The Walking Dead 4.2, "Infected" Review

And The Children Shall Lead Over in the B plot, Carol is having a conflict of her own. While Daryl, Glenn, and Sasha work on killing the Walkers in D-Block, Carol rushes a wounded man into a cell to amputate his bitten arm, Hershel-style. Unfortunately, Carol discovers that this man--who I am going to call Sean--has a zombie scratch on the back of his neck. He asks Carol to look after his daughters like her own, and Carol summons them for a final farewell. By the time that they arrive, he only has strength enough to tell one to take care of the other. In what I originally thought was a flaw in editing, it is not clear which of his daughters he is addressing. Sean dies, and Carol tries to usher the towheaded girls out of the cell so that she can commence with the head-stabbing. Older sister Lizzie says that they should be the ones to do it, so Carol hands Lizzie the knife and tells her that she must do it now, presumably before Daryl can show up with his crossbow and splatter some brain matter onto Sean's grieving daughters. Or to prevent Sean from becoming a Walker and killing them all. One of those two. Anyway, Lizzie's nerve understandably fails her, and Carol stabs Sean through the brain while younger sister Mika calms Lizzie by telling her to "think about the flowers." Later, in the Council meeting, Carol makes some very reasonable suggestions for quarantining the sick. All the while, she has a slightly unbalanced "my-new-daughters-are-not-going-to-die" glint in her eyes. She admits as much to Daryl, confessing her concern for the girls. Before he can go off to bury to bodies, though, Carol stands in for the audience and nervously asks him if he's feeling alright. "I gotta be," Daryl answers, nodding in the least reassuring way ever. Oh, that Daryl. Always playing hard to get. Carol watches him walk away. Lizzie and Mika stand at the perimeter fence, watching the Walkers. Carol appears in order to criticize Lizzie--who does not seem to understand that the Walkers are no longer people--for not enthusiastically stabbing her own father in the head. "Honey, you're weak," says Carol, and Mika looks as appalled as I feel. Lizzie runs away in distress. "She's messed up," says Mika. "She's not weak." Mika then runs after her sister. "I just don't want you to run into the woods, get bit by a Walker, and be fed hobbled chickens in a barn for half a season before somebody finally shoots you in the head!" Carol yells after them. Off-screen. I assume. After a while, Carol approaches Carl as he is making a grave marker for Patrick. Instead of offering her condolences, she begins to try to pressure him into promising not to tell his father--or any of the other adults--about the knife lessons, arguing that the children need to learn to defend themselves and that their parents might not approve. Carol is actually very creepy in this scene, and the uncomfortable Carl refuses to promise. You go, Carl. Lizzie and Mika are at the fences again. Carol shows up and is slightly nicer. While still stern regarding the need to maintain composure in an attack, she tells them that their father had asked her to look after them. To win Lizzie over, Carol gives her a knife and puts some flowers in her hair. "Don't worry, new-Mom," thinks Mika. "I didn't want any flowers anyway."