The Walking Dead tries to recapture that ol' Daryl magic with a messy flashback
TV Reviews The Walking Dead
When The Walking Dead goes into flashback mode, it’s usually for one of two reasons: To offer up a meditative character study that lends weight and depth to the current state of mind for the person or persons highlighted, or to quickly add some new information as a means of driving a present-day plotline forward without making their choices seem as random or unexplained as they might otherwise be. (The former is usually preferable to the latter, for hopefully obvious reasons.) “Find Me” obviously wants to be the former, but ends up a bit of both, and doing neither one particularly well. Some excellent Carol/Daryl conversations bookend this episode, but all the sodden stuff in between never feels like anything more than rushed backstory, doing a disservice to both Daryl’s motivations and to the methodical way the character has been shaped. Everybody’s favorite crossbow aficionado deserves better.
One of the best things about Daryl as a character is that, thanks to his naturally taciturn state, the writers rarely try and force words into his mouth that don’t belong there. There’s a reason he’s been a fan favorite for so long: Norman Reedus plays him just right, and no creative team has ever gone broke overestimating audience desire for a stoic, brooding type. Daryl’s the classic antisocial ass-kicker with a heart of gold, and despite having softened considerably in recent seasons, he’s still best deployed as part of a long game, relying on his natural mistrust and misanthropy to pay off slow developments in plotting and relationships. The Carol-Daryl pairing works so well because it was earned, patiently, over the course of multiple seasons. This episode tries to steamroll through a traditional “Daryl warms up to someone” arc in the span of about 30 minutes, and the results predictably fail. We don’t know Leah, we never really see Daryl get to know Leah, and with abrupt time jump after abrupt time jump onscreen (6 months later, 8 months later, et. al), it plays like the show doesn’t want to do the hard work of earning this relationship, or its effect on Daryl when Leah inevitably disappears. That’s not efficient storytelling; it’s lazy.
After a pre-credits opening that features some of the best banter between Carol and Daryl that we’ve seen in quite awhile, we get into the meat of this narrative. While out hunting, the two take refuge in a cabin that turns out to be the place where, five years ago during his years-long walkabout after Rick vanished, Daryl met a similarly stoic and taciturn woman named Leah—oh, and her little puppy, Dog. (That’s right: Daryl’s not the one who named his dog “Dog.”) Flashing back, we watch as he breaks in with his new canine companion and offs a walker inside, only to be taken hostage by Leah, who ties him up just long enough to decide, “Eh, whatever, he’s cool,” and lets him go. Thus begins the multiple time jumps through the next couple of years, as the pair slowly dance around wanting to hang out (read: hook up), trading insults and bickering, before she invites him over—mainly, it seems, so she can have an emotional breakdown about the death of her child from a walker bite, leading to this solitary existence.
Before you can say, “This doesn’t feel earned at all,” we skip right past whatever honeymoon phase existed during their 10-month affair, to the part where she demands he choose between her and being alone out searching for Rick. He chooses Rick/alone/not having sex with Leah, only to quickly realize he wants to be with his new beau after all; but when he gets back to the cabin, she’s gone. He writes a note, telling her to find him. It ends back in the present, with an intense argument between Carol and Daryl, in which his bottled-up anger over her choice to run away ends with their friendship fractured, Carol proclaiming “our luck’s run out—you and me,” and cut to black. The episode seems to think the Leah And Daryl Montage Show would give that final fight meaning. It didn’t.
Guest star Lynn Collins played Leah just fine, but nothing about the material really works. The closest comparison is something like Lost’s season-three episode, “Stranger In A Strange Land,” which squandered an episode by having Matthew Fox’s Jack flit off to Thailand in a flashback, all for the exciting reveal that he had a brief fling with the woman who gave him a tattoo. Suddenly giving us a romantic history that has meant seemingly nothing, only to try and inject it into the blowup of Carol and Daryl’s long-simmering argument—especially as an addition to a season that already spent a lot of time addressing their situation—feels like a wasted opportunity.
It’s especially unfortunate because the present-day scenes with the two of them are quite good. They’re funny, affectionate, and engaging in the opening act before we flash back; and at the end, when Carol tries to deliver the “it’s not your fault” speech, only to have Daryl lash out by turning it around to blame her for Connie’s disappearance (ouch), the resulting words feel painfully honest. He’s pissed at her for leaving him after Henry’s death, though his anger seems as much about the fact that he was forced to step up and be responsible for the community without her presence as it was the simple fact of her disappearance. “You wanna run? Run…I won’t stop you this time.” He’s trying to hurt her, because he’s hurt. And it works. It’s too bad the rest of this episode wasted time with a poorly executed flashback; here, finally, is something really worth digging into.
Stray observations
- More clever COVID-related cutting around walker attacks: We never actually see up close the walkers Daryl takes out to get to the boat; it’s all just implied by the editing. I would love it if one of these episodes used that trick to show a bunch of walker attacks that turned out to be in someone’s mind, or some such.
- Pet peeve alert: For the love of god, can we be done with the playing of ominous music when someone pulls out a knife and the main character is tied up, to try and suggest they might actually be getting ready to stab or cut them? It. Never. Happens. It’s always to cut them free. Stop trying to make that moment happen. Put it away with “Fetch.”
- Really liked the opening banter—Carol needling Daryl, him being a grouch about it. Melissa McBride was funny as always, but Reedus had a good moment too, when she tries spearfishing and he communicates with Dog about it: “Watch this disaster right here.”
- There’s one nice moment in the flashbacks, when Daryl tells Leah that he lost a brother, and you immediately realize he’s talking about Rick.
- There was an interesting, almost Greek Chorus-like approach to the way Carol would periodically check in on Daryl in the past. It helped leaven those otherwise milquetoast sequences.
- It’s starting to look like they’re really not going to take the opportunity of these bonus episodes to do anything different, structure or story-wise, from the norm. What a waste.
29 Comments
So, Leah’s totally coming back in the Carol and Daryl spinoff, right?
*nods*
Are you ready for Fear The Walking Dead Relationship Hunt 2.o????? Maybe the shows will merge and you’ll get to see Daryl and Dwight looking for their girlfriends together, just with more Carol.
Nah, she’s coming back in the final few episodes to die miserably and give him reason to mope around in a spin off instead of settling down in peace.
Probably to tell him his kid is out there for the spin off .
Yes, this was an awkward blatant setup for further adventures on the Carol and Daryl Show. It wouldn’t be so bad if it hadn’t been so rushed.Also, wasn’t Darryl supposed to be revealed as gay? Or was that fan fiction?
This was one of the most boring episodes of television I have ever watched. And I have watched a ton of bad things.
You make a great point about Darryl and it’s why a show that leans on him as a lead (even with Carol) is doomed to fail.He’s not a leading man, and using him as such is going to overexpose the character.
At least they showed the traditional redneck courtship ritual of throwing fish at one another to express interest.
That’s called ‘Spuckler Courtin’.
So rednecks learned courtship from Monty Python’s Flying Circus?
Only watched half of this and tuned out. You’d think that with the show ending soon, they’d stop with filler episodes.
I’d think if you were living in a post apocalyptic, zombie filled, hellscape, and you’ve tied someone up with what appears to be high quality rope in good condition, you wouldn’t want to waste the rope by cutting them free. Resources are limited…untie the damn rope so you can use it again.
Rational behavior- like biology, chemistry, and physics- was deemed surplus to the show’s requirements a looooooong time ago.
That opening was exceptional. I started out in this series wondering if Carol and Daryl would/should hook up, but I quickly moved to loving the friendly, sibling-like relationship. But this whole opening had me bouncing between “maybe they should be a couple”, “wow, are they BFFs or what?”, and “are we sure they aren’t actually siblings?”.
Am I the only one who initially thought the cabin was going to be a flashback to the cabin Daryl found with Beth? I know the logistics don’t work since that was closer to ATL, but considering the way he reacted upon finding it again that’s what came to mind.
Same thoughts here.
And, you know, would have been pertaining to someone we would have given a crap about, and not “here are some pieces for the spin off” BS.
Really liked the opening banter
I liked it too but the opening theme on top of it was tonally jarring.
This is the set up for the carol /Daryll spin off ,on the road searching for his kid Leah went off and had right?
Leah is not a “beau.” “Beau” means boyfriend. I wish the writers on these sites would either stop using words they don’t actually know the meaning of or at least look up the meaning before trying to use it. I learned long ago that if you try to use words to sound cool, you will almost always mess it up.
I’ve used it both ways. Just like, ‘hey guys’. Don’t be such a wanker.
Here’s where I had trouble: Daryl knows where he is when he’s in the woods. He knows how to get home. He knows that area really well because it’s where he spent years looking for Rick. No way they just accidentally happened upon that cabin. I mean, the show made it look like that’s what happened, but Daryl would have known quite a while before he got there that they were headed that way. And, considering what happened, you would think he would take them around to avoid it.
Yeah, nobody cares about Leah. She reminded me of Gina in Season 3 of The 100. “Wait, who was Gina?” you ask. My point exactly! She was Bellamy’s girlfriend, the one who was not Clarke and not Echo. She was in small parts of 3 episodes and when she died, it was supposed to have this big emotional hit. But she was Gina, not Clarke (we hadn’t met Echo yet) and so no one cared.Similarly, Leah is neither Carol nor Beth, and so who cares? No one! And this was made all the worse by the amazing Carol/Daryl dialogue at the start of the episode. Leah can’t compete with that!Aside from the aforementioned dialogue, the best parts of this episode were Daryl saying “Whaaaaat?” anytime someone speared a fish.
My question is where did they get corn on the cob and artisanal multigrain loaf of bread that they were having for dinner when Leah got upset that Daryl chose his career vs her and the babies (hello TIU Madison) snark aside, really, where did those come from? the only thing missing was a bottle of Dom P.
How did Leah tie up Daryl? Hold the shotgun in one hand while using her feet and other hand to tie the knots?
“they’re really not going to take the opportunity of these bonus episodes to do anything different, structure or story-wise”People have been bemoaning the lack of stories with a narrower scope, in both action and cast, for years. How is doing something that people have been noticing hasn’t been don e not doing something different?
I’m going to put my hands up here, I’d completely forgotten about the time jump. When “Five years earlier” flashed up I was completely thrown about where in the timeline we were. It took me a long minute for it all the click into place and made me realise how throwaway TWD has become if I can totally forget a massive plot device from the previous season.Still, it was good to get some of Dog’s backstory. Can’t imagine they’ll give us an Incredible Journey style bottle episode, but one can hope.
It was fine, honestly, but I was most upset that we only got essentially one scene with little-adorable-puppy-Dog. I was hoping for an entire episode with little-Dog.