Zombie Sleepover Partay Tonight! Bring Your Own Tent

“Consumed”

We enjoy some Carol flashbacks. Good; never can get me enough Carol. Carol’s driving her Ford station wagon that she took way back when Rick exiled her. Do you remember the dippy hipsters who bought the farm? I do. Good times. Last we saw, Carol had just bought herself a one-way ticket to Slabtown, where Beth is clinging to a tenuous, face slap-filled existence. So what’s this all about? Carol is armed and finds refuge in an abandoned building of some sort. She seems highly contemplative. She spots a fire in the distance and takes off in her aforementioned station wagon. She witnesses the burning of the prison. It must have been when the Gov’nor returned to kill Hershel and when he met his most welcome untimely end? Cut to credits! Am I the only one who finds it amusing that they advertise Slim Jim meat sticks during TWD?

Carol’s driving alone at night. She’s with Daryl. Is this another flashback? No, I think this is more modern day. Perhaps they are tracking Beth? Ugh, I’m super confused, readers! I need the show notes for this program, people. A cop gets out of the car that Daryl and Carol were following. A walker slams itself against their car. Ew. The cop appears to be dragging something across the ground. He-she gets back in his-her car. Daryl ran out of gas. Daryl and Carol go back to the abandoned warehouse-building. Walkers descend. Looks toney inside, as if it were an office building at some point. They mooch around. When this whole crazy tribulation is over, C could seriously find a job in the armed services. Covert Ops. As a commando, perhaps. She is totally badass now.

Carol cleans up nice; Daryl, not so much.

It seems as if it were a shelter for abused women and children. Carol has been there before, in a past life, when she was married to that lout who used to beat her. Carol  muses about life whilst gazing out the window. They’re going to split a bunk bed. A noise; they stand to attention in a flash. There are women and children walkers behind a glass door, pawing it. Carol wakes up in the morning. Daryl is burning bodies. Did he kill the aforementioned walkers, in an attempt to give them a half-respectful send off? Yep. So far, this episode has been disappointing. Boring, even.

Now, just for a moment, we flashback to Carol and Tyreese burying the girls. C and D are downtown. There are a few walkers ambling about. I guess C and D are still trying to rescue Beth from the hospital, but cannot be sure. Running through an empty parking level with their guns and crossbow brandished, they come to a hallway strewn with walkers in sleeping bags. Odd; a zombie sleepover! Did they roast s’mores and share scary human stories? More walkers trapped in a tent. C and D come upon some locked double doors. They are skinny enough to squeeze through! That squirrel-only diet has paid off big time.

A doctor’s office. Daryl wants to start over; he doesn’t want to know what happened with Tyreese and the girls. Good call, Daryl. They survey the panoramic view of the wasteland out the window. Daryl provides witty commentary on the expensive looking oil painting hanging in the office. A dog could have painted it with its butt. Nice imagery! They leave, squeezing through the locked doors once more, only to be greeted by a man pointing a gun at them. This must be an envoy from the cop hospital. It’s Noah, the kid Beth helped escape. The man slashes the tents and unleashes the walkers on C and D. They escape, but without their much needed weapons.

Carol flashes back to her unfortunate epidemiological experiment with Karen and anonymous sick guy back at the prison during the hemorrhagic flu outbreak.

They rifle through the white van they spotted from the office building. Walkers are coming. They hole up in the van, which is teetering on the edge of a bridge. Daryl straps in, Carol straps in and they hold on for dear life. They fly off the edge. They seem to be ok, but then dead walkers and blood rains down on the van. They are not totally OK, but for flying off the edge of a bridge they ain’t too bad. They hobble off.

Carol’s in pain from the self-induced crash. She injured her arm or shoulder somehow. They enter another abandoned building and spy on the distant building across the way. Carol acknowledges the death of the old Carol. A distant banging noise—finally, some real action! Sounds like walkers. They come across a walker with an arrow in his neck. More walkers, and distant gunshots, or perhaps it’s the rat-tat-tat of submachine gun fire. D pins the young black guy under a fallen bookshelf. D casually smokes a cigarette he finds. Too bad it looks like the generic kind. He’s about to leave the guy pinned but Carol wants to help him. D turns to go but at the last minute fires off one of his signature arrows, killing the walker that’s on top of the young guy. Whew.

Carol is wearing her Maude caftan bloodied with walker guts and walking through the forest. I think this is during her rescue of the folks at the so-called sanctuary? Back to helping poor young guy pinned. Now what? He’s limping. He finally mentions Beth, who did help Noah escape. The cops run over C as she runs into the street. She goes flying over the hood of the car. Noah restrains Daryl from running to save her. And so we reach the point that Carol is headed for Slabtown, a.k.a. healthcare hell. D finds a big, big truck and rides off into the sunset with a very bewildered, but presumably grateful, Noah at his side.

"Hi Carol! I'll be your doctor today and Dawn is your terrorizing cop. Enjoy."