The Walking Dead - Recap: The Last Man Standing
Recap video and review of The Walking Dead - Season 4 Episode 12 - Still:
Methodical storytelling has its risks. It's hard for a plot-oriented series to do a character-oriented episode. The Walking Dead gives it the old college try with "Still," and I imagine this is going to be a divisive episode among the fanbase. For some, it'll be the episode in which nothing really happens; for others, it'll be the episode in which Daryl (Norman Reedus) proves to be more than just a stoic badass, and Beth (Emily Kinney) actually starts to feel like an individual and not just a warm body for the R.I.P. list in future seasons. But I fall somewhere in the middle. Are these the two characters I would have picked for an episode like this? Probably not, mostly because we haven't spent enough time with Beth to make an episode centered around her attempts to reclaim the more innocent time that's been stolen from her all that resonant. If this episode were to come a bit farther on down the line, after which we've gotten to spend a bit more time getting to properly know Beth beyond just being 1) That Girl Who Tried To Kill Herself In Season 2, 2) That Girl With the Really Pretty Singing Voice, and 3) The Girl Who Used to Babysit Judith, there'd be more reason to care about her compulsive need to have her first drink. For Beth, life is less about what has happened, and all about what never got to; for Daryl, it's almost entirely about the past, whether that means escaping from it, or from what could have been done better.
Credit: Gene Page/AMC
The story of the episode, such as there is one, involves Beth deciding she wants to have her first drink. Frustrated by Daryl's overly cautious nature, and demoralized by the fact that she never gets to actually do anything (I have no problem with the show getting meta), she wants to head into town. And it's hard to really blame her, since her life has become a routine of close calls. The episode opens with a terrific sequence that relies on sound design and extreme close-ups to depict the terror of being locked in a car trunk in order to avoid an oncoming rush of walkers. But while this might be a routine occurrence for Beth, this amount of caution is necessary for survival. Of course, it's not that she doesn't realize this. She knows good and well this is all necessary to make it to the next day. Rather, it's simply that she just doesn't care about surviving anymore, not if it means just surviving for survival's sake. And so Daryl agrees to going on this silly fetch quest for booze, and it doesn't take long for things to start going awry.
The pair makes it to an abandoned country club, and while there are some fittingly tense sequences, such as the ransacking of a room with hanged walkers (presumably members of the community that committed suicide and turned), there are some painfully overwrought moments. For every moment of Daryl kicking ass and going absolutely berserk on some walkers, there's a scene such as Beth pleading with Daryl to help her preserve the dignity of a walker hung up in the clothing store like a mannequin, with a sign attached to her reading "Rich Bitch." And then there's the on-the-nose business of Beth deciding to pick out a new white blouse (innocence!) only for the blouse to get stained with blood when Daryl kills a walker with a golf club (tainted innocence!). It's a segment that is one brick in the foundation the episode is building: you can't reclaim the past. The innocent life Beth is trying to reclaim doesn't exist, and she's naive if she thinks she can go back to a simpler time. It's hard to pretend everything is hunky-dory when you're having to kill a walker with a broken wine bottle (and can I just say how done I am with the "walkers are inaudible until THEY SUDDENLY POP OUT OF THE CORNER!" bull? It's just an attempt at a jump scare, which is the cheapest form of suspense there is).
Credit: AMC
Ultimately, the two end up at a shack Daryl discovered with Michonne. The place is special since there's an old cellar in back where the former residents used to make moonshine. It's a place that is, as Daryl recounts, painstakingly similar to the house in which he grew up, and in this sense, the environment serves as a window into Daryl's background, as he addresses every aspect of the house with a sort of wistful disdain. It seems apparent that Daryl has residual issues about his upbringing, particularly after he and Beth engage in the world's most awkward game of "Never Have I Ever." Beth makes an inference about Daryl's life pre-apocalypse that offends him deeply (she assumes he's been to prison before, and he resents the implication), prompting Daryl to go nuclear and force Beth outside to practice the crossbow. He manhandles her and forces her to fire several arrows into the body of a walker, exclaiming that they're just having fun.
It's an unsettling moment, as Daryl goes from one of the few consistently level-headed characters in the show, to the crazed, redneck bully he appeared to be back in Season 1. It's a change I didn't really buy, but this is in no way a knock against Norman Reedus, who delivers some of his best work of the series. So good, in fact, that I eventually overcame my qualms about Daryl's abrupt shift in character. Beth accuses Daryl of refusing to grieve or show emotion of any kind, and wants him to admit that the lives they led in the prison mattered, as did everything they lost. Yet this moment of introspection doesn't come until Daryl begins to question whether or not there was something he could have done to stop The Governor before the attack on the prison, so that he could have saved Rick, Maggie, Hershel and the others. Daryl completely breaks down and sobs as Beth holds him from behind, and it's a moment that I imagine would have read as overly corny on the page. Yet Kinney and Reedus do a spectacular job with the material, making it feel like an organic route for their respective character arcs to take.
Credit: AMC
After the dust has settled, Daryl and Beth commiserate over moonshine, and talk about life before the fall. Daryl reveals he wasn't really doing anything, he was simply wandering Georgia with Merle and doing whatever his big brother told him to. Although Daryl might not see it this way, Beth views this apocalyptic world as a place in which Daryl belongs. He's vital here in a way he wasn't in the old world, and she predicts he'll be "the last man standing," outliving her and everyone else they've ever known or will ever meet. Daryl doesn't want to hear this, but she insists. For Daryl, it's as if Beth is implying that he'll never be able to escape his past, since the skills acquired as a result of his upbringing are exactly what will allow him to continue to survive (if not thrive) in this world. He's irrevocably tied to how he was raised, and he's been marked as a certain type of person from a certain type of class. He can't escape this, no matter how much jewelry and money he steals from the country club, or how boisterously he yells at Beth for having had a childhood in which her parents loved her and provided her with things.
In essence, it's up to Daryl to forge a new identity, which could be why he's so mad when Beth assumes he's been to prison. Whether he has been or not is immaterial, what matters is that apparently his attempts at reforming have meant nothing, since people apparently still see him as "some redneck who was probably a criminal at some point." Yet now Beth seems to at least understand why Daryl is the way he is, and in turn, Daryl seems to form an understanding of Beth's naivete after she recounts the story of how she imagined things would be at the prison long before the fall: Glenn and Maggie would have a baby, Hershel would die old and quietly in his bed, and there would be picnics and other happy moments. Life isn't like that in this world, but there's no guarantee it can't be. But the only way to get to that point is to move forward, not dally in the past or the might-have-been. And so Daryl and Beth burn down the shack and give it the literal middle finger, flipping off their past and forging ahead. It's cathartic, if nothing else (although setting a fire in the forest in a world with no fire department doesn't seem like the best idea in the world).
Credit: AMC
"Still" is an episode that I can appreciate, although I didn't love it. That said, I'm finding it really encouraging that the show can branch out and do more character-centric storytelling. No, they don't always do it all that well. But there's a concerted effort in place to make each character feel more and more like an individual, and not merely the part of a larger ensemble of indistinguishable faces. The Walking Dead can only benefit from this, and if we have to sacrifice a week or two of "stuff actually happening," I'll take it. This is the kind of stuff that could pay dividends down the line.