I know this episode isn't gaining a lot of love, but as far as this six-episode filler arc is concerned, its probably the best so far. Unless you don't like Carol. Or dogs. Or rats. In which case, you'll likely fall asleep. But I challenge anyone to say that they didn't at least chuckle at watching a blood-spattered Carol waxing on about the nutritional value of nettle and dandelions. Melissa McBride is and always has been one of the high-points of this series. Even if it is a show that has been slowly circling the toilet drain for quite some time now.
Was is me or this was a nice little filler EP, plus to me Carol was looking hot in this EP.
These "exra" episodes sort of feel like they are COVID filler episodes - one to 3 actors, socially distanced, and telling stories that, honestly, dont move the story along more than just give filler "a day in the life" of a character.
This one is another one of these. It's the Carol and Daryl show. (Many years ago, when Carol was the cookie making housewife of Alexandra, I said I could see her and Daryl having a 1960's style comedy - the happy couple. She cooks and cleans and gets blood stains and oil out of the clothes, and Daryl is fighting Zombies at the door and fixing up his bike in the garage....). They part ways (I love how Dawg goes with Carol. He knows where the soft home life is). Carol goes back and wants to be helpful in some way. And Daryl is just being Daryl - scavenging, surviving and look cool doing it.
The Whisperers were taking care of too soon in the season. Nothing left for the survivors to face. Other than how will Carol make soup for Jerry when Dog knocked all the ingredients on the floor ? As well as how will Daryl start his bike without his pocket knife ?
(5.5/10) I’m sorry but did I just watch 40 minutes of my favourite character making soup, tearing apart walls and screaming at a rat, whilst my other favourite character attempts to start his bike without his pocket knife?
The most interesting part of this episode was when Carol explained the story of some dude only had rocks, so asked people for ingredients to make a soup. Oh… and I almost forgot that epic scene where Dog knocked the ingredients on the floor.
I feel like I’ve watched absolutely nothing! This episode is by far the worst episode of the series and probably the entire show…
Season 10 Episode 21: People doing menial tasks.
Much better than the episodes in the miniseason so far, and very timely to do an episode about how even the frustration of mundane things can push you to the edge when the world is in chaos.
The BB 'Fly' comparison is a good one, but then Fly was a genuinely great episode. This isn't quite that, but it has something interesting to say, and I'd rather that than the usual mindless filler episodes.
if you see this comment and don’t mind skipping an episode, do. you won’t e missing anything important.
Ain't Covid hell? jfc...
Well, at least now I know that "Axe porridge" that we studied in school was an universal folk tale.
Awesome episode to play in the background, through. Unlike the inspiration for this episode Breaking Bad's Fly, but that masterpiece hard to replicate.
If it hadn't purely focussed on Daryl and Carol, this episode would have been a lot worse - as it is, to have yet another narratively wheel-spinning episode this late in the game is kinda ridiculous. For the final handful of episodes of The Walking Dead, there sure seems to be a whole heap of nothing going on.
if watching Daryl fix his bike and Carol make soup while hunting a rat is your idea of a good walking dead episode, i'm sure you were glued to your seat during this, i however was bored out of my skull. thank god we only have one more of these filler episodes left
The show itself has become the walking dead. Help it out of his misery please.
If this is what Carol and Daryl's new show will be like and I am out before it even starts.
"Kinda beat, gonna hit the sack" sums up the way I feel after this episode.
i want my 40 minutes back
this is like the breaking bad fly episode, if jesse was a dog, and there was a b-plot of skyler fixing her bike, and it was in the middle of a stale, miserable excuse for a tv show.
their solution to the ever-dwindling ratings seemed to be to try something new with these six pointless filler episodes. but this show never needed to try anything new, it only needed to fucking END.
What the hell is up with this episode? A day in the life of Daryl and Carol going (even more) crazy over an elusive rat and trying to make inedible soup isn't really the kind of thing I would expect to see in the next to last episode of a lengthy season of this show, in which the main villain(s) are already dead. I kept waiting for something - anything - significant to happen in the last 10 minutes of this episode, but nope. These last several episodes have felt pointless. The season should have ended with the death of Beta. The finale better be one goddamn humdinger to make up for these multiple lackluster episode. Negan is in it, so before even watching a minute of it, it's already better than whatever episode 21 was.
Ever watched your grandma chase a rat around the house and think I should write a tv episode about this? No? Me either.
You think the last one we bad? You’re up for a surprise!
This two where my favs characters…
I’m sorry for actors
Lowest point ever in the series, in my opinion. Even when it was boring in previous seasons, there was at least some slight glimpses of character development. Now this is just plain unnecessary...
Next episode might be about them watching the paint dry on the wall.
Absolute crap, easily the worst episode ever (and there have been a fair whack of piss-poor eps down the years), utter waste of time. It’s like they wanted their own version of Breaking Bad’s ‘Fly’ episode but just boring af.
One of the shittiest thing I've ever seen
WTH WAS THIS? WHAT A WASTE OF FILM. :thumbsdown::sleeping::thumbsdown:
This episode is the reason the show got canceled after Season 11
Also WHAT THE DOG DOIN?
What the hell happened to this show? What is the point of this or the last episode?
Bro.... Why??? This episode is so meaningless...
The writers were clearly trying to rip off the"Fly" episode from Breaking Bad (which isn't that great of an episode itself) but failed miserably. Calling this show a shell of its form self is the kindest way I can phrase my thoughts on its current state.
I thought it was not possible to make a worse episode than the last two. But ohh boy.. They did it
Without a doubt the worst episode in the history of this show. This entire covid mini-season, with characters mostly by themselves and no plot whatsoever, is terrible. I've kept watching only because the end is near and I might as well see it through. But this is painful to sit through.
Wow - we got an extra 6 episodes in this season, it's a pity at least 10 of them weren't worth the time spent watching the drivel. Worst episode I've ever seen and a LOT of them are bad.
You can skip this episode, literally nothing happens.
An episode where we diverge to watch people doing random things, literally (like catching a mouse, getting gas, cooking, breaking a wall, etc.). This episode is like watching NPC walk around in a video game.
This show has turned into total weak sauce. Kill it!
Another filler. Fast forward to 42'35, thank me later
The many adventures of Carol and Daryl. Today Dog will knock over Carol's soup, Carol will capture a rat, let it free, and chase after it on the floor, Daryl will fix his bike with some black cords he tore from cars, and Carol repeatedly stabs a wall with a knife. Spare yourself.
A comedic episode of a show that is a joke in itself...
Quite possibly one of the most useless episodes of television I've ever seen
Most boring zero-content episode ever! Adds NOTHING to the story. Dragged-out walking scenes, chasing the rat scenes, wandering around scenes... YAWN. Glad I skipped most of it. 0/5.
When she lost the rat, I thought "shit, she's gonna cook the Dog!"
This episode proved they have reached an end point. I was just thinking while watching how boring this is, and maybe something new to explore in the show would be a cure or the end of the infection. How would they react to the news, return to the city, to civilization after all these years? Having to go back to jobs, single houses. Would they miss this life? I don't know, but something like that would be more interesting to me to watch. Show some new emotions on these people's faces. I personally am so over the painful/struggle/stoic face they have to pull all the time for 4 seasons now.
I will never get bored of Carol and Daryl. Not much happened in terms of the general story in this episode but character wise this was good. It's a very quiet episode but it - again - sheds light on how these two characters function and how similar they are in coping with things. I love how Dog ties the stories together in this episode but to be honest... I would watch an episode with just Dog as well... such a good boy.
Episode 21, Carol makes a soup
What was the point of filming these additional episodes? I hope at least Negan's episode will be interesting
Okay this boring show is officially renamed to The Walking Rat :D
Gee, I'm so glad I watched that, truly a revolutionary episode of tv, wouldn't have missed that for the world. Why the fuck am I still watching this show?
No, I'm alright thank you.
You can keep it.
She made soup but he wasn't hungry. She can keep the knife though. Hopefully next episode she uses it to stab herself in the neck so she's can finally get written out of the series. They butchered her character anyway.
I was on the edge of my seat though when the mushrooms fell on the floor thanks to this silly Dog . And thank god it was just a rat after all .
Try to make an AD for the knife and multitool?
Is it just me or are the zombies even shit now?
There I thought only anime series have filler episodes.
Dullest episode ever and I've seen every one
4 back to back episodes with nothing but pointless garbage.. Oh I think the message is clear. They're running out of stories to tell but the commitment to make these many episode is still left. FFS, just cancel it already.
I have to agree that this was NOT a TWD episode. The camera work, the music, and the writing were entirely sub par. Why not show the rebuilding of Alexandria? Develop some of the side characters? Anything would have been better than 20 minutes of Daryl looking for a screwdriver that his character would have had attached to his bike not a swiss army knife that he loans out.
title should be: the boring dead...
It's just characters wandering from one place to another and the usual zombie killing. Good thing this show is coming to an end.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-03-29T23:14:26Z
[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.