‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon

It was a bit of a disappointment when we heard that the Walking Dead spinoff that was originally going to concentrate on Daryl Dixon and Carol Peletier was going to be just about Norman Reedus’ Daryl, because Melissa McBride couldn’t shoot in Europe for the first season. But for the show’s second season, that issue has been rectified, and Carol is on her way to join her soulmate in zombie-killing in France. Just how long it’ll take for her to actually be reunited with him will be the key to how good the second season of TWD: Daryl Dixon is.

Opening Shot: Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) turns around and sees a group of walkers, and he kills them all.

The Gist: These walkers are tied down to a rig dreamed up by Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), who is training the supposed “messiah” to defend himself. They’re situated right outside The Nest, an old island-based castle that’s safe from the Guerriers.

The survivors meet, and their leader, Losang (Joel de la Fuente), tells them that Marion Genet (Anne Charrier) and her followers have captured three of their people trying to set up a new camp near Paris. While Losang, a man who does not believe in being on the offense, preaches caution, Daryl tells him and the group that Genet will just kill them if she doesn’t get what she wants out of them. For his part, Losang does not like Daryl exposing Laurent to the violence involved in defending himself against the walkers.

Meanwhile, back in the States, Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride), rides up on a group of mechanics asking about Daryl’s whereabouts. After grabbing and wielding one of the men’s crossbows, she gets at least a semblance of an answer: He was last seen on a boat headed to France, one of the few boats they’ve seen on shore in years.

When she grabs one of the cars in the lot, she drives until she hits a walker and crashes into a drive-in sign. As she wanders around looking for a place to get some help, she hears a plane buzzing overhead, a sound she hasn’t heard in many years. She finds the plane parked at a gated compound of a man named Ash (Manish Dayal), who talks about finding this plane after his family died and bringing it to his cabin piece by piece and rebuilding it. He flies around the area of his cabin just to get a different view of the world than the bleak one on the ground.

He also goes into his greenhouse at a particular time of day. When Carol goes in while Ash is flying around, looking for another car for her to use, she sees a shrine to Ash’s late son. Given that she lost her own daughter, Sophia, to the zombies, she can empathize. But she can also use that empathy to her advantage, as she concocts an elaborate lie to convince Ash to fly her to France, which becomes more urgent during a storm when his generator dies, his security fence opens and walkers flood the compound.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? TWD: Daryl Dixon – The Book Of Carol is one of the many spinoffs of The Walking Dead, but it’s always good to see one with an OG character. Now there’s two OG characters, with McBride finally joining the action after sitting out the first season.

Our Take: The second season of Daryl Dixon gives fans a bit of a bifurcated story, with Daryl helping to defend the folks at the Nest while chafing against Losang’s pacifism on one side of the Atlantic, and Carol trying to get to him from the other side. It’s definitely a juggling act that showrunner David Zobel and his writing staff will have to contend with, but it’s worth it to finally have McBride as Carol back in the fold.

Carol was always one of our favorite characters from the original series, because of how she transformed from abused and meek housewife to kick-ass zombie fighter, especially after Sophia died. But she’s always been able to retain the vulnerability that she used to have; it’s part of what’s helped her survive this long. That was on display in the first episode, where she crafted such a convincing lie about Sophia being in France that she was able to convince Ash to give up his safe haven in Maine to take the very risky move of flying to France, something tough to do in a single-engine prop plane.

Carol manages to lie to Ash without much in the way of anxiety or any signs or remorse. But, in this environment, that seems to be a desired skill instead of a character flaw. At some point, Ash will likely find out, but for now, it’ll be interesting for her to provide real empathy to him while using it to get what she wants.

In the meantime, it feels like the goings-on at the Nest are going to come down to Daryl vs. Genet. When he helps a group of Nest residents retrieve the people Genet took, a misfiring mine generates a shootout, with Daryl looking down a shotgun barrel at Genet. That scene right there tells us where this part of the story will find its propulsion. Sure, there’s Laurent’s ascension to “chosen one”, and Daryl and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) trying to figure out where — or if — they belong at the Nest, but we’re more interested in seeing the uber-walker-hunter go up against someone as cunning as Genet.

Of course, we also want to see Daryl and Carol reunited. When the writers in the original series figured out that Reedus and McBride had good chemistry, their pairing was one of the best aspects of the original. We imagine the reunion will take some time to unfold, but it’ll be satisfying to see when it happens.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Carol and Ash fly past the storm clouds and see the sun rising. “There’s nothing to be afraid of up here,” Ash tells her.

Sleeper Star: We like Manish Dayal as Ash, especially when he was talking about how he keeps his son’s memory close to him.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Losang tells Daryl that they’re a pacifist movement, he says, “We resist violence.” Daryl replies, “Same here. When I can.” The problem is, there is no situation where he can resist, is there?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon continues to work because it puts one of the franchise’s best characters in an unfamiliar situation. But now that his partner in zombie-killing is on the way to his side, that should make things even better.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.