I don’t really know what to say at this point. So far AMC’s Daryl Dixon The Walking Dead spinoff starring Norman Reedus, set in a zombified France, is 1 for 4.
Episode 2 was really good. Every other episode has bugged the hell out of me. Don’t get me wrong: The production values remain very nice throughout, with some lovely cinematography, music, set design, costuming and so forth. Some cool zombies, too, though the “mutant” zombies feel like video game gimmicks at this point, especially since they’re just being made by humans rather than evolving.
I also think Reedus is doing a really great job, though I’m not sure he can carry the show as lead across from the boy wonder Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) who I not only dislike intensely (no fault of the actor) but also whose story I find preposterous and goofy in the worst sort of way. The whole “religious wunderkind” thing is bad, and Daryl having to ferry him to the Nest doesn’t work especially because it’s impossible not to compare it, over and over again, to The Last Of Us. Both the game and the HBO adaptation of the show are better than this.
That’s partly because Joel and Ellie are a great pair in that story. There are great supporting characters there as well as in Daryl Dixon—I continue to really like Isabelle (Clémence Guichard) for instance—but the two leads in TLoU make that story work, and that dynamic simply doesn’t exist between Daryl and Laurent.
Laurent is just annoying, for one thing. For another, the whole setup just doesn’t make that much sense. Why is Daryl bothering to transport this annoying kid, especially after Episode 4 when he basically isn’t getting his end of the deal at all.
The villains also don’t really work here. Genet (Anne Charrier) is this weird, arch-conservative warlord who finds Impressionist painting debaucherous, which is just weird rather than actually interesting as a character trait. Her counterpart is the selfish, club-owner Quinn (Adam Nagatis) who is equally bland as a villain. Nothing here really works, and in Episode 4 you see how flimsy it all is.
Laurent has run away and gone to the Eifel tower, which is where a photo of his mom was taken. Not a very smart boy, this one. Zombies attack him here, and fortunately (and unfortunately) both Daryl and Issa, as well as Quinn’s goons, show up. The goons get him and I guess for reasons I’m not quite sure are made clear, Laurent doesn’t get out of the car when Daryl tries to grab him, despite calling for Daryl’s help.
Daryl captures a goon and—in a scene that certainly reminded me of a much hokier version of a similar scene in The Last Of Us—tortures him until he tells them how to get into Quinn’s “impossible” fortress. It turns out to be no trouble at all, barely an inconvenience.
While some of the good guys run a diversion attack, Daryl sneaks in and rescues Laurent, who has learned (or divined) that Quinn is his father. He’s still happy enough to leave with Daryl, who beats up Quinn but let’s him live. Quinn’s assistant and lover (who is jealous of Issabelle) Anna (Lukerya Ilyashenko) let’s Laurent go basically to get rid of him, and Daryl and the boy return to Isabelle who bafflingly says she needs to go back to Quinn so that he can help them get out of Paris, though it’s never explained how this will actually work since Daryl and Laurent are leaving on a boat with no way to actually communicate with her or Quinn.
Now that all the friggin carrier pigeons are gone, that is, and the cute old man who helped with them is dead.
Why is he dead?
Because Daryl showed up, basically. Everything was fine until Daryl showed up. This is how The Walking Dead works. A peaceful, semi-functional community survives for years, maybe decades, until our heroes show up and then BAM! The nunnery is toast, most of its nuns shot to smithereens. The pigeon guy is a goner. Daryl’s going to get Laurent to the Nest and they’re all dead the next episode.
The question is, will he shoot them all himself after they try to kill Laurent in order to manufacture a vaccine?
We’ll see, but I’m having a hard time caring one way or another. This show is very pretty, no doubt, but it’s every bit as hollow as the rest of this shambling, mostly-dead carcass of a franchise.
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