The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (AMC/AMC+) (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'd pretty much written this franchise off after sticking it out to the series finale of the mothership, but I decided to give this one a shot tonight. I thought it was a really strong premiere, and separating Daryl from all of the other characters and the baggage that went with them was a good way to clear the slate.

There is of course a group of baddies with opaque nefarious objectives, but what grabbed my attention was the good people that Daryl encounters. Clémence Poésy provides an effective counterweight to Daryl as the female lead. We get intimations that her backstory is as tragic as Daryl's and Carol's, but her optimism perseveres.

While we don't know the details on how Daryl washed up on the shores of Marseille, he does. By the end of the premiere we've gotten a few tidbits that give us the broad strokes.

 

[Sean Bryan]

I'd pretty much written this franchise off after sticking it out to the series finale of the mothership, but I decided to give this one a shot tonight. I thought it was a really strong premiere, and separating Daryl from all of the other characters and the baggage that went with them was a good way to clear the slate.

There is of course a group of baddies with opaque nefarious objectives, but what grabbed my attention was the good people that Daryl encounters. Clémence Poésy provides an effective counterweight to Daryl as the female lead. We get intimations that her backstory is as tragic as Daryl's and Carol's, but her optimism perseveres.

While we don't know the details on how Daryl washed up on the shores of Marseille, he does. By the end of the premiere we've gotten a few tidbits that give us the broad strokes.

Yes, I thought it was a solid start and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go with this.

 

[TravisR]

Daryl was one of, if not, my favorite TWD characters so I'm going to check this series out.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This show shares a number of commonalities with "The Last of Us", with Laurent's backstory making those parallels more clear. But if you're gonna steal, steal the best I guess.

One thing that I'm really enjoying about this show over the others is the way it balances the darkness with light. For long stretches of the other series, it felt like the extinction of the human race was inevitable and the only question remaining was in what order the remaining holdouts would succumb.

But in both episodes so far, we have seen humanity reasserting itself in the face of the apocalypse.

And I don't think we've had any child actors in this series as good as Louis Puech Scigliuzzi as Laurent, and in this episode
Kim Higelin as the leader of the feral former preschoolers. The only thing that stretched credibility for me is that Lou's English would be so good when she only learned the language from an old French woman and a single old rerun of "Mork & Mindy".

 

[Walter Kittel]

I stopped watching the original series during season eight. The series had kind of run its course for me. I never really could get into any of the other 'dead' series. I did watch season one of 'Fear' but was pretty much zombie-fied out at that point.

I decided to give the Daryl Dixon series a try and viewed the premiere episode on demand last night. Growing up in the rural south, I appreciated the new series' setting (which in the original show looked like much from my childhood. ) If the series can maintain the production quality of the first episode I may stick around. I liked the use of a European cast and the French language. These aspects of the show, along with the settings did quite a bit to breathe some new life into the franchise. I also appreciated the various weaponry employed in episode one. It felt appropriately regressive, given the state of the world.

I was pleased that the episode gave us some hints about how Daryl arrived in France and I expect further amplification of that plot element as the series progresses. I completely bought into the idea of a religious based mythos developing in a post-apocalyptic environment. So it looks somewhat promising.

QUESTION:

Spoiler

This was the first time I had seen a 'burner' during the first attack. I am assuming this is from the graphic novels, but have we seen this variation on the dead in any of the prior series?

- Walter.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I continue to be impressed with how they've built a show around a title character who says so little.

The show continues to make good use of location shooting along with what is presumably a lot of CG matte paintings, with Jim Morrison's actual grave in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise this week. And while I generally prefer music in the walking dead universe to be purely diegetic, the French cover of "People Are Strange" was a nice touch.

When Sister Sylvie was sitting with Laurent in the wagon while Daryl and Sister Isabel were dealing with the crazy man in the theater, Sylvie looked so young that I was reminded of the fact that she actually isn't that much older than Laurent is.

As they're walking through the catacombs on the way to Quinn's night club, surrounded by the bones of millions of people, I got a chuckled when Fallou stated that America is an infant and that Paris had survived apocalypses before and will survive this one too. Though he was wrong to ascribe the catacombs to the Black Death, at least directly. They were the result of 18th century urban planning, as city leaders turned to the abandoned limestone mines under the city to rehouse the remains in the overflowing city cemeteries.

QUESTION:

Spoiler

This was the first time I had seen a 'burner' during the first attack. I am assuming this is from the graphic novels, but have we seen this variation on the dead in any of the prior series?

I haven't kept up with all of the other spinoffs, but they differently weren't in the mothership. I'm assuming they're the result of Genet's experiments with the dead.

 

[Walter Kittel]

Running an episode behind. I am continuing to enjoy the settings for the series and I liked the flashbacks in episode two. When the original The Walking Dead series ran, I don't recall much coverage of The Fall. We see Rick in the hospital but not the first hours of the collapse. I enjoyed that coverage in episode two and I wouldn't mind seeing other characters' perspectives on the first day as the series progresses. ( I guess we did see some of that in Fear The Walking Dead, but I have very few memories of that series as it really did not hold my interest; perhaps due to being tired of zombies at that point in time, vs. any inherent weakness in that series. )

If the parallels with The Last of Us weren't clear in episode one, the second episode removed all doubt. "Steal from the best" indeed.

Had to laugh at the episode's satire / commentary on the "ugly American". The cut away from Daryl scaling the moat (simply showing him at the other side) made me laugh. Reminded me of similar edits in some of Liam Neeson's later action roles where the physical requirements for the stunt / activity were too strenuous.

Still enjoying the series and will view episode three later this week.

- Walter.