Episode Recap: Season 4, Episode 11 "Still"
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Cindyinpg
Posts: 3,902 Member
If Daryl Dixon fans aren’t satisfied right now, they never will be.
“Still,” tonight’s offering from “The Walking Dead,” was all about the many sides of Daryl Dixon: Stoic Daryl, Feral Daryl, Angry Daryl, Protective Daryl, Crying Daryl, and even Drunk Daryl. We learned finally the answer to the question of what he did before “the turn.” And we learned that even after zombies have consumed the majority of humanity, you can still shed your dark past and become a new person.
This episode stands with a few other episodes of the show (“Clear” from season three comes to mind) that are self-contained: the story concerns only Daryl and Beth; there are no signs of any other characters, or any other story lines. It’s a character study in coping not only through a societal catastrophe, but personal catastrophe as well, a completely self-contained 60-minute universe.
It’s also, from its claustrophobic opening sequence to its fiery conclusion, one of the best episodes this season, maybe of the entire show.
It’s nerve-wracking from the start: Daryl and Beth are on the run, still, barely a step ahead of a herd of walkers. It’s night. They find a road. They take refuge in the trunk of a busted-up Lincoln Town Car, hiding until morning like cornered mice as the herd rambles noisily by, shaking the car and fraying nerves.
The next day they make camp in the woods, each wordlessly doing their part. In fact, it’s notable that for the first seven some-odd minutes of tonight’s episode (sans commercials), there is hardly any dialogue between this unlikely pair: the pixie-like, seemingly fragile farmer’s daughter, and the tough-as-nails hillbilly for whom a zombie apocalypse appears to be just another day.
Daryl offers Beth almost no direction, no compassion, no noble speech the way Rick would. He merely offers almost assured survival. Even if she had a choice, Beth dutifully follows along.
“I need a drink,” she says, finally, while they’re eating a snake. “A real drink.” She’s never had alcohol, and seeing as Hershel’s not around anymore, and everything seems to have fallen apart forever, she wants to at least do that, to at least do something that isn’t constantly running. We’ve never really seen Rebellious Teenager Beth before, but that’s what she is right now, chafing against her new father figure’s ways.
“I can take care of myself and I’m gonna get a damn drink,” she says, and off she goes. It’s a terrible idea, of course, which Daryl knows. But the fact of the matter is, he can’t stop her. All he can do is protect her, if he wants to.
He does. Daryl isn’t the rowdy redneck we first met when this show started, and while the events since the zombie apocalypse have allowed him to, pardon the terrible cliché, spread his wings, he also was never really the person you may have thought he was. He was ready to take a bullet for his brother, we learn tonight, over a meaningless fight. When you’re loyal, you’re loyal, and that’s all there is to it. The person Daryl is now was always there. It just took a worldwide catastrophe to draw it out of him.
So of course he risks his life to protect Beth while she goes on her reckless quest.
They come across a golf club, and the trip through the club is quite a set piece. It appears the clubhouse had been serving as a refuge at one point. There are dozens of dead and undead corpses. It’s hard to say what happened to them all. Three hang on nooses from a ceiling, snarling and grasping. Myriad bodies lay rotted away in various rooms. A women’s torso was attached to a mannequin’s legs; perhaps some bad actors came through and slaughtered these survivors.
In any case, there’s a lovely irony in watching dirt-poor Daryl work his way through this former center of wealth and privilege. He fills a bag with money and jewelry. He slings his crossbow over his back and picks up a golf club, which he uses on walkers. He throws darts at pictures of the club’s leaders. When Beth grabs a new shirt in the club store, for the first time in forever wearing something clean, there’s isn’t a doubt that Daryl is not about to trade in his rags and leather vest for a polo shirt. He bangs and bangs and bangs on a walker, who was clearly once an older man, with a golf club before using his head as a ball and splattering guts all over Beth’s new shirt.
He’s angry, you see. They both are. Beth shows it by throwing a tantrum about having a drink. Daryl takes it out on walkers. Up until this point, in fact, there’s been little in the way of dialogue. They are both just trying to live through the next minute, hour, day. Beth still has hope, we know because she hasn’t chucked her journal yet (it’s in one of her back pockets, with a revolver in the other). But they haven’t had a chance yet to even begin to comprehend the pain from the disaster at the prison. That’ll come.
Darly takes her to a run-down house he and Michonne had once found. In a shed, there’s a moonshine still. That will be Beth’s first drink. She convinces him to play, reluctantly, a game of “I Never.” This whole sequence is beautifully done, the two of them in this wreck of a house playing a teenagers’ game and trying to pretend the whole world hasn’t gone to Hades.
“I never went to jail,” she says at one point, and you can see Daryl just freeze.
“That what you think of me?” he says flatly, and he does what any angry man who’s been drinking moonshine would do: he gets up and urinates in the room, screaming and insulting Beth so loudly, and viciously, he rouses a walker outside.
Outside he continues to lash Beth verbally while pinning the walker to a tree with bolts from the crossbow. He’s furious. He was a leader of the group, he was somebody people looked up to, somebody whose hand they wanted to shake. He feel responsible for letting the Governor attack them again, for getting his comrades killed (or so he thinks). It’s eating him up inside.
This isn’t really the “old” Daryl anymore, a fact that’s brought home, pun sort of intended, when he mentions he grew up in a house like this one. He tells Beth about his life before the turn, following Merle around, doing nothing productive, getting high before noon. It’s almost ironic: it took the complete collapse of society to turn, again, pun intended, that guy into this guy.
Beth suggests a way to put that earlier Daryl to rest, forever, if at least metaphorically: burning the house down, which is pretty easy given how much moonshine they have on hand. As they stand there watching it burn, Beth flips the bird, and makes Daryl do the same.
They might as well be flipping the bird to absolutely everything that’s happened to them, ever. It’s defiant, it’s angry, it’s feral, it’s even hopeful. They are, after all, still alive. They are surviving.
From: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/03/02/the-walking-dead-recap-season-4-episode-12-still/
“Still,” tonight’s offering from “The Walking Dead,” was all about the many sides of Daryl Dixon: Stoic Daryl, Feral Daryl, Angry Daryl, Protective Daryl, Crying Daryl, and even Drunk Daryl. We learned finally the answer to the question of what he did before “the turn.” And we learned that even after zombies have consumed the majority of humanity, you can still shed your dark past and become a new person.
This episode stands with a few other episodes of the show (“Clear” from season three comes to mind) that are self-contained: the story concerns only Daryl and Beth; there are no signs of any other characters, or any other story lines. It’s a character study in coping not only through a societal catastrophe, but personal catastrophe as well, a completely self-contained 60-minute universe.
It’s also, from its claustrophobic opening sequence to its fiery conclusion, one of the best episodes this season, maybe of the entire show.
It’s nerve-wracking from the start: Daryl and Beth are on the run, still, barely a step ahead of a herd of walkers. It’s night. They find a road. They take refuge in the trunk of a busted-up Lincoln Town Car, hiding until morning like cornered mice as the herd rambles noisily by, shaking the car and fraying nerves.
The next day they make camp in the woods, each wordlessly doing their part. In fact, it’s notable that for the first seven some-odd minutes of tonight’s episode (sans commercials), there is hardly any dialogue between this unlikely pair: the pixie-like, seemingly fragile farmer’s daughter, and the tough-as-nails hillbilly for whom a zombie apocalypse appears to be just another day.
Daryl offers Beth almost no direction, no compassion, no noble speech the way Rick would. He merely offers almost assured survival. Even if she had a choice, Beth dutifully follows along.
“I need a drink,” she says, finally, while they’re eating a snake. “A real drink.” She’s never had alcohol, and seeing as Hershel’s not around anymore, and everything seems to have fallen apart forever, she wants to at least do that, to at least do something that isn’t constantly running. We’ve never really seen Rebellious Teenager Beth before, but that’s what she is right now, chafing against her new father figure’s ways.
“I can take care of myself and I’m gonna get a damn drink,” she says, and off she goes. It’s a terrible idea, of course, which Daryl knows. But the fact of the matter is, he can’t stop her. All he can do is protect her, if he wants to.
He does. Daryl isn’t the rowdy redneck we first met when this show started, and while the events since the zombie apocalypse have allowed him to, pardon the terrible cliché, spread his wings, he also was never really the person you may have thought he was. He was ready to take a bullet for his brother, we learn tonight, over a meaningless fight. When you’re loyal, you’re loyal, and that’s all there is to it. The person Daryl is now was always there. It just took a worldwide catastrophe to draw it out of him.
So of course he risks his life to protect Beth while she goes on her reckless quest.
They come across a golf club, and the trip through the club is quite a set piece. It appears the clubhouse had been serving as a refuge at one point. There are dozens of dead and undead corpses. It’s hard to say what happened to them all. Three hang on nooses from a ceiling, snarling and grasping. Myriad bodies lay rotted away in various rooms. A women’s torso was attached to a mannequin’s legs; perhaps some bad actors came through and slaughtered these survivors.
In any case, there’s a lovely irony in watching dirt-poor Daryl work his way through this former center of wealth and privilege. He fills a bag with money and jewelry. He slings his crossbow over his back and picks up a golf club, which he uses on walkers. He throws darts at pictures of the club’s leaders. When Beth grabs a new shirt in the club store, for the first time in forever wearing something clean, there’s isn’t a doubt that Daryl is not about to trade in his rags and leather vest for a polo shirt. He bangs and bangs and bangs on a walker, who was clearly once an older man, with a golf club before using his head as a ball and splattering guts all over Beth’s new shirt.
He’s angry, you see. They both are. Beth shows it by throwing a tantrum about having a drink. Daryl takes it out on walkers. Up until this point, in fact, there’s been little in the way of dialogue. They are both just trying to live through the next minute, hour, day. Beth still has hope, we know because she hasn’t chucked her journal yet (it’s in one of her back pockets, with a revolver in the other). But they haven’t had a chance yet to even begin to comprehend the pain from the disaster at the prison. That’ll come.
Darly takes her to a run-down house he and Michonne had once found. In a shed, there’s a moonshine still. That will be Beth’s first drink. She convinces him to play, reluctantly, a game of “I Never.” This whole sequence is beautifully done, the two of them in this wreck of a house playing a teenagers’ game and trying to pretend the whole world hasn’t gone to Hades.
“I never went to jail,” she says at one point, and you can see Daryl just freeze.
“That what you think of me?” he says flatly, and he does what any angry man who’s been drinking moonshine would do: he gets up and urinates in the room, screaming and insulting Beth so loudly, and viciously, he rouses a walker outside.
Outside he continues to lash Beth verbally while pinning the walker to a tree with bolts from the crossbow. He’s furious. He was a leader of the group, he was somebody people looked up to, somebody whose hand they wanted to shake. He feel responsible for letting the Governor attack them again, for getting his comrades killed (or so he thinks). It’s eating him up inside.
This isn’t really the “old” Daryl anymore, a fact that’s brought home, pun sort of intended, when he mentions he grew up in a house like this one. He tells Beth about his life before the turn, following Merle around, doing nothing productive, getting high before noon. It’s almost ironic: it took the complete collapse of society to turn, again, pun intended, that guy into this guy.
Beth suggests a way to put that earlier Daryl to rest, forever, if at least metaphorically: burning the house down, which is pretty easy given how much moonshine they have on hand. As they stand there watching it burn, Beth flips the bird, and makes Daryl do the same.
They might as well be flipping the bird to absolutely everything that’s happened to them, ever. It’s defiant, it’s angry, it’s feral, it’s even hopeful. They are, after all, still alive. They are surviving.
From: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/03/02/the-walking-dead-recap-season-4-episode-12-still/
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Character Points For Week 5
Team Rick:0
Team Daryl: 6
Team Michonne: 0
Team Carol: 0
Team Carl: 0
Team Glenn and Maggie: 0
Team Tyreese and Sasha: 0
Team Walker Horde: 0
Team Mika and Lizzie: 0
Team Beth: 20