You'll have to excuse, TREK_GOD, his Carol-Boner blinds him to a lot of logic and sense. Like, apparently, it's hypocritical for Rick to judge people for killing others because he killed a man moments away from killing HIM and his companions were getting ready to kill Daryl, Michionne and then RAPE and kill his son.
Oh, will you stop with the "Carol boner" stuff?!
We are talking about morality.
I'm calling Rick a potential hypocrite for the basic reason that Dawn--no matter what one thinks of her methods--is trying to survive for a higher purpose. Unlike the Governor's two camps, Joe/claimers, Randall's gang and Terminus, as of the aired episodes, she's seeking a better day for humankind, instead of being an opportunistic barbarian.
If Rick tried to confront her on her using her title as an excuse, remember, he too used survival as the reason to kill.
That is the evolving point of the series: Rick is really not the "good guy" anymore (which justifies one part of usually insane Shane's belief system), thus his moral high ground has increasingly become quicksand. That means he cannot be protected from criticism when he goes too far.
But let's get back to Rick's actions: do you think he had to repeatedly stab Fat Wannabe Rapist, or could he simply cut his throat, break his neck, shoot him (with Joe's gun) or something quick?
Defense is not being argued, but excessive violence is another matter.
Did you see the look on the faces of Maggie, Glenn, Tyreese and Tara as Rick hacked Gareth to death?
They all experienced Terminus--including the mutilation of Bob. that was a shared experience, but Rick went beyond the extra mile in killing Gareth
. Do you think his friends were wrong in their shock / revulsion?
But it was totally cool for Carol to kill two people who had a severe flu but were otherwise isolated and posed no real threat to anyone. Oh, that's right, killing and burning people retroactively makes the virus they've been spreading die.
You are conflating decisions which lead to the end of life. Carol was not seeking excessive revenge, but attempting to stop something they had no other means to use as a treatment. There's no comparing her actions with butchery.
As I've said before, and as may be clear, I'm not too huge of a fan of Carol.
Really? That comes as a big surprise.
A lot of it could be the burden of how she was in the first two seasons of her pretty much being an emotionally and physically abused woman. It's hard to see this stone-faced woman going around killing walkers like a pro as being the same one loudly crying over her daughter in the back of Dale's RV. (Granted it makes sense she'd be crying so much given the situation.)
We weren't blessed with that 8-9 month period between Season 2 and 3 where her relationship with Daryl grew and Daryl's redneck temperament cooled (there were times in Season 2 when Carol is following Daryl around like a puppy and Daryl is being verbally abusive towards her that it almost seems like Carol has some psychological "need" to be abused in some way) and as she grew colder in the wake of losing her daughter and became so skilled at taking down walkers.
It makes *sense* she'd grow colder after losing her daughter but we weren't really given the chance to see it happen, it just does.
We did not see Beth's transformation from a frightened teen at the end of season 2 to an increasingly no-nonsense woman who can survive (the argument made to Daryl last season), but we accept it. All development cannot play out on screen.
Same with Carl: by the end of season 2, he was still very much a young boy in mentality, but by the opening of S3, he was clearly maturing, and taking his responsibilities seriously, but that growth happened in the off-camera realm between seasons.
That said her story was somewhat interesting at the time and it was interesting to see some of the insight given by the Talking Dead's female celebrity host on some of the "themes" in the episode. (Carol starting fires in the flashbacks, Daryl starting them in the present; Daryl perhaps tying to "test" her or "push" her back into humanity by trying to save Noah.)
That was Yvette Nicole Brown, and she is one of the best
Talking Dead guests, as she really knows and loves the show. Always thinking.
So good scenes in the episode for sure and an episode I liked a lot I just still don't "get" the Carol-love. For me, it's not something the character has really earned. And, for my money, she's so cold it's hard to really connect with her.
She's not inherently cold--her early seasons serve as evidence of that. Is she a pragmatist to a fault? Perhaps, but take the decision to kill Lizzie: what was the solution? The child could not be trusted around
the living, and even if isolated with Carol, there's no guarantee she would not try to kill Carol in her sleep.
The pragmatic solution was what happened (sad as it was)--but if that makes her cold, how would anyone else deal with that in a world where psychiatrists, group homes and therapy simply do not exist?
Rick may be brutal but he still has plenty of moments of humanity where you see that man we see wake from a coma is still in there. It'd be nice to get *something* like that from Carol, a moment where we get to see the human is still in her.
I suspect, however, Carol will not survive through the mid-season finale (the cast is starting to get a little bloated and she's on very borrowed time by being a non-comic character and a first-season character.) Which would be a bit of a shame, I guess, but maybe before then we'll get that piece of her humanity still in her to make her death more powerful.
It would a shame for the predictable to happen: she thaws, realizing that Daryl is right, only to be killed. That kind of reach-a-big-moment, hope (or character development) only to die soon afterward happened with T-Dog, Merle (to a degree), and Bob. Its come to be expected, and I would hope the producers do not continue with that expected plot device.
