The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon review: The franchise takes a puzzling Parisian detour
Daryl does France in AMC’s most disposable and bizarre spin-off yet
TV Reviews Daryl Dixon
It could be that after 13 years of walker-stomping and a steep decline in viewership that led to its finale last year, AMC’s foundational post-apocalyptic series The Walking Dead is looking to shake things up. The work to breathe some life into Dead began in earnest with this summer’s first post-finale spin-off, The Walking Dead: Dead City, which, for now, has given the franchise a tenuous stay of execution. But AMC needs a rejuvenating hit, which puts a lot of pressure on the tanned shoulders of Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), who begins his solo adventures in France (of all places) in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon come September 10. (AMC: Let’s talk about these titles.)
If there’s one character from TWD that would thrive in a fish-out-of-water narrative—in Gay Paree, yet!—it would undoubtedly be Reedus’ surly, crossbow-wielding survivalist. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize how this tough customer might attempt to parse sophisticated French customs or butcher the country’s musical language with his scorched Southern drawl. It’s a goofy concept, but it has potential. When you watch all six episodes in this debut season, however, Daryl’s relocation simply isn’t the paradigm-shifting change TWD needs. It’s just a superficial one.
The inaugural episode, titled “L’âme Perdue” (“The Lost Soul,” groan), begins with Daryl unconsciously drifting into the bay of Marseille. How he got there from his Commonwealth home in Ohio is a mystery kept by the reliably mum Dixon. (“I went out looking for somethin’,” he says early on. “All I found was trouble.”) The series eventually spills the beans as it ambles along, albeit in a slow information drip-feed that might leave you malnourished. But, in the grand tapestry of things, the hows of Daryl’s Parisian escapade pale against whether or not he’ll wind his way back home—or if he’ll even want to before season’s end.
So, how’s Paris holding up in the apocalypse? Better than you’d expect. The Republic is divided into survivalist groups, each thriving in their way, complete with champagne and varying degrees of plumbing and electricity; one lucky group boasts a working VCR that’s exclusively screening reruns of Mork And Mindy. (Why Mork And Mindy, we cannot tell you.) The country is a chaotic mix of debris and graffiti, marking faction territories. Amid the noise, one message stands out on flyers: “Dieu vous aime,” which Daryl interprets (via a handy translator book) as “god loves you.”
He snorts at this, though later he runs across the nun who posted those sheets and changes his tune. Meet Isabelle (Clémence Poésy), a former Parisian partygoer who found her true calling under god through a rote series of walker-related tragedies. Like every French character in this show, Isabelle speaks perfect English, so we never get to experience the joy of watching Daryl fumble through conversations en Français. So, with language hurdles conveniently tossed out the window, Isabelle untangles France’s intricate circumstances for Daryl. As it turns out, her abbey is a cog in the wheel of a larger entity known as “Union D’espoir” (Union of Hope), which believes that humanity’s current walker-besotted dilemma is a test from God.
Here’s where things get a bit squirrelly. Isabelle takes care of Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), a gifted, long-locked tyke whose birth from a pregnant walker is considered by many to be a miracle. Laurent is a trip: He can do the Rubik’s cube in 3 minutes and 12 seconds (he says—we never see him do it), can recite the names of all the world’s countries and capitals, and, chiefly, is the most empathetic person on the planet. “I feel your sadness,” Laurent tells Daryl. “You deserve a happy ending.” (Later, when Laurent is out of earshot, Dixon says to Isabelle: “We used to have a kid like that in grade school; used to get his ass kicked a lot.”)
For the betterment of France, this exceptional boy must journey to a far-off place called “The Nest” so that he can grow up to be—get this—the New Messiah fated to lead humanity back from the brink of extinction. How does Daryl fit into all this? Isabelle says he’s “The Messenger,” a pilgrim Laurent dreamt would arrive from the sea to protect him on his path. Because there are six hours to fill, Dixon initially rejects his hero’s call until a pack of mercenaries led by the tattooed Cordon (Romain Levi) descend on Isabelle’s convent to exact revenge on Daryl, who took out two of their men early on. After a swift tussle, Isabelle, Laurent, and a nun named Sylvie (Laika Blanc Francard) begin their long trek to Paris (really a two-episode jaunt), where they’ll find clues to The Nest’s location—as well as Genet (Anne Charrier), one of the series’ many villains, who has plans of her own for Laurent.
It was only a matter of time before dopey things like destiny and prophecy crept into a well-trod saga like The Walking Dead. Daryl Dixon isn’t out to make its hero some sort of born-again figure, which would only nerf the harder edges of this well-established realist, but faith and religion remain omnipresent themes. They’re employed clumsily—one dream sequence sees Laurent pray the walkers away in the show’s attempt to solidify the boy’s messianic status in Daryl’s perception. But it remains ambiguous if Daryl ever gives a rip about the spiritual significance the Union D’espoir bestows upon Laurent. The religious drama belongs to France; Daryl is merely a tourist.
But let’s not forget that, under that miles-long squint, Daryl’s got a heart of gold. Doing right by folks is what he does—no philosophical debates required. So why does Daryl’s solo show veer into power struggles and theological introspections when it could be pitting him against a militarized adversary or the series’ much-touted new walker variants? (On that front, here come the “brûleurs,” walkers with a corrosive touch, who prove to be less of a bother than you’d think.) Don’t worry: The possum-eatin’ Daryl hasn’t suddenly gone urbane. His surroundings certainly have, but Daryl Dixon doesn’t do much with the contrast.
So, how’s the action? Here, Daryl twirls a small spiked mace, which pales compared to the cool lethality of his iconic crossbow. And his choice of weapon is the least of the show’s issues regarding action. During battle, there’s little sense of immediate stakes or even geography. Shoot-outs are a logistical mess to watch play out. Walkers shamble into scenes with laissez-faire disdain (the walkers are real oddballs in this), dispatched with little fuss. When opportunities to stage memorable set pieces pop up, like a rendezvous at the Eiffel Tower halfway through the season, it’s executed more like a rude assembly of gnarled Parisians than a dangerous walker gauntlet. It seems imagination has also become a casualty of the prolonged zombie apocalypse.
That’s not to say Daryl Dixon is without its moments. Once episode five rolls around, with all the characters and scenarios more or less locked into place, Reedus gets a chance to commandeer his series for a spell. AMC has sworn us to secrecy concerning details from this season’s final third—but suffice it to say Reedus’ performance in this episode provides tangible glimmers of what this show could have been.
It would have been almost inconceivable just a few years ago, but the future of The Walking Dead, as we currently know it, is uncertain. It’s not that gore-festooned misery marches have become old hat. If viewers have grown weary of these things, AMC’s prestige competitor didn’t get the memo; the first season of The Last Of Us, HBO’s adaptation of the venerated video-game franchise, only grew in viewership as its debut season went on. After soaking up a few Emmy nominations, its impending second season is looking to gobble up even more of the television/streaming pie—or severed arm, as it were. As the kingpin of televised walker carnage, AMC is right to worry about this upstart horror series cannibalizing its accolades and ratings. Especially if it keeps churning out puzzling dross like Daryl Dixon.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon premieres September 10 on AMC
55 Comments
“can recite the names of all the world’s countries and capitals”
It’s been how many years since the outbreak in-universe, why is it that nation-states still seem to meaningful exist as some kind of useful touchstone?
And can do a Rubik’s Cube in 3 minutes, 12 seconds! …which is a passable time for somebody who has gotten the hang of the “beginner’s method” but hasn’t really focused on getting their time down. The world record is 3.13 seconds.
I almost wonder if whoever put in this little detail wanted the time to be just faster than the world record, but confused minutes and seconds.
I’m convinced your theory is on the money
This was my exact thought when reading this.
That or it’s just another AVC proofreading mistake.
In this case, they’re pretty safe. It’s not like anyone’s going to watch Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon to catch them out.
Kids are soft these days.
I think it’s just that he can memorize a long list of shit. Just like it’s not necessarily useful to know the names of all the dinosaurs but it would still be cool if a kid could name every dinosaur and its correct era.
If most viewers are anything like me (a sickening premise, obviously), they’re just bored of TWD. It’s been 13 years. The pilot was excellent, the first season was good, second through maybe fifth seasons were decent. As I recall it’s been downhill since. The whole show became a soap opera at best, and a gloomy nihilist trudge at worst.Fear The Walking Dead had a great premise, which they threw out the window within a few episodes, but that had a decent first season or two before suffering the same fate. The other spin offs have been turgid at best.
Daryl Dixon might have been the best character on the original series, but it doesn’t matter if we’re bored of him. If AMC asked me to make a Walking Dead spin off that could actually work (they wouldn’t, and shouldn’t) I’d go with an anthology premise. Give us mini stories, one episode at a time, starting in the first days.
Better yet, bin the whole franchise and do something new. If they’d run TWD for exactly 5 seasons, or less, and kept the story contained, it’d probably be regarded as classic TV.
I’m pretty sure they’re doing the anthology thing.
Yeah, this is it. There just aren’t that many (arguably any) franchises pumping out new episodes and multiple spin-offs every year for over a decade that are consistently good. Zombies are a great visual but very one-note antagonist by their very nature, and they’re window dressing at this point. So there’s understandably always a human villain in the season arc, and after the second season or so, they’ve virtually always been some flavor of a fascist organization that wants to recruit and/or eliminate the main characters. Philosophically, I’m on board with that, but it’s very repetitive as a story beat and they’ve milked it beyond what it’s capable of sustaining. And since the stakes are always life or death, there aren’t a lot of nuances to most of the character beats. Either they want to live or they don’t, and then it’s just a question of what they’re willing to do or put up with to make that happen.
I agree they should probably just end it, but if we’re proposing hypothetical spin-offs, I’d do one with a radically different tone, about someone who’s really figured out the new world and is thriving during the apocalypse without becoming a monster. Small, tight cast, short 2-4 episode arcs, colorful, eccentric villains that aren’t always just secret Hitlers bent on murder and social control.
You could do a spin off with the format of “The Canterbury Tales” crossed with EC. Maybe set it in a bar or watering hole establishment, and everyone is stopped on an intersection to/from someplace and tells their own story over an episode or two. You could also have a season long frame story. Plenty of opportunities for different kinds of stories, and the fact that each story would only last two or three episodes before another person tells another one cuts sprawl off at the knees. It also allows for organic development of cliffhangers, which the show seems to favor. You could talk about but not show/obliquely show characters like Daryl or Neegan like they were legends to situate it in universe.
AMC, drop me a line. It’s a more sustainable and cheaper idea than sending Norman Reedus to France like it’s his high school year abroad.
I think there was a small resurgence in interest when Angela Kang took over as showrunner, but that was after seasons 7 and 8, which did enough damage to turn most people off. Which is a shame, because Kang brought some real creative juices to the series and some of the best looking and atmospheric episodes are from her run.Fear’s premise was fantastic and I immediately clicked with its distinctive style and wildly different characters. Then it got even better as time went on, despite ditching the initial idea. S3 is one of the very best seasons from any of the shows. Then they changed showrunners for some inexplicable reason and turned a cast of characters lauded for their complexity (Madison was supposed to turn into a villain eventually, warping her family’s perceptions as she did), into simple and boring good guys.I’d argue that Daryl was one of the better characters at the start and then became a snooze. I hope Carol shows up in his series, like she was originally supposed to. She also fell into a similar trap like other characters after an astounding development arc. But she’s still one of the more dynamic ones there.They have an anthology show! It’s pretty meh! But it does try some new things.Dead City, though, is unironically one of my favourite bits of recent zombie media. Which isn’t saying a lot, but it’s kinda shocking that it’s done by largely the same people who did the parent show. The change in scenery and atmosphere is enough to have me on board. And I also love Maggie.All this being said, I do agree that it should’ve stopped a long time ago. It’s especially weird that they’re doing the spin-offs now rather than earlier. But hey, anything to keep the money machine printing, even if it’s printing only nickels.
You may love Fear TWD, but many people, including me, were intrigued by the setting of the zombie outbreak first happening and how society fell and they just ditched the whole premise like four episodes in for just the B team TWD -West Coast. The show is just worse than just being bad, it is completely irrelevant.
They did the anthology series. It was called Tales of the Walking dead and it was some of the best content to come out of this franchise in a while.
If AMC asked me to make a Walking Dead spin off that could actually work
(they wouldn’t, and shouldn’t) I’d go with an anthology premise. Give
us mini stories, one episode at a time, starting in the first days. That’s what Tales of the Walking Dead is and I really enjoyed it, actually. I watched it because it was not going to be a lore slog like every other TWD show became. As far as I know, they’re not doing a second season of it though.
extremely funny to me that we’ve hit so much cultural/content oversaturation that the op, clearly a big enough fan, wasn’t even aware that his idea has already been done.
I don’t remember what show it was, but I remember Ice-T talking about the oversaturation of cop shows with spinoffs (primarily Law & Order and CSI) and he said “Just wait until we do Law & Order: CSI – then that’s a wrap.”
I fucking loved most of that show , but the amount of haters bemoaning it because it wasn’t a super grim trauma fest was unreal. I honestly would watch a show that had the same feel as the episodes with Gillian Bell and Parker Posey ( think groundhog day of the dead), or Olivia Munn and Terry Crewes ( Dammit Terry hates Zombies).Oh wait I did , it was called Z Nation!
What I would kinda love is a Fargo-style 10 episode season anthology show in the TWD universe at different time periods like Tales had. I think the Terry/Olivia plot could have supported that with a little fleshing out, and probably the one with Anthony Edwards.
I was really disappointed in Fear the Walking Dead. I thought it was going to be more about the politics of a quarantine zone that has lost contact and guidance from the US government and attempting to function independently. Instead we basically got Walking Dead 2: West Coast.
Stole my comment..LOL. Yeah, it is not people are tired of “zombies”, but they are very tired of TWD. This needs put out of its misery. Everything about it has been done to death and it is tired. Everything they have tried to do just eventually goes back to the tired formula, no matter how novel the “premise”. Even the teen one set decades after the TWD just fell into the old stale routine where nothing was different despite it supposedly being decades after. (So zombies just never rot away and just walk around forever?) This sounds like the exact same deal, but with a “hey kids! You memberberry Daryl! Remember how he is one of the few characters left you always liked! Well, watch this!”
I was hoping this zombies-in-France show was going to be spin-off of ‘Emily in Paris’.
Honestly, I would absolutely watch this show if they somehow got Lily Collins to do a zombie cameo.
Emily in Parts.
Emily [inside a zombie] in Paris
funny because that’s pretty much exactly what it is; an american show depicting every possible clichés about France to cater to it’s US audience. Emilie in Paris; but with zombie.
Is this the one with the Mandalorian and Lyanna Mormont? Her name even sounds French.
The Last of Us is to The Walking Dead as Casablanca is to a monkey fucking a coconut.(Sydney Greenstreet plays the monkey.)
So long as its Greenstreet as his Maltese Falcon character.
And the coconut ? …you guessed it , Frank Stallone.
Obligatory joke about how nothing’s changed about Paris after the apocalypse then as workers are clearly still battling the government over multiple grievances.
champagne and varying degrees of plumbing and electricity It at least hasn’t changed since my last trip.
Its a US show , therefore a French walker (zut alors! Le marcheur!!) ,I assume doesnt eat anyone , just sniffs them , give them a rude withered look , and shamble off aloof.Also is on strike a lot.Also is the only supernatural creature attracted to garlic.
“(“The Lost Soul,” groan)“
Why does this get a no-context groan?
“Religious fanatics in the zombie apocalypse” sounds absolutely tedious.
whose birth from a pregnant walker is considered by many to be a miracle.The only way this doesn’t garner a “fuck this show” from me is if the kid can climb walls and shoot acid from his skin.
He made it to Paris? Paris, France? Across the Atlantic Ocean? The really big one, that ocean?
Okey dokey.
apparently he had some kind of boat so you know
He’s a survivalist so obviously he can navigate the Atlantic Ocean without satellite help in a small boat.
Thats the big twist , it’s just texas with everyone doing an inspector cluseau accent! Incroyable!
I watched it and he arrives through the south; which makes even less sense since he got through the mediterannean. There is kind of a plot point explaining it a bit later though
The premise sounds like the kind of horseshit Daryl isn’t supposed to have time for, but give your terse hero a child and a nun to protect I guess. Zombies are great because of the allegorical possibilities, but the classic story it often comes back to is: humans will not work together even if, if they fail to, their destruction is nearly certain. TWD sometimes got this but more often it was just a revolving door of factions and trying to top the last villain. I stopped watching when Glen got it, but that wasn’t really fatigue with zombies, just with the show, like superhero movies it is entirely dependent for me on simply the content: the new Dr. Strange was pretty good, the new Ant-Man was pretty bad. I might watch that “Last Voyage of the Demeter” but it really doesn’t have any effect on me if it is a good vampire movie and then a bad vampire movie comes out. That said, I did not go back to watching TWD when Samantha Morton was on it and I am a big fan of hers so it really must have tired me out. If they really want to get me to watch again, get Frank Darabont (‘s original draft) back, maybe have him do whatever he was going to do with Sam Witwer in the tank in the early days
seems like the wish version of the last of us, which was itself the wish version of the last of us.
I looked it up and in France 22.8% declared to be atheists, and 17.6% declared to be agnostics. And the rest who identify as Christians I am guessing is similar to the US where its become more a cultural identity than serious belief considering only 5% of the population in France attends weekly services. Its kinda weird to have such religious focus for a series taking place in France and then in the series US series to mostly avoid it. Maybe the TWD dealt it with it later but even in 2009 it felt strange that the characters never came across some religious nut jobs who believe it is the end of days. The conservative evangelicals would have an absolute melt down if this happened in real life.
oh yeah people going to churches here are a super tiny minority. Those who say are christian are probably baptised and that’s it.
Exactly what I was thinking. The showrunners set the show in France, but everybody speaks english and the characters values and culture are all American.
I was gonna say my knowledge of France is that its fairly secular and not exactly bursting with religion. Was Rome not an option?
Merde.
I dropped out of TWD (a show I loved early on, and one of my few appointment viewings) when it became clear that it was just going to be a nihilistic, repetitive cycle of suffering. In the era of trump, that world stopped being escapism. I feel like this spin-off is trying to sort of put the “what if there is a cure?” spin on it, but its a day late and a buck short. Moreover, I would be even less interested if they started introducing prophecies and dream sequences and shit into this world.
As a french I’m half tented to watch this; the trailer looks quite silly; it has a bit of a tourist office commercial vibe, with they put every monument and sight they could find in under two minutes. Also Paloma; the Drag Race France winner from last year is part of this apparently. but of course it’s the walking dead; the zombie show (as the show that is a zombie more than the show about zombies), so it’s probably that bad.
It would be nice to see how different cultures reacted to the apocalypse. Yes, there are fascists in every country, but not everywhere is as much about “rugged individualism” as the US, and certainly not as armed (which makes a mace make sense, at least). There have to be pockets of survivors that have created actual communities by working together and may not necessarily be thriving but aren’t going to fall apart after one mistake is made.I’d be far more interested in watching the very American Daryl trying to navigate something like that than nonsense about a messiah.
not watching this because i stopped caring about TWD a long time ago but Paloma (the winner of Drag Race France season 1) is in this playing a drag queen which is a fact i am obsessed with
Mork and Mindy? Not Jerry Lewis? Sacre bleu
ok I watched it out of unhealthy curiosity and it’s a bit like Emily In Paris but with zombie. It completely caters to an american audience by delivering every cliché possible about french people and France (including the settings which work as a tourist brochure to come see your finest landscapes). And as the review points out it’s super weird how it feels like they’ve been transported to medieval times and everyone uses antique weapons (ok we mostly don’t have firearms lying around everywhere like in the US but still)
It’s surprisingly a lot less bleak than the original (which is not a bad thing); but Dixon out if its element is not a very interesting character; and I don’t understand why while they made an effort to have a french speaking cast you’ve sometimes entire dialogues in english even without him being present. As for the rest for it’s still quite a bore.