece of shit who filled his bag with alcohol instead of the medication that they went halfway through the zombie-infested state to get. Honestly, if I was Daryl, I would've pushed him down to the waiting zombies down below. But other than those two character beats for Tyreese and Bob, the latter being absolutely fucking annoying considering the events of last last episode -- where he could've taken the alcohol without any real ramifications.
Meanwhile, Rick and Carol go off on a little excursion for Rick to try and gauge Carol's real motivations, when it's honestly obvious. She's trying to prove herself strong. Nay, to show how strong she is... and she's also trying to protect the community. The thing is, I'm actually not arguing that Carol shouldn't have acted... after all, like Rick killing Shane in season two, it's honestly somewhat comparable, something that Carol herself brings up. But it's the brutal way that she killed them, the relative lack of urgency that the threat honestly was at the moment, the way that she took the decision to her own hands without telling anyone.
Rick himself also needed to hear some of what Carol was saying -- he was trying to run away from responsibility, trying to just be a farmer and plant cucumbers -- but ultimately both of them have a point. The result of the conversation is basically Rick setting his foot down and firmly but not unkindly telling Carol to fuck off from their community, otherwise he'll have to tell Tyreese about what Carol did. That bit honestly bugged me a little, because Rick taking the decision to deal with Carol on his own seemed mighty hypocritical, but it's an interesting conflict nonetheless.
There's a random subplot about two people that they meet hiding in a house who try to prove themselves to Rick and Carol, and ultimately just die offscreen. That was a time-waster, to be honest, with really the only thing it manages to do is to show that Carol's gone a lot colder -- something that we already know. She killed two people in cold blood, her acting with indifference to two random newbies getting killed by zombies isn't a huge shocker.
One of these generics, however, is played by Robin Lord Taylor, who, in a couple of years would star as the breakout character in Gotham as the Penguin. It's a bit of a hilarious recognition, yet the script doesn't let him do quite enough to make him as memorable as his role as Oswald Cobblepot.
It's an interesting way to resolve a conflict, where everything is mostly just two people talking amicably like adults. And both Carol and Rick have gone through a lot over the course of three seasons that they're not one dimensional... yet there's just kind of a lack of interest to just what's going on. At least the status quo is changed, though, with Carol leaving the group and going off on her own, but I'm still unconvinced that they couldn't have made the conversation less vague and more interesting. It's not bad, but it honestly didn't have enough material in it to last an entire episode.
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