Ok, controversial, so feel free to block me if this upsets you, but I think I am finally able to put into words what my main issue with the Daryl Dixon Spin-off is: it’s written with the ‘Fortnite/TikTok’ generation in mind. 🤷 It’s fast, flashy, full of tropes and clichés. Everything is oversimplified and overexplained, just to make sure the audience gets it.
Say what you want, but this has been a real plague on popular media (movies, tv shows, videogames) for the past few years.
There is an abysmal difference in writing between early TWD seasons and the spin-offs (Daryl Dixon especially feels like it’s drawn the shortest stick here).
‘Words can be meager things. Sometimes they fall short.’
‘It's not that I'm afraid to die. It's that I'm afraid we'll lose ourselves into who we have to become.’
"You step outside, you risk your life. You take a drink of water, you risk your life. ... You don’t have a choice. The only thing you can choose is what you’re risking it for."
"My father didn't bother with comforting lies. He used his fist. He was a loveless, violent drunk and no good to anybody. ... Some men do not earn the love of their sons." (This line gets me in a choke hold everytime).
‘That’s the third time you’ve pointed that thing at my head, you gonna pull the trigger or what?’ - gets shot ‘I was kidding’.
Followed by: ‘Don't be too hard on yourself. We've all wanted to shoot Daryl.’
‘Honey, I can't imagine what you're going through. And I would do anything to stop it. But you have got to stop blaming Rick. It is in your face every time you look at him. When Sophia ran he didn't hesitate, did he? Not for a second. I don't know that any of us would have gone after her the way he did or made the hard decisions that he had to make or that anybody could have done it any differently. Anybody? Y'all look to him and then you blame him when he's not perfect.’ [Lori fuckin’ ATE with that one + not to mention that the characters in the early seasons were so complex; none of this good guy vs. bad guy vs. sad bad guys shit.]
And one of my all time favourites:
‘You’re completely in over your head, aren’t you?’/ ‘Ma’am, aren’t we all?’ - which for me was the essence of the show. It was such a simple exchange that needed no further explanation. It said everything.
What does the spin-off have? Weird stuff like:
‘You know, no one ever called me special when I was a kid. Not in a good way, anyway. So that's something.’
‘The world’s messed up. You either go good or go bad. He went bad.’ / ‘Not you. You went good.’
The early seasons of the show used to be sneaky, used to TRUST the audience, and deal with raw emotions within a very wide range (fear, sadness, anger, humor, hope, etc., etc.). The show wasn’t spoon feeding information, the writing was clever and confident. It didn’t have to show you overly dramatic, dark and gritty flashbacks of a character to make you understand the absolute horror they had gone through. All we needed was a ‘I didn’t know he was - ’/ ‘Yeah you did. He did the same to you. That’s why you left first.’ and everyone’s hearts were shattered on the fucking floor.
The spin-off, just like so many other pieces of media these days, is written by people who think their audience isn’t capable of paying attention for more than 30 seconds. Also, fuck it! Full offense, but because of how some people are consuming information nowadays and their increased reliance on ChatGPT to give them answers, yeah I can see why. The writing is dumbed down to the point where it’s disrespectful. And I say all of this as I am perfectly aware that the main show got really bad halfway through, exactly for the same reasons + it had turned into a character torture fest. The last seasons of that show - awful. Also, while the Daryl Dixon spin-off might have some heartfelt or clever-ish lines here and there, they have almost no emotional weight - they just get diluted into the lukewarm mess that is the show.
I think I’ll end my rant here. I don’t intend to bring up the spin-off again. I’m always trying to just talk about, or reblog positive things about the media I love (or used to love), but sometimes I guess I slip. It sucks that the show utterly sucks for me, but yah know... c’est la vie.
