There is no doubt that The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon made quite an impression on me last fall, and while I appreciated the cinematography as well as the location design, I was let down by the plot and overall direction of the show.
This season of Daryl Dixon, subtitled The Book of Carol, premiers on September 29th. However, I was one of the many who saw the first episode at the Tribeca Film Festival. Since it will be almost four months until the rest of the world sees it, this will be my non-spoiler preview of the first episode of Daryl Dixon’s second season.
I will have to say that this episode is a mix between Daryl and Carol, with a heavy focus on Carol’s journey to France. While I cannot disclose how she gets there, Carol also has a self reflection on having a drive to do something meaningful as she felt lost for some time. Also to add, there is an actual plan on the travel route to France, but I cannot say what that is.
There are also a few callbacks to previous seasons for Carol. Instead of just using them for a fan service ratings pop, these are used to progress Carol’s character forward to the point where she had to face what was behind head on. That also includes one situation where she had to put a convincing strategy together.
Moreover, I like how this episode resolved some plot holes from its first season without just dragging it to the point of dragging bullet points. In this episode, you’ll discover the connection between France and the shipyard, how they arrived at the shipyard, and why it mattered. Additionally, I’ll highlight that the CRM is not involved in the show, which I believe is positive, especially since we just saw it in The Ones Who Live, despite part of that organization being defeated anticlimactically.
The story of Daryl is that he is involved in an ambush and rescue mission and the strategy for how it works for what he and everyone must do is from 0 to 100. I feel that this one mission, along with a few story progression notes that I cannot share, will provide a better sense of the back and forth flow between Daryl and Carol’s scenes.
There is a new character in this episode that I find to be quite interesting and it seems that this character will not be here for only one episode, as this person has an interesting backstory that made me care about the character. Also, one of his lines ties into a line heard earlier in the episode from a different source and I like how that was organically put in rather than the forced dialogue.
Had The Ones Who Live put the first two episodes into one large episode, I think that would have been a better way to introduce the casual or lapsed fans to the series. This episode of Daryl Dixon, did that while also not putting too much progression on Daryl’s side since they needed to establish how Carol goes overseas. The structure here is exactly how it should have been done.
In general, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon-The Book of Carol’s first episode of its second season has far exceeded my expectations in terms of its character development without feeling rushed or hurried. As a matter of fact, I think that if Melissa McBride did not appear in the second season, Daryl Dixon’s second season would not have added as much depth to the series as it does now. The premier is very solid and there is a lot to look forward to.
It is also going to get very mouthful to word out the entire show’s name in further reviews, but I’ll get used to it.
