TWD: Daryl Dixon Episode 2 Review, Pros & Cons, Recap

Review – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Episode 2’s intro is what Fear the Walking Dead could have been. Imbued with splashes of Resident Evil across subway trains, chaos on the streets, a city turned upside down. Here’s the pros and cons:

This Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Episode 2 review and recap contains spoilers for “Alouette”.

Clémence Poésy as Isabelle – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

Neutral:

– “Let us switch to English for Daryl” (* The people watching this) never stops sounding awkward. Perhaps, it suggests a larger picture of casual audiences being unwilling to watch something with subtitles for more than a few minutes?

Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon, Clémence Poésy as Isabelle, Laïka Blanc-Francard as Sylvie – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

There must be some behind-the-seasons focus group research for the show’s implementation of this. Like viewers turning to check social media instead on their phones.

Clémence Poésy as Isabelle – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

– Probably the most memorable part of Episode 2 is hidden away towards the end. A pregnant woman dying mid-birth turning into a walker/zombie, with her child still being human. This is ‘water cooler talk around the office’ kind of stuff and many casuals will never see it.

Instead of “Did you see that scene on The Walking Dead last night?”, it’s more likely… “Yeah, I turned it off, the episode was moving too slowly.”

The Cons:

– It’s sad that the show is already forcing the ‘Daryl needs to locate a radio to reunite with his old TWD buddies’ as the central drive of his character. Or even trying to make Laurent (Judith and Lydia part 597) feel special.

Makes the spinoff feel almost like The Walking Dead Season 12 instead of a fully fresh go at it. Laurent reminds me of Chris Manawa on Fear the Walking Dead.

– The spinoff is treading the line on Daryl Dixon being portrayed as weak. Again, Daryl needed to be rescued, this time from the grimy clutches of walkers. Not only was it predictable after Daryl said he didn’t need help and he’d be better off alone…

But it seemed intentionally set up to portray Daryl as a male stereotype who ‘stupidly’ dives into action recklessly, only for his ‘betters’ to save him from himself.

– Speaking of stereotypes… The character from Texas with the heavy Southern accent who calls Daryl his ‘brother’ seemed to be some kind of veiled messaging. Especially since Daryl rejects his friendship immediatley and tells him ‘he’s not his brother just because he’s an American’.

No surprise the Texan was brutally attacked by walkers shortly after. Reminded me of the TWD episode where Negan can’t stand his own fanbase. Obviously placed social commentary like that tends to break the fourth wall and take you out of a show.

– Newly introduced characters just aren’t that strong as of yet.

Isabelle had maybe the highest production value introduction scene in ages on TWD… But the viewer was in awe of the Resident Evil-like zombie havoc, not necessarily her individually. If it had been Fear’s Madison Clark in place of her, the scene wouldn’t have played out much different.

But at least Isabelle has potential. Everyone else except the lead villain Codron seem to blend into the background right now. And the lead villain is mostly noticeable for his physicality and upper hand during hand-to-hand combat with Daryl ala Beta fight.

Good screen presence but there’s no silver tongued ‘The Governor‘, ‘Negan’, or ‘Simon’ level charisma yet. People remember Paula years later and she was basically in 2 Walking Dead episodes. Just look at Robert Patrick’s 1 episode top notch work.

The Pros:

Clémence Poésy as Isabelle – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

– Every Daryl Dixon review should be in universal agreement about one thing… It’s a beautiful looking show. The cinematography is top tier, stunning environmental aesthetics, and all-around great costume designs.

Clémence Poésy as Isabelle – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

That scene where Isabelle runs in a brightly lit clean corridor is impressive looking. Similarly, the cinematography (seen below) for the introduction of Isabelle’s neighbor Aimee.

Naia Pichler as Aimee – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

– If you’re a Resident Evil fan, you need to watch this episode for the opening subway chaos. The claustrophobia of people trying to escape subway train cars from zombies is what the horror genre is made of.

Would have watched a whole episode, even a season on the walker subway invasion alone. Imagine a full season of Daryl moving train car to train car like a homage to Resident Evil 0.

Unlike when we saw Maggie on a train car seasons back, the riders are actually vulnerable here. Which makes the scene strong.

– Norman Reedus is just a fascinating actor to watch on-screen, pretty much in any situation. Great acting instincts. To be truthful, his capabilities and range shield the obvious lagging plot and so-so dialogue. Without Daryl Dixon at the forefront, there’s doubts on the remaining audience left for this plot line.

– Daryl never abandoned his instincts to ‘shoot first’ back at Sanctuary and has adopted quite a few gray-area habits. Like lying to get what he wants (a horse this episode).

Now if he’ll just stop apologizing for his newly found tendencies, we’d see complete character development.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Episode 2 Review Score: 7.6

The high production values of Isabelle discovering a zombie infested France set the bar high. But the cheesy orphanage was a bit much and brought down the overall episode. Only saved by the zombified pregnancy scene answering a fictional ‘scientific’ hypothesis.

Why does almost every TWD community always have to be fully goody-goody or evil? Can’t there ever be shades of gray? And this doesn’t mean the town’s people rebelling against the evil monarch like Pamela Milton.

Just let Daryl Dixon go off and survive on his own, I’d still watch without all the strings attached.

(Isabelle) Clémence Poésy, (Laurent) Louis Puech Scigliuzzi , (Sylvie) Laïka Blanc-Francard – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

More Walking Dead Reviews and Recaps

Naia Pichler as Aimee – The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon _ Season 1, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

– We hope you’ve enjoyed this Daryl Dixon Episode 2 recap and review! Be sure to read Episode 1’s non-spoiler review!

Looking for more articles like this TWD: Daryl Dixon Episode 2 recap? We’ll have more Daryl Dixon recaps and reviews for you in The Walking Dead section in the coming weeks! As well as general coverage of the Daryl Dixon spinoff and its French based zombie apocalypse.

You can also read our review of other Walking Dead spinoffs like Dead City meanwhile! We’ll have release dates for Rick Grimes’ spinoff soon.