If I can be real with you guys for a second, I was genuinely almost afraid to settle down and watch the second episode of Daryl Dixon’s spin off Walking Dead show because was worried about what I might see. You see, as I’ve mentioned before, my belief that the gargantuan show that spawned from Robert Kirkman’s legendary comic could never again achieve the awesomeness of its glory days was total and absolute. However, after my socks were righteously blown off by the fact that the first epidode wasn’t just watchable, but actually good, had me doubting that the show could possibly keep this positive streak up.
However, with Alouette, it’s becoming apparent that Daryl Dixon might actually be the real deal as the second episode falls back on a few overused Walking Dead tropes and still emerges as the best thing the franchise has done in absolute yonks.
While trapped in France, fish out of water Daryl Dixon has agreed to take nuns Isabelle and Sylvie and their young charge, Laurent, to Paris in as to reunite them with the rest of their order. The kicker is that the holy sisters both believe that the child is the second coming of Christ due to reasons yet to be revealed to us and while Daryl is obviously sceptical, what else is he going to do as he wanders across the French landscape. However, after negotiating a Walker swarm by sacrificing their mule as bait, the group run afoul of a community of children who have been operating out of a pre-school since the zombie apocalypse first started under the protection of a kindly teacher who has since grown I’ll and frail.
A deal is made; Daryl will help them scout for medical supplies while they’ll help him replace his eaten mule to continue his reluctant quest and as he heads out with his new, young allies, he finds that the task isn’t going to be as straightforward as he had hoped – especially not with a hidden sniper and a moat full of Walkers thrown into the mix.
However, while all this is going on, we get flashes of Isabelle’s past as we witness the type of person she was before the world collapsed and rest assured, she wasn’t no nun. Essentially a professional thief who pick pockets partying rich guys in Parisian clubs while she hoovers up sizable amounts of cocaine, she’s on her way home with a successful haul when the zombie plague erupts all around her. Saved by her partner in crime, Quinn, they race home in his car in order to pick up Isabelle’s pregnant sister, Lily, but when she’s forced to choose between Quinn – who wants to ditch Lily to make better time – or her sibling, it’s a case of bye bye Quinn. However, after Lily receives a fateful bite from one of the undead ghouls that’s ravaging the capital, we realise that what we’re actually watching isn’t Isabelle’s origin story at all. It’s Laurent’s.
Be honest, when you read the above section that explains that Daryl has to interact with a tribe of children who have survived over a decade in a secluded school, did your eyeballs roll as you immediately were haunted by memories of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome – because mine certainly did. But once again, Dixon flips the script, making that most despised of Waking Dead tropes – the unnecessary side mission – actually interesting, gripping and, above all, relevant as our reluctant lead slowly starts to find that maybe he’s not so burned out and aimless after all. In fact, the lives the kids have built for themselves is oddly fascinating in a tragic sort of way as the majority of their number were pre-schoolers whose parents never came to pick them up after the zombie pandemic spread faster than an Olympic level sandwich maker. While raised by the sole, remaining teacher and having their ranks bolstered by random kids wandering in or even being abandoned there, the eldest learned to hunt and fight while all of them are entertained every night by repeat viewings of Mork & Mindy which they’ve all memorized religiously. It’s a far cry from the bargin basement villainy of Dead City’s Burzai or the lazily scripted Tribespeople and it’s further proof that this spinoff is a noticable step up from the repetitive drudge the franchise had slipped into.
Norman Reedus doesn’t seem to be doing anything out of the ordinary, but after playing the guy for thirteen frickin’ years, he doesn’t really have to Andy instead his gruff character continues to be revitalized by his new surroundings that steadily seem to be getting even more primitive as we go along. I mean, the second half of the episode takes place in an honest-to-god castle whose Walker stuffed moat harkens back to the days when the show kept giving us ever more inventive scenarios for survivors to discover the rotting flesh eaters in. While the sticking point of the mission – steal already stolen supplies from a random, hording, rifle wielding Texan – seems distractingly random at first, his desire to return back home to the States to be with his (presumably dead) loved one is counteracted by Dixon, who couldn’t resist the urge to ditch his and find something else.
However, as good as this section of the episode is, it’s made remarkably more vital by that other maligned Walking Dead trope: the overuse of rug pulling flashbacks in an attempt to alter our perception of current events. Essentially following Isabelle’s pre-nun life as an upper-class pick pocket as Paris suddenly crumbles around her, it paints a better, scarier picture of the fall of humanity in seven minutes than Fear The Walking Dead managed to achieve in the entirety of its first season as Clémence Poésy stares horrified as she watches people trapped on speeding trains get mauled as they whizz through the stations and panic tears through the streets. Furthermore, the fact that Laurent is cut from the womb of his freshly zombified mother at the convent where we first met them actually adds a little credence to the theory that the precocious child is special – but mostly it’s a no-nonsense, plausible explanation as to how Isabelle went from coke dusted thief to warrior nun and protective stealth auntie.
There’s an argument to be made that one of the reasons that Daryl Dixon has caused The Walking Dead to suddenly stir with renewed life is that it’s merely The Last Of Us with a French accent, but while there are admitted similarities (the transporting of a special child across zombie-filled terrain), there’s also a great many differences too that keep things separate enough to enjoy.
So Daryl Dixon is so far two for two when it comes to pumping new lifeblood through a desiccated corpse – here’s hoping horror TV’s favorite redneck biker with a heart can keep the good times coming.
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