There are moments when I really wish this show was better than it was, where I wish quite badly that the premise wasn’t so preposterous. When Daryl and Carol finally run into one another again, after all this time, and Daryl runs to her and they embrace, it’s a really nice scene.
You see the surprise and relief and joy wash over Daryl’s face. But none of it is earned. Carol got here too easily. What has it been? Five days since Carol heard Daryl was in France? She managed to find a plane and a pilot, fly over the Atlantic ocean to France, and walk in the exact right direction of her friend. You’d think finding someone on a totally different continent during a zombie apocalypse would be super tough.
“Actually it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience!” Mmhmm.
But perhaps the most frustrating thing about the latest episode, Le Paradis Pour Toi, is the death of Isabelle at the hands of the increasingly unhinged Losang.
At first I thought this was a fake-out. After a big exposition dump, in which Losang sort of tells Isabelle—but really is just telling the audience—about his plans for Laurent, she cuts his face. He responds by grabbing a dagger and stabbing her in the stomach, which feels like overkill even for a bad guy. Carol finds her and then finds Daryl and brings him to her just in time for her to die in his arms.
I’m frustrated by this because I thought Isabelle was a pretty good character and I wanted the show to have the guts—just this once—to give Daryl a shot at a romantic relationship. But I guess there wasn’t room for that once Carol arrived, so Isabelle has to die. I wondered last week how Carol would screw things up for our fledgling lovebirds, but it wasn’t her at all: Just the writers giving us a “shocking death” so that they didn’t have to put in any hard work in developing Daryl and Isabelle any further than a kiss.
I say this as someone who wants more characters to die in meaningful ways. I just remain incredibly frustrated that it’s always newer characters, while so many of the remaining stars have crazy plot armor. How much crazier and more compelling would it have been if Carol died instead? But that can’t happen. Her plot armor is far too thick at this point. It’s practically calcified. They couldn’t even kill off Rick. They had to keep him around for the egregiously bad The Ones Who Live. Maggie should have been killed off when she left the show for the first time, but nope. Plot armor rules the day! She gets her own spin-off.
You get a spin-off! And you get a spin-off! AND YOU GET A SPIN-OFF!
Isabelle’s death was pointless and lazy. She died before her arc was over. She died before they had a chance to really explore what she meant in a world where Carol existed. What a waste.
Then again, I bet Carol stans will be all over social media posting pics of her and Daryl and gush about the feels they experienced this episode. I’m not cynical.
And sure, it’s nice. I like Daryl and Carol—most of the time. I think their relationship has always had room to be a really great friendship, but The Walking Dead has treated it kind of like they’ve treated Carol: endlessly spinning without any kind of arc or growth. Daryl has changed a lot over the years. Carol just see-saws between different versions of herself.
When the two run into a French couple—holed up in a perfect, perfectly safe house with lots of food and and a working record player—all I can think is “Well these people are dead.” It’s remarkable they’re still alive to begin with, but once our heroes show up everyone is basically toast. It’s a foregone conclusion.
The couple had hosted Laurent recently, and they mistake Carol for sister Isabelle—a misunderstanding that neither of our heroes clears up, because randomly lying to people and deceiving them for no good reason is just . . . what they do, I guess?
The old lady talks with Carol about how it’s clear she and Daryl are in love, again mistaking her for Isabelle (never once considering how odd it is that she’s American) while the old man and Daryl look for a working car, though I’m not sure why you’d want a car to track people on foot. The old man takes them to a friend’s to get spare parts, where they find a car that seems to be in much better condition and strip it for parts. Why not just take that car?
At one point, Daryl and Carol talk about Laurent. She says he’ll make friends in Alexandria but Daryl says he has friends in Paris. It’s a bit of an odd conversation. Daryl says it’s important not to let Laurent down.
“You’ll end up like me, is that what you’re afraid of?” Carol asks, referencing her many failed attempts at protecting children over the years. Daryl says that’s not it, but his look says everything.
Carol continues to have flashbacks whenever there’s a barn door, as though she has not encountered a single barn door between her daughter’s death and this season. I understand that trauma can have a weird impact on people, but come on.
She and Daryl seem off to a rocky start. Bickering about the car. Carol tells him that she’s surprised he’s gotten so close to people in France.
Naturally, when the old man asks them to stay for breakfast instead of getting an early start, we know something is up even if Carol and Daryl don’t. I thought they were drugging them but it turns out the old lady wasn’t in on the betrayal. The old man gave them up to Genet—for reasons—but she had nothing to do with it. She hides them in the basement and the pair lie and say their guests left already—after breakfast. Alas, the food is clearly still warm and it’s obvious that they were just here. If Genet were smart, she’d leave these high-yield producers of produce alone but villains gotta villain. And when the old lady calls Genet a Nazi—basically—you can tell bad things are about to happen. Not smart things. Not what you’d do if you really wanted to survive this apocalypse and needed food. More “turn them into super zombie” nonsense.
Daryl and Carol show up just in the nick of time. After Carol is caught, Genet does a bit of monologuing. Just enough for Daryl to show up and interrupt Carol’s execution. Carol shoots a zombie dart into the French woman’s back and she turns rather horrifically.
Meanwhile, downstairs the old woman has died and the old man weeps over her body. What did he expect would happen, bringing the soldiers back like that? And what did we expect, knowing that wherever our heroes go, people die. Their long survival in weirdly peaceful and idyllic hideaways comes crashing down. Ash was safe in that little compound for years before Carol showed up, and it was one day before he lost it all. Carol and Daryl spent one night with these old fools and the next morning they’re digging a grave.
Back at Mont-Saint-Michel, Genet is pronounced dead at the hands of the American and the two forces of Losang and Genet’s lieutenant join forces. At this point, I can’t help but wonder what the point of any of this was. Why replace one big bad with another? They feel almost entirely interchangeable. It honestly would have been more interesting without Genet at all, with our heroes just trying to find the Nest last season and escaping various dangers—zombies, bandits, etc.—and then they come to Losang and think they’re safe. Then we discover that Losang is crazy and is going to have Laurent bitten to prove he’s the Chosen One and we get all the rest of this drama but without the weird conflict with Genet and the two sides just . . . joining up like one big happy family.
Of course, it was Genet who brought Daryl over, but it didn’t need to be. It could have just as easily been Losang, but Daryl didn’t realize this at the time, since he escaped the ship. Losang has the ability to get a boat to send Daryl back, which we learn at the end of Season 1, so this also would have tied up nicely and with fewer moving pieces and overall clunkiness (though I’d also massively change how Carol made her way to France, if we have to have Carol at all).
Another pretty “meh” episode, especially for the big reunion. Daryl Dixon still feels totally unbelievable. Everything is too convenient. France feels like a fake country lost in time. There are no stakes because we know our heroes will survive and (other than Isabelle) don’t really care about the fates of the rest of the cast. Now that they’ve killed the one really sort-of-likeable new character, I’m not sure there is really any tension remaining (sexually or narratively). It’s the kind of show that constantly leaves me feeling nothing at all—when I’m not lambasting it for the myriad liberties taken with plausibility.
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Scattered Thoughts
- This show is so bad at French-isms. Genet is always drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. All the French people wear clothes that conjure up France in some other, distant era. When they dole out food for the peasants last week it was all baguettes and fresh produce, which apparently they get from these old people. It’s honestly hilarious. The older couple they encounter with their fancy, fine dinner and candles. Oy vey. Everyone speaks English…right.
- Everyone has ethanol. Everyone has power. And look at all this lovely fresh produce! Sacré bleu! Incredibly fruitful gardens tended to by old people in the apocalypse are totally believable.
- I’m still wondering what’s going on with Ash. Is he just chilling with the plane, totally fine with lots of supplies or will he be dead when they find him? Will Carol tell him the truth or make up some new lie. Maybe she’ll forget the name she gave him and tell him that she’s sister Isabelle.
The episode was named after this song, which was playing when Daryl and Carol stormed into the old French couple’s dining room:
