AMC’s The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
1×02: “Alouette”
Directed by Daniel Percival
Written by David Zabel & Jason Richman

* For a recap & review of the premiere, click here.
* For a recap & review of 1×03, click here.
A flashback of Isabelle in better times, before the world collapsed in a mess of blood and violence and zombies. She was in a club having while New Order blasted through the speakers. She was having drinks at the bar and snorting a few lines in between. A far cry from where we see her in the contemporary world of this series, as a nun trying to help usher in the age of a new Messiah. She wasn’t only drinking and doing drugs, she was busy stealing anything and everything she could get her hands on.
Eventually she left but the lifestyle was clearly wearing her out. She went from the club to a bridge where she stood beneath the near glow of the Eiffel Tower. She noticed a commotion nearby, as people were fighting and someone got hit by a car. At the subway station, she witnessed all sorts of madness on a train entering the station, and strange, shambling people already in the station. Chaos was erupting everywhere throughout the city. Isabelle saw an overturned car and watched the victim thrown from the crash reanimate to deathly life. There were people chewing into each other becoming zombies. A man named Quinn (Adam Nagaitis) soon came to find Isabelle and whisked her away in his car. He told her Paris was all but gone. They went back to Isabelle’s, where she went inside to grab whatever she could and alert her sister Lily (Faustine Koziel) of the growing chaos across the city.

On the new journey, Daryl’s not much for talking while Laurent thinks about what’s the best way to die. Their mode of transportation is a mule and that doesn’t exactly fare well for them when they’re stopped on a road and the animal’s noises draw walkers out. Daryl unhooks the mule, fires a gun, and the animal goes running to draw all the dead away from their group. This allows the crew to get walking. Daryl doesn’t like how Isabelle is afraid to tell Laurent the truth about things, though she sees it as a normal relationship like parents have with their children. “The truth can wait,” she says. Along the way, someone starts firing arrows at Daryl and the group, so he runs off looking for the culprit only to be surprised by a bunch of people carrying spears.
Daryl’s tied up and his friends are taken hostage along with him. They’re led to a walled community that used to be a preschool once upon a time. The people bringing Daryl back start calling out like wolves, howling up at the walls, and then others come out from inside. A woman asks if Daryl is a nun, then calls him “Father Daryl.” She says they’ll speak English to accommodate their American visitor. She explains to Isabelle and the others that they’ve taken in orphans at the old preschool. They’ve been continuing to teach the kids while working hard to survive. The place has been run by Madame Dubois, however, the old woman’s been sick the past six months. The young folks have had to take up the slack now that she’s ill. Laurent enjoys being there because there are other children, yet it isn’t an easy adjustment for everybody. At least Daryl and his friends aren’t being attacked by this community. So they all sit and break bread together. Father Daryl even gets to say his version of grace for the supper table. He uses this time to reflect on how “we probably do deserve” the world being turned into chaos, but that moments like this one, where people are together sharing food and caring for one another, are worth all the struggle in this new post-zombie apocalypse wasteland.
Daryl’s looking for another mule or a horse to replace their lost animal pal. He hears about a man who’s ruled over the area and took everything from people. The guy lives in a castle and has horses. He raided all the drugstores and all the other stores, so he basically has a stockpile of necessities. Daryl thinks it’d be a good idea to go there, yet one of the young women, Lou (Kim Higelin), says it’s too dangerous. But she starts to rethink that when one of the other young people seems to react poorly to her lack of action. Lou says she’ll go with Daryl tomorrow. A while later, Daryl, Isabelle, Sylvie, and Laurent join the kids to watch some television from America: Mork & Mindy. Initially it’s a nice surprise for Daryl, but he soon starts to drift off into reminiscence and all his old, painful memories. That night, he shares a bed with Isabelle and they talk. She and Daryl talk more about the truth, and when it’s a necessary thing. He’s only focused on getting back home. Isabelle asks about Mork & Mindy, and Daryl says him and his brother used to watch it as children because it made things “just a little better.”

More of the flashback to Isabelle’s past before the zombies. She and Quinn were escaping the city along with Lily, who was pregnant. Lily wasn’t doing so well. She was in a lot of pain. Isabelle didn’t even know her sister was pregnant, either. Lily kept it a secret from her. Quinn said they couldn’t take Lily along with them in her condition. They were headed someplace secluded without doctors. Isabelle wasn’t going to leave her sister behind, and certainly not with Lily pregnant. Quinn was fine with it. So, Isabelle stole Quinn’s keys and ensured that her sister wouldn’t be left.
While Lou and Daryl get to know each other better, Laurent has difficulty fitting in with the rest of the children. The boy tries to ingratiate himself to the orphans but it’s not working the greatest. Sylvie and Isabelle are inside talking about the boy. Sylvie worries about Laurent not being able to fit in with the world and find his place, but Isabelle assures her friend that when they get to where they need to go, the boy will be fine. Poor Laurent goes off on his own and stumbles onto the mule torn apart by walkers. He apologises to the animal for not being there. More of the flashback shows Isabelle and Lily on the road when they came upon an ambulance in the road. They were swarmed by zombies and rushed back to the vehicle. They had to keep going because there was only death on the roads. After some time, Isabelle and Lily came to the abbey, where the nuns welcomed them inside. It was revealed that Lily was seven months along. She was in pain and Isabelle comforted her by reminding her of their mother singing “Alouette” to them.

Eventually the castle appears on the horizon, as Daryl and Lou head up to the walls. There’s a moat surrounding the castle and it’s filled with the undead. Daryl locks Lou in a room after they find some material to use. He doesn’t want her in any danger while he tries to get into the castle, and he works better as a one-man team. He’s able to scale up the drawbridge and get into the castle’s courtyard. He finds a supply room with everything from medication to toilet paper and anything else in between. He soon hears a voice from somebody in a room beneath the supply room. He finds a young man called Herisson (Milo Mazé), the French word for “hedgehog” (but not the animal kind), and then there are people firing off guns. He and Hedgehog get moving. He subdues a man shooting a rifle out of a window upstairs. It’s a “fellow American” named Gaines (Ned Dennehy). The man is kind of happy to see Daryl, but Daryl isn’t happy about Gaines stealing all that stuff from needy people. Hedgehog and Daryl take Gaines outside at gunpoint. They decide to take Gaines back to Lou and the others. Gaines is under the illusion that America is okay, that France—the origin of the zombie virus—was the only place affected, and Daryl makes him aware of reality.
When Daryl leaves the castle he has trouble with his cart due to the wheel. He lowers his guard for a minute and it gives Gaines a chance to go for the rifle. Daryl and the man fight a moment, then they fall into the moat full of walkers. Gaines is pretty much fucked, so Daryl has to try staying alive amongst a horde of hungry undead. Daryl grabs a mace and starts swinging. He notices a couple pressurised tanks nearby, so he takes a shot at them with his rifle and blows a bunch of the zombies apart. Hard on the ole brain, yet Daryl survives. He’s aided from above by Lou and Hedgehog, who drop down a rope so he can scale the moat’s wall back up top.

Back at the preschool, Madame Dubois has succumbed to her illness. Daryl tells Lou that meds wouldn’t have worked, no matter how fast they were; he admits he lied “to get a horse.” But Lou doesn’t hold it against Father Daryl, and she goes about taking care of things. Afterwards, everyone gathers to pay their respects to their teacher. There’s a shrine made for Madame Dubois. Even Laurent is of comfort to little Hibou, as he says his teacher is “also with the angels.” And so, the orphans are once more orphaned with the loss of their matriarch. Now, Daryl, Isabelle, Sylvie, and Laurent prepare to leave again. Except the boy doesn’t want to leave all the other children. He wants to be a normal boy with friends, but Isabell and Sylvie insist they’re headed to the next stop on the road towards their destination. The orphans wave goodbye to Laurent as he goes.

At the abbey, Stéphane continues to survey the carnage left in the wake of Daryl and their fight. He listens to the tape recorder left by Daryl, and he goes through books in the abbey, noting the route on the map leading to Paris. He knows exactly where the small group of survivors are headed. Out on the road, Laurent refuses to get in the cart with the others. He doesn’t want to be treated like a baby. Daryl says he was never called “special” as a boy, though Laurent says he doesn’t want to be special. The mention of a baby sends Isabelle into another flashback to when Lily was giving birth at the abbey. Sadly, Lily died during labour and came back as a zombie. They were able to get the baby out of Lily, but it was a horrifying moment for Isabelle, watching death and life arrive at once. And thus was Laurent’s introduction to the world. Does this mean that Laurent is immune to the zombie virus, being born from a zombie womb? Is that the source of his specialness?