First impressions are so important (even if it’s the first episode of a second season that features a character we’ve already met before) and if I’m being honest, the first chapter of the Book Of Carol kind of proved to be a little damaging. To put things a little more clearly, the first season of Daryl Dixon proved to be the best chunk of The Walking Dead I’d seen in bloody ages as it took a franchise groaning under the sheer weight of its bloated size and repetitive storylines and made it feel fresh with a simple change of scenery – something, I might add, that Fear The Walking Dead didn’t do even half as well. Plonking one of its most beloved (and overpowered) characters into an unfamiliar scenario where her was forced to play defence with a motorcycle or crossbow in sight, it also gave Norman Reedus’ overused fan favorite biker/tracker a purpose for the first time in ages and in a single episode, Carol almost ruined it. Luckily, first impressions can be reversed if you put the work in and hopefully the Book Of Carol’s second chapter will prove to be more of a riveting read.
After convincing Ash to fly her to France on the basis of a well thought out lie, Carol continues her quest to track down Daryl Dixon only to an iffy fuel line halt their progress over Greenland, but after an encounter with the finest (and mossiest) Walkers that the country has to offer, the pair soon run into Eun and Hanna, two research scientists that haven’t laid eyes on another soul for years. However, despite their earlier, friendlier nature, we soon find out that their opposing views on the continuation of the human race has led to them coming up with a rather troublesome plan. While Hannah feels that the human race us finished and should continue down the road of extinction, Eun has convinced her that any males who pass by should be used as sperm donors to repopulate the Earth.
However, while Carol has to sort out this unorthodox version of family planning, over in France Daryl has problems of his own to deal with that prove to include a hefty amount of betrayal. After getting word that young Larent has been kidnapped by Genet’s men, Daryl and Isabelle lead a team to get him back that also includes the recently saved Fallou and Emile. However, mid-mission, the men who have accompanied Daryl from the Nest suddenly turn on him revealing that the whole operation to be a decoy on order to get Dixon out of the picture while Laurent’s big test approaches. What is this big test, I hear you cry? Well, in order to prove his divine powers, Losang is planning to have the boy bitten by a Walker to show his followers that he is immune and thus can lead them forward into a brave new world. But while Daryl fight for his life against the very people he’s sided with, Carol makes it to Paris and immediately stumbles across Genet’s troops.
I guess, in order to keep things simple, I should review each plot line of episode 2 separately as in not only keeps things neater, but it will sort of show the potential damage Carol’s plot is doing to the show a whole lot clearer. Now that’s not to say that Carol’s journey is awful – in fact it’s a noticable improvement over last week’s episode – but in the attempt to fastrack Carol’s inclusion into the show while still giving it weight, it tends to break into the established Daryl stuff and lessens it’s impact with a separate story that has nothing to do with the main points of the series. Thankfully, Dixon’s thread is allowed to breath much easier this time, but it’s constantly annoying that a major plot twist involving the Nest has to share episode time with another, standard, Walking Dead side adventure that introduces yet more single-serving antagonists for a story that’s not going to go anywhere.
Anyway, we follow Carol and Ash as their plane has to touch down in Greenland fir repairs, but almost immediately, the story-led coincidences start piling up as once again, virtually everything thing that transpires seems to happen entirely by chance purely to benefit Carol’s quest. While we could have had just a simple stop over to refuel and have Carol and Ash bond further, they are thrown into a whole side episode involving dormant, grassy zombie who have just happened to be burried in that exact spot, two new and highly disposable characters who just happened to spot them land and also just happen to have the parts they need and also the twisted plan that Hanna have just happens to require exactly what Carol and Ash bring to the table.
Now, coincidence based plotting doesn’t seem to piss me off as much as it does some people, but I do understand why some would declare it as lazy writing – however, luckily for this episode, the pace of the story manages to move it along fairly well while including some cool new Walker designs, some tense standoffs and a shock ending that Carol once again coldly takes advantage of. However, the problems is that with all the momentum that’s built up in Dixon’s thread, there is absolutely no need to slow it down with whatever fuckery Carol is up to and the whole escapade is instantly reduced to filler status no matter what your opinion is of it.
However, while Carol’s arc blunders around making classic Walking Dead mistakes, Daryl’s manages to pick up the momentum lost in the last episode by essentially tearing down the status quote the first season spend its entire run trying to build. Essentially, the religious fervour that’s built around Losang’s prophecy that Laurent is the second coming has reached a stumbling block thanks to Daryl’s growing bond with the boy and that all the survival training and games of baseball is making the boy unpure for the grave task ahead. However, while Losang’s original plan was to get Daryl out of the Nest by faking Laurent’s kidnapping (he never actually leaves the Nest at all), a devout underling reveals that she’s altered the orders to have Dixon killed to nullify his “negative” influence on their hopeful holy one. Not inly is this a massive blow to the new life that Dixon was hoping to gain, but it also means that Isabelle now has to make a difficult choice too when she finds out that the order she devoted her life to will stoop so low as to execute the very man who Laurent to them safe and sound. Furthermore, ranks are divided when it’s revealed that the former ally Emile is also in on the plan even though Dixon himself led the mission to free him from Genet’s clutches.
The differences between Daryl and Carol’s stories are as plain as night and day, with Dixon’s stakes getting ever higher with every betrayal and Carol’s thread being nothing more than a mildly diverting sidebar that doesn’t really need to be there. Luckily, thanks to the fact that Dixon’s sections are genuinely riveting and Carol’s is still pretty watchable despite its rather pointless nature, this has to be considered a sizable improvement over the first episode and seeing as the episode ends with Carol finally in France and getting tangled up with Genet’s troops, hopefully we can merge the two storylines back into something great.
Bon’ chance, Daryl Dixon. Bon chance.
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