Once upon a time, while cooking up ideas for his upcoming comic series, The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman made the decision to use the classic, slow moving undead archetype for numerous reasons. One was that he grew up with the lumbering ghouls from George Romero’s seminal Trilogy of the Dead, but another was that the slow gait of the living corpses would allow the space to grow the world and give the characters room to breathe without the monsters of the piece breaking the land speed record in order to claim a victim. It’s a concept that’s long since paid off once the comic leapt from the page to the small screen and became a legitimate phenomenon, however, in these times of the Walking Dead spinoffs, you can’t help but feel that deliberate pace is starting to be more of a hinderence than a blessing.
Proof can be found in the third episode of Daryl Dixon that seems to think that its move to Spain is an excuse to slow the series way down from a lope to a virtual crawl. Can anything manage to perk up a season that’s somehow managed to span numerous countries, but still feel that nothing has actually happened yet?
Possibly proving that the true source of all Daryl and Carol’s problems are probably themselves after all, the fortunes of the Solaz del Mar start to nosedive suddenly thanks to the various instances of out two heroes sticking their noses in. For a start, Daryl has killed a trio of men who travel with Guillermo Torres, a big shot from El Alcázar who offers the town protection, after they recognised him from an earlier altercation, which has caused friction between the boss man and Fede, the leader of the Solaz community. Of course, Guillermo has no idea his missing men have been killed are are currently living a new life as the undead in a local Walker pen, but as the search continues, the shock waves caused by the Americans arrival continue to spread.
After Carol spoke out at a village gathering about El Alcazar’s practice of offering protection in payment for taking a girl from their village picked in a lottery, Justina discovers that her uncle Fede has been removing her name from the draw. In response, she is so wracked with guilt that she volunteers herself in order to save her friend, Alba, who was the not so lucky name pulled out of the hat. Meanwhile, Carol has been given orders by a determined Daryl to try and take (eg. steal) as many useful items as she can for their eventual journey back to the States, but she finds herself getting drawn in by the kindly nature Antonio.
Speaking of Daryl, he’s so desperate to catch back up with young Laurent, he’s on a defiant mission to get his boat ocean worthy, but after making deals with an equally determined Roberto and the impressively salty former cruise ship captain, Valentina, he finds that both waterlogged Walkers and fate itself is lining up to slow him down.
While building up characters, atmosphere and an appropriate amount of world building is imperative for things like this, it really does feel like the Walking Dead crew have lost all sense of pacing. While both Dixon and it’s sister show, Dead City have displayed the frustrating habit of dragging everything out for way too long before rushing through the important stuff in the blink of a jaundiced eyeball, the third season of Daryl’s odyssey seems to be trying to reverse this trend of barely having any exciting things happen at all. I mean, there’s the perfunctory Walker sequence that sees various waterlogged corpses pop up from the ocean waves only to have Daryl clean their clocks with a twirling boat anchor, but it’s something of a standard blip in a season that desperately needs to add some genuine risk to the drama. Despite the fact that they look rather fetching in barnacles, we’ve seen waterlogged zombies before as early as season 2 of the original parent series. But aside from that slight skirmish that does absolutely nothing to the plot, the season continues to lay on suspiciously familiar drama.
We’ve seen Carol gradually let her walls down and slowly bond with someone before and the fact that she and Antonio spend a genuinely nice moment watching a classic movie (The Exterminating Angel is a fitting title for someone as formidable as Carol), it’s nothing new. Similarly, the whole bigger community bullying/protecting a smaller one for a horrible price is also a regularly played track on the Walking Dead’s greatest hits seeing as the show ground out multiple seasons featuring the Saviors. It seems that the writers genuinely think that the location change to Spain will plaster over the overwhelming unoriginality of the plot there are a few things that still manage to keep the season clinging in there.
The main one is the addition of Irina Björklund’s winningly direct Valentina, who is exactly the sort of attention grabbing character the show is in dire need of. An intelligent, yet playful weathered face peaking out of her flowing white hair, the woman not only lives in a lighthouse and has a weakness for spicy olives, she also seems to be having a open, sexual relationship with the two men who are fixing her truck and isn’t afraid to hurl counter offers at Daryl in order to sweeten deals that don’t even effect her. Simply put, she feels like one of those characters like Merle, Princess or Eugene who seem like such a violent shift from the norm, you can’t help but want to see what they do next and I truly hope that the season uses her wisely as the show is screaming for a breakout character.
However, from here it’s fairly standard stuff. Guillermo is pissed that his men have vanished and rages at Fede, but it doesn’t really feel like this season’s villain (if that’s what he actually is) is actually much of a threat – if we’re supposed to be getting nervous about the search possibly turning up the fact that said men have been murderlised and all zombied up, then the show isn’t doing much of a job about turning up the pressure. But while we’re on the subject of characters not making much sense, Justina makes something of a bizarre decision after she discovers that her uncle has been leaving her out of the lottery. While obviously suffering a huge amount of survivor’s guilt after realising that she was never in danger of being picked, and wanting to selflessly save her friend, Alba, from a mysterious fate, the emotional young woman offers herself up voluntarily – which is fair enough. However, the fact that she does so without speaking to her beloved Roberto, his father Alberto or even Carol or Daryl before she does so is a perfect example of how irritating the writing of The Walking Dead can really be. Is she emotional and does she have limited time before Guillermo leaves? Certainly – but for her to do something so extreme at the drop of a hat without directly telling someone important is just the sort of sloppy storytelling that’s been headshotting the series for years now.
Once again, we find an episode of Dixon’s third season teetering at the precipice at being watchable while still in danger in tumbling into the void of just being annoying – however, thanks to those handy, dandy “coming next week” sections at the end of the episode, it looks like the season is finally about to actually do something. How it ultimately turns out is something we’re just going to have to wait and see, but it’s long past time for Dixon to break into a sprint.
🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 