After they parted ways last time, Daryl and Carol have very different, equally bad days.

This episode’s taken a lot of flak as filler for the season and it’s easy to see why. The much vaunted ‘break up’ of the stars of the show’s eventual spinoff is resolved here, Daryl’s plot is largely non-existent and Carol’s involves elements of weird comedy and a lot of soul searching. It’s not slam bang entertainment, it’s not urgent and it progresses exactly nothing in the overall arc of the show.

That’s the point. That’s the plan.

This is something the show does so rarely you barely remember it’s in the toolkit: whimsy. In fact the last time this arguably happened was four and a bit years ago with ‘The Next World’, the weirdly endearing Jesus introduction episode which re-casts Rick and Daryl as offbeat cops and Jesus as an amiably violent mischief ninja. The show doesn’t do this often but it always does it well and this is no exception.

Let’s start with Daryl, whose plot is really ‘Gives Carol Siss Amy knife, risks life countless times to find replacement, doesn’t talk about it’. Norman Reedus is basically silent this episode but his physical presence is so powerful at this point you can’t take your eyes off him. He’s also doing really clever work here, Heather Bellson’s script emphasizing just how life or death a small item can still be even a decade into the end of the world. Reedus’ slightly flamboyant, slightly grumpy responses drive that home too, as Daryl skirts the edge of the sort of mistake people make once in order to solve a problem. He seethes beautifully, and the clear message, Daryl is less free but stronger with friends, is nicely played.

But in all honesty this is Melissa McBride’s episode, soup to nuts. From the moment Dog chooses to go with Carol to her final, awkward conversation with Daryl she owns the screen with a combination of charm, trauma and exhausted fury. The scenes she shares with Jerry (Jerry in a hat no less!) are quietly hilarious as Ezekiel’s big, calm, kind best friend watches Carol work herself into a murderous fury, promise soup, fail to deliver soup, catch a rat, lose a rat, stab a wall to mostly death looking for the rat and finally let herself be hugged. Carol knows she’s screwed up, isn’t sure she can come back but is trying. Jerry, and Daryl, both see that and both let her know she’s going to be okay in their own inimitable ways. And the rat is too if you were worried.

Verdict: Backed by an impish, playful score from Bear McCeary this is the oddest episode of this odd mini-season yet. But it’s compassionate, gentle storytelling of a sort this genre desperately needs and it’s one of my favourites to date. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart