The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon

I was a bit weary coming into The Walking Dead: Darryl Dixon because of how hit or miss the original and Fear the Walking Dead have been over the last few seasons. Then I saw The Walking Dead: Dead City and got excited again because I really enjoyed that a lot more than I thought I would. The trailers for this didn't give away too much but just enough to get people excited. Like many have said this story is a lot like The Last of Us where a man has to travel with a really important kid across the country and dealing with a bunch of dangerous situations, both alive and dead. Darryl is still the star and biggest reason to watch but the new supporting characters are also interesting enough to tune in. Norman Reedus does such an excellent job as Darryl.

A series on Dixon gives Walking Dead a little more focus without the somewhat dreary dialog that sometimes fills a few episodes. But what is with their take on France? Do Americans really think that old muskets and Napoleonic pistols is all that Europeans have at hand for the Apocalypse? You do know that Glock is an Austrian company, right? Or that everyone is happy to talk English to Americans? I thought the French would have had enough of American tourists with zero language skills to have killed Dixon on the spot....but back to the series: it has a nice flow, some new zombie types and all in all better than expected if somewhat flawed around the edges.

I had no much hope for this due to the previous TWD seasons, but I was surprised! Whoever came up with the settings in France knew what they doing. It works so well for Daryl and gives a new fresh aura to the show. The pace is good, things actually happen. The cast is good enough, especially Isabella, she seems like a real woman not just a one dimensional character.

It does resembles a bit to The Last of Us plot and I was taken aback by that but it still works. I hope they turn this into a different direction in the following seasons. I'm looking forward Season 2.

Overall they invested in Daryl and it paid off.

The high ratings and glowing reviews, promoted to the top of the results, exemplify all that is wrong with current fandoms. The fans of an IP are so slavishly devoted to their parasocial relationship with a show/game/movie/book that any criticism of that property is felt as a personal attack and, as such, generates a vociferous defence.

Daryl Dixon, while being an interesting character, has been abused by the writing staff for years and finally pummelled into what we are given in this show: a bland, one-note character that looks the same, says the same old things and performs the same old actions.

To make the character stand out, he is surrounded by idiots acting in idiotic ways. We are expected to believe that these people have survived decades of a zombie apocalypse and then act in the dumbest ways imaginable.

Every egregiously stupid action performed is unnecessary - dozens of alternatives that hit the same story beats exist for each scenario, but in this show the writers have chosen the laziest, tropiest and most idiotic options that it boggles the mind as to how people watching aren't all suffering from vertigo from the constant eye-rolling.

And yet, the fandom laps it up. People wonder why so much dreck is produced these days, and it is because these fandoms accept existence over quality. We need to hold our entertainment to a higher standard and only then will there once again be a drive to produce quality art instead of just producing... something.

There was real potential for this show, a true chance to try something different and elevate the artform. With so many spinoffs it should have been possible to tell interesting stories in interesting ways, to generate some new styles and flavours to complement the existing offerings.

But instead we are given the same dull grey gruel and it is only delusion that makes some think they are eating a delectable ice cream sundae.

What started as a character created by the show runners turned out to be a character favorite throughout all tv shows i've watched, He's badass and i couldn't have predicted the impact Daryl Dixon would have on all of us. Years later he now has a spin-off and it's so good, The best TWD spin-off so far. The cinematic shots are great, The acting is great and for sure the plot is great. The show is based in France and i can tell this was a great move! The French actors are great and you can just tell the chemistry on set was good, Cause where watchers of the main tv show were used to the bad acting at the end of the show, It now has definitely revived itself. Props to the show writers of the Daryl Dixon spin-off and hopefully we get more of this!