Can we love her more?

So I'm doing this whole daughter of a ship series and some of these have come out pretty well.

Daughter of Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier. (almost makes me think of Ellie from TLoU lol)

This is stunning.

The barrel has no bottom.

Discovered the line of dolls named "Chabel" which seems to be a Spanish doll. They had THE cutest tiny doll house "La Villa de Chabel."

Very cute but small, reminds me of Licca. (Edit: Looks like they are based on Licca.)

Just love the colors, the door at an angle, the tiny blinds. Wonderful.

Progressives understand prevention and responsibility.

Republicans don't.

Media should repeat this ad infinitum.

CAROL WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ON THE BACK OF DARYL’S MOTORCYCLE

Kitchen Nightmares

A 2022 TV report by the Geena Davis Institute found that female caregivers were doing one-third more on-screen caregiving tasks (such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, play) than male caregivers (page 5).

So, Carol has to look after the kids whilst Daryl and Aaron are away.  Fine.  

But do we need to see her cooking again?  Why would the writers double down on gender stereotypes?  Why does this scene need to take place in a kitchen?

If you are going to give Carol a kitchen scene, elevate it à la Diverged.  Sure, Carol’s making soup for a good chunk of the runtime, but the whole episode is a character study: Carol’s fixation with the soup says so much about her headspace after her fight with Daryl. Maybe my memory’s foggy, but I don’t remember other instances of Carol cooking in Seasons 9-10 (Kang’s era)? I know we had two instances of Daryl cooking on screen (we had the not-so-yummy snake stew and the breakfast in Carol’s dream).  Basically, Kang makes her kitchen scenes interesting, and I don’t think they’re thrown in randomly.  

I can’t say the same for Gimple.  Gimple leaned hard into Kitchen!Carol! during his time as showrunner, particularly in Seasons 4-6.  The overwhelming majority of these scenes felt surface level to me, it’s just having Carol in the kitchen again rather than using the kitchen scenes meaningfully.  It’s incredibly frustrating that AMC keep using Kitchen!Carol! in their promos - they use the clip of her with the beetroot cookies a nauseating amount.  Why do they keep going back to this clip? Why can’t we see Carol being inspiring, or funny, or badass instead?  

If Carol’s sudden relegation to the kitchen/bakery seems weird in Season 11, that’s because it is weird.  It’s oh-so-curious that TWD is going backwards in so many ways. I wonder who might be responsible for these horrible shifts in quality, tone, and representation?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Carol deserves better.  Melissa McBride deserves better.

P.S. The Geena Davis report is called This Is Us? and you can find the report here - https://seejane.org/research-informs-empowers/this-is-us-how-tv-does-and-doesnt-get-mens-caregiving.  It’s worth a read and it’s far from being all doom and gloom.  We’ve got a long way to go, but things are getting better. It’s just disappointing that TWD is regressing in terms of representation.