I’m not sure what to think at this point. Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon was one of the best in the wider Walking Dead franchise in years. This week’s episode felt like a bad video game. And that wasn’t the worst of it.
Don’t get me wrong, I still liked parts of Episode 3 “Paris Sera Toujours Paris”.
That translates to “Paris will always be Paris” which is similar to “We’ll always have Paris” from the classic film Casa Blanca. It might be a coincidence that the main characters in that show were named Rick and Ilsa, and here in Daryl Dixon we have Rick’s old friend Daryl rubbing shoulders with his new friend Isabelle. It might not.
The best parts of this episode were Daryl and Isabelle’s scenes. Norman Reedus and Clémence Poésy are great, though a part of me is tired of Daryl always playing the rough, gritty asexual. Can’t we just let him get laid? He’s had so many female friends, many of whom were almost-lovers, at a certain point it just gets ridiculous. Daryl and Isabelle have good chemistry. Just rip the bloody bandaid off!
In any case, beyond the compelling leads, this week’s episode just felt bizarre. The video game comparisons are impossible to ignore. Our heroes come to an NPC outpost where they’re given a side-quest. Later, in order to pass through a vine-covered entrance, Daryl has to use an acid zombie to burn away the vines. All of this could be easily overlooked since at least it’s entertaining, but the spinoff’s premise just keeps rearing its ugly, stupid head to remind us that this is, in fact, just another Walking Dead show filled with inane nonsense.
For instance: Laurent. I really dislike this kid. I dislike the kid and I hate the way they’ve set him up as some prophetic savior that somehow everyone—not just Isabelle and the nuns—has gotten fully onboard with.
They show up to this outpost and everyone is already in awe of him. The other children give him gifts. Then he sees a woman sleeping up on a patio above and goes to her while everyone else in the outpost watches. We learn that this woman’s husband recently died and she’s refused to eat or be comforted but then—oh my god—Laurent gives her a hug! And she hugs him back!
Truly, he must be the chosen one.
This just ruins it for me, I’m sad to say. The whole “chosen one” crap is usually bad on its own—played out, predictable, etc.—but in the context of a gritty, post-apocalyptic world like The Walking Dead it’s absolutely ridiculous. The cringe factor in that scene is so off the charts that a part of me just doesn’t want to even watch this anymore despite how much I enjoyed last week’s episode. It took me days to even write this review I was so irked by this irksome dreck.
The big revelation—that the “super zombies” are being manufactured by Genet, the Bad French Woman and her people—fell very, very short for me as well. I just don’t care. I don’t care if they’ve evolved to be acid zombies or if people are making them that way. Nothing in these shows actually ever builds toward anything meaningful. Clues and hints an easter eggs abound but they’re all red herrings.
I watch The Walking Dead for the human stories. Sure, the zombie apocalypse flavor helps, but what glues the best episodes together is the human condition and the deeply flawed but sympathetic characters we root for and against. I don’t want to watch grown adults fawn over pretentious French adolescents. I’m still not sure why this is even set in France to begin with.
I did enjoy the guy with the zombie orchestra. That was straight out of a Terry Gilliam movie. If anything, I wish we’d had an entire episode to explore that character and his creepy project more. Instead, we get our NPC outpost and our Magic Boy and eventually (shocker!) Isabelle runs back into Quinn who betrays them to bad guys and, well, I guess the real question is this: Will Daryl Dixon be awesome like last week’s episode or is this week’s episode what we should expect?
Final verdict: While Episode 3 had some fun action sequences and it’s still nice to be in such a radically new and different setting, many of this franchise’s worst habits got in the way of making this anything even remotely compelling, ratcheting up the cringe factor beyond all reason and leaving this critic with an awfully bad taste in his mouth.
Oh how the tables have turned. Again!
Read my review of Episode 2 here. Read my review of the series premiere here.
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