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Posted in: AMC, Review, TV, Walking Dead | Tagged: amc, amc plus, Daryl Dixon, Episode 4, Review, The Walking Dead, TWD
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Goes The Negan Route (S01E04 Review)
Daryl channeling his inner Negan was just one of the jaw-dropping moments from The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon S01E04: "La Dame de Fer."
With this weekend's episode S01E04: "La Dame de Fer," AMC & AMC+'s Norman Reedus-starring The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has reached its midpoint and is positioning itself for what feels like an epic final first season run. Along with some hard truths about the now-missing Laurent's (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) parentage and a serious smackdown between Daryl (Reedus) & Codron (Romain Levy), we also learned last week that Genet's (Anne Charrier) Pouvoir Du Vivant ("Power of the Living") is engaging in some very deadly experiments involving the walkers. Now, Daryl and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) realize that they're going to have to work with Quinn (Adam Nagaitis) if they're going to find & save Laurent. Complicating the situation? Quinn is Laurent's father. Yup. So with that in mind, we're throwing on the "MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!" sign and throwing down an image spoiler buffer before jumping into what the season's fourth chapter had to offer.
The opening had us believing that Laurent could be the "messiah," checking out some cool underwater walker-killing and vibing for a hot second that Daryl got bit in the process. And that was all in less than five minutes (including the cool opening credits). Without sounding like a broken record, "Daryl Dixon" continues to do an excellent job of walking that fine line between connecting with the greater TWD universe and carving out its own identity. Some of the stand-out moments from this go-around included our hearts breaking over the death of Antoine (Dominique Pinon) and Daryl releasing his pigeons.
And then we had that embrace between Isabelle & Daryl, which said more in those moments than three pages of dialogue could. Lukerya Ilyashenko never once went the cliche route with Anna Valery – instead, presenting a sympathetic character who realizes she's second-best in Quinn's eyes and yet doesn't lose her sense of compassion & humanity – towards Laurent and Isabelle. And let's not forget that exchange between Isabelle and Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard), a very sweet moment with "mother" Isabelle saying goodbye to her "daughter" Sylvie before sending her out into the world. Oh, and watching Eriq Ebouaney's Fallou Boukar throwing some Molotov cocktails at the big bads never got old. But there was one headline-grabbing moment in "La Dame de Fer" that left us jaw-dropped, shocked, and pausing to explain to a colleague that I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And what I was seeing was Daryl channeling more than a little bit of Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan in that torture scene – and Isabelle being very, very okay with what she was seeing.
Look, it's not that we haven't seen Daryl be brutal in the past – but for some reason, this one vibed differently. While he may not have been able to understand what his & Isabelle's prisoner was saying about Isabelle, we could see in his face that he knew it wasn't good. So when Isabelle had apparently exhausted her "good cop" ("good nun"?) routine, we were expecting Daryl to step in to be the "bad cop" ("bad nun?"). What we didn't see coming was the story that Daryl had to share about the piglet – and the way he went about telling it. This wasn't a quiet, brooding Daryl grumbling through his story. This Daryl was louder, clearer, and much more animated in how he told his tale – punctuating the key parts by punctuating the torso of the person he was interrogating.
But the moment that sold us the most – the moment when we could see Negan with "Lucille" saying/doing the same exact thing – was the moment in the story when Daryl gets especially animated when he mentions how no one would mess with the kid who had the pig anymore. Reedus makes all of this work because he has deftly evolved Daryl over more than a decade into a complex character who wears his influences on his sleeve – good and bad – in a way that viewers can relate to. Interestingly enough, it's some of Negan's traits that have kept Daryl alive – while on "Dead City," the argument could be made that Negan is not being enough of his old self and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) is trying too much to be like him – and that's why Negan & Maggie are trapped in their own personal hells heading into their second season. But for Daryl, it could be the very thing that gets him home.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon Season 1 Episode 4 "La Dame de Fer"
9/10
With this weekend's episode S01E04: "La Dame de Fer," AMC & AMC+'s Norman Reedus-starring The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has reached its midpoint and is positioning itself for what feels like an epic final first season run. Along with some hard truths about the now-missing Laurent's (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) parentage and a serious smackdown between Daryl (Reedus) & Codron (Romain Levy), we also learned last week that Genet's (Anne Charrier) Pouvoir Du Vivant ("Power of the Living") is engaging in some very deadly experiments involving the walkers. Now, Daryl and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) realize that they're going to have to work with Quinn (Adam Nagaitis) if they're going to find & save Laurent. Complicating the situation? Quinn is Laurent's father. Yup. So with that in mind, we're throwing on the "MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!" sign before jumping into what the season's fourth chapter had to offer.
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