10x21 Diverged

[7.7/10] I like how simple this one is. It’s a very intimate, internal hour for The Walking Dead, the kind of episode we haven’t gotten in the longest time. There’s no major threat here. We get some minor zombie attacks just to ensure the show still hits its quota of the undead for the week. But for the most part, this episode is about smaller problems that Carol and Daryl face, that reveal deeper things about their psychology, a tack I almost always enjoy.

There’s an intimacy to it. The episode doesn’t quite reach these heights, but it reminds me of “Fly” from Breaking Bad with that balance. Carol’s challenges are simple: make soup and find a rat. So are Daryl’s: find a screwdriver and fix his bike. But the realities of the zombie apocalypse mean those tasks are not just more difficult than they ought to be; they’re harrowing and even maddening.

They also reveal something about the inner workings of these two stalwart characters’ minds, dramatizing the difficulties each is experiencing without the other to lean on, the way both have absorbed the pain of their fight earlier in the season, in ways they’re not likely to vocalize. THat’s another thing I like about “Diverged.” It’s a dialogue-light episode, one that lets the characters actions and the actors’ non-verbal performances carry the day. The writing on TWD is hit or miss, so taking a step back like that, giving us a more tactile, “show don’t tell” episode like this one is a breath of fresh air.

I like the themes and symbolism in this one. Things are hard in Walking Dead-land right now, and yet the refrain is “We’ll get through it, we always do” in a way that is well-intentioned but also glosses over how much hardship Carol and Daryl have absorbed over the years. It just assumes they can go through anything and be fine, because they always have, without thinking about the toll its taken on them.

That’s why I like Jerry here, someone who recognizes that for all her stiff upper lip, Carol is in a bad spot right now and wants to give her support. She wants to solve problems because it’s all she knows how to do, especially when she’s worried her best friend might have recognized that she’s broken. Jerry sees through the facade and gives her the solace and friendship she needs to help weather it. The fact that the rat she’s been chasing scurries off after Jerry’s expression of empathy lays it on a little too thick (hello, fans of The Departed!), but it’s a nice sentiment.

We see Carol and Daryl using similar expressions (“Take that, asshole”), applying similar approaches, and hitting similar walls and frustrations in their efforts to keep things humming after the absence of the other. There’s still a lot of raw feelings there, but I like the implication that they don’t work well without the other, that as much as they’re inclined to be lone wolves and take care of themselves, they still rely on one another to an extent, as we can see in the way each rests a little easier when the other’s around, and how even simple problems can drive them to exhaustion when the other’s gone.

Overall, it’s one of the more intimate and experimental episodes of TWD we’ve had in some time, and I admire the big swing “Diverged” takes. I can see how it’ll be controversial in the fandom -- there’s minimal zombie-killing and no major plot movement. But it’s the kind of small-scale, character development-focused episode that I can really appreciate.