Requested by drinkingteawithflitwick
Gentle, quiet Carol got sassy in this episode, and the same held true in this deleted scene from "Judge, Jury, Executioner." We had seen Carol scared, upset, sad, despondent, and grieving. Now we got to see her angry.
Daryl had taken up station to nurse his knuckles after torturing Randall, far from the farmhouse and everybody else, but he hadn't slunk back to his separate camp. Baby steps. He dismissed Carl as soon as he saw Carol nearing, knowing she was going to get stern with him after nonverbally expressing her displeasure earlier about his 'chat' with Randall.
Carol didn't sugarcoat her opinion either. Torturing people wasn't in Daryl's nature; he wasn't a violent and cruel person. After confronting him earlier about him pulling away, she had finally gotten fed up with his behavior. She knew he wanted to be part of the group, but his constant back-and-forth was maddening.
She was seeing that he was starting to inch back into the group's interactions, but he was doing it in a way that made him the grunt to do the leaders' dirty business. Rick was becoming the head of the group, and Carol wasn't content to see Daryl slough into becoming the dirty hands of the group. He was better than that, and she could only tell him that so many times.
Daryl was still struggling with his role in the group. He had passively accepted that he wasn't going to ditch them, but he didn't believe that he could contribute anything beyond his survival skills and muscle, nothing of intellectual or moral value anyway. He thought that contributing his survival skills and muscle would be enough, but Carol called him out on that.
He couldn't continue to play both sides of the coin. Carol even let him off the hook of their budding friendship. If he wanted to play brainless tough guy, she would back off and liberate him from every kind and smart thing he had ever done for her and the group. However, she challenged him not to hide his potential behind his own self imposed limitations. If he wanted to be part of the group, he needed to be PART of it, not an appliance to it.
She would continue to accept him, to give him a chance and not write him off, but she was done holding his hand to make that decision. It was a firm assertion, not saturated in condescension or rejection. The group had enough on their plates with the Randall situation; they needed Daryl to be a fully integrated part of their motley crew to survive.
And this time, she walked away from him, after he had stormed out on her in the stables ("Pretty Much Dead Already") and shut her out emotionally and stomped away from her ("Triggerfinger"). That was Carol telling Daryl to put his big boy pants on and admit what she already knew: he cared about the group, and his apathy act had to go.
