The Walking Dead is at its best when it puts everything into the power of its visuals and keeps the dialogue toned down and reserved. One of the more powerful scenes of the show, for instance, came from the almost silent opening to Season Three, which truly embodied the chameleonic stages of desperation of which this zombie apocalypse must – logically – overwhelm these characters on an almost daily basis.
Afterwards they explore a nearby country club and discover a tangled mass of corpses. Eventually they find temporary accommodation in the form of an old shack close by, where Daryl introduces Beth to moonshine. This middle part of the episode grows a bit stale by testing some of its believability. You’d think that after almost four years of experience in the post-apocalyptic world the two would have learned that being drunk when zombies are nearby is never a bright idea. The two drunkenly vent to one another about their problems, about how things ‘should have been’, about where it all went so wrong, etc…
Together Beth and Daryl decide to burn down the shack – symbolising Daryl’s exorcism of his brutal past. The episode ends abruptly when nearby zombies are drawn to the fire and the two friends, now strengthened by each other’s company, escape into the night.
There is zero progression of the overarching storyline of the season as a whole but we are given a fresh and intimate insight into the dynamic rapport between these particular two survivors. Although Daryl has certainly been in the spotlight for the majority of episodes there is really not much we know about him, so the reveal into his past was quite nicely done with solid performances from both of the leads. Although the character of Beth is bordering on the clichéd and her fatalistic outlook makes her attitudes very inconsistent, she was at least interesting enough to keep us involved.
Despite how self-contained the episode is and how disinterested I was in Beth as a character, the episode was very enjoyable and – actually – one of the more immersive ones this half of the season.