The Walking Dead Review – “Consumed”

Editor’s note: this review will contain some spoilers. I will try to keep them to a minimum, but they’re be there nonetheless. You’ve been warned.

I’m a bit torn on the latest episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead. On the one hand, it feels like the show is dragging its heals a bit. That’s been a complaint I’ve heard leveled at the last few episodes, and I’d defended the show because I liked what they were doing with the divergent story lines and individual character development. In “Consumed”, it feels like they’ve taken that just a bit too far. On the other hand, I really like what the show has done with Carol, and this episode really built on that in nice ways.

Let’s start with the positives here. Carol is a real success story for this show, which has long struggled with writing female characters that had more than a single dimension and acted like real human beings, rather than just automatons programed to advance the plot. Lori was awful. Andrea was somehow even worse. Carol started off that way. She was the battered wife stock character right out of a Lifetime Original Movie, and her abusive husband was a cartoon character for all intents and purposes. In the second season, her primary role was that of the mother of an imperiled child. She had pretty much nothing else to do.

She was written in a way that female characters are all too often pigeonholed: as a perpetual victim with no agency of her own. I absolutely hate this kind of characterization. It’s shallowly manipulative and perpetuates the ludicrous idea that women can’t manage their own lives.

But then, Carol started making her own decision, and actually started to become something of a human being. And what a breath of fresh air that was. Sure, there were some heavy-handed moments, but that’s just growing pains. Carol has somehow become one of the most interesting and successful characters on the show. It’s also fantastic that they managed to write a female character with her own motivations and goals, without making her some sort of overly-sexualized virgin/whore. We need more of this please, Walking Dead.

Pairing her with fan-favorite Daryl almost seems like a cheat. Almost.

“Consumed” gives us some nice insights into Carol’s development, including several glances at her involvement with plot points that have only been hinted at up to now. The real story here is her familiarity with the battered women’s shelter that she and Daryl camp out in for the night. When they arrived at this setting, I was worried. It would have been very easy for the show to get lazy and maudlin with this plot thread, but they handled it extremely well. Carol was pained by the memories, and her regret at not taking action in the past.

They also took the moment to address some of the criticism leveled at the show: Carol actually talks about how much she’s changed, and is not a self-actualized person, rather than someone who simply reacts to the circumstances of their life without actually doing anything about it. Well done, writers.

Of course, there’s that other hand full of negatives that I mentioned. “Consumed” had a lot of good moments, but let’s be honest here: a lot of it was filler too. There were some great moments here, like the zombies in the sleeping bags who were clearly murdered by someone – presumably the people at the hospital – based on the bullet holes in the sleeping bags. And then there were the parts with Noah, which just didn’t work for me at all. It seemed out of character for him to hold Carol and Daryl at gunpoint and leave them unarmed, and then it took things to a ludicrous new level when he released several zombies on them for no good reason. We knew exactly how this was going to end, our heroes were going to catch back up with Noah, who would be in trouble and need help, and then they would fold in together, where Noah could tell them about Beth and the hospital. The needless back and forth was an irritant.

Eventually, we end exactly where everyone assumed: with the hospital people taking Carol away, and Noah and Daryl heading back to the church to bring in the rest of the group for a big rescue attempt. The story could have been told much more efficiently. Oh, and the van thing was really stupid.

Grade: