The Walking Dead: Dead City
Season 3 - Episode 1 - ”Costa Da Morte” – Season premiere
The opening bears the following quote:
”I have my dead, and I have let them go.”
--R.M. Rilke*
DARYL / CAROL 1: The pair head into the foliage-covered remains of London, curious about the lack of Walkers…and people. Assuming the area may have been a safe zone, the two continue their journey, hoping to find transportation back to America. Daryl stops, thinking about his life—where he used to be:
DARYL:”You know, I was pretty young when all this started. Never got to do much. Never had much.”
CAROL: “There’s a lot we lost.”
DARYL: “Yeah, growing up it was my brother and I against the world, then the world changed. Now all we do is run and fight. That ain’t no way to live. Do you ever think about that?” (SEE NOTES)
CAROL: “Mm-hm."
While acknowledging their hard lives, they still see home as…home.
CAROL: “I keep thinking about how far away from home we are.”
DARYL: “You said it was hard being there.”
CAROL: “Without you, yeah. But after everything, you know, I’m really ready to get back.”
DARYL: “Yeah…me too.”
The two find piled up tires…and burned corpses at the Westminster Checkpoint entrance, along with a sign bearing the warning:
“OBSERVE CURFEW: 18:00 – 8:00. IN AT NIGHT OR SHOT ON SIGHT.”
Passing through a narrow passageway in a residential area, Daryl notices a “MIND THE GAME” sign defaced, with “game” replaced by “Squid”, leading to a “whatever” from Dixon. Before they realize it, a horde of gray-shaded Walkers—once intertwined with foliage-- rise from their dormant state and move in on Daryl and Carol from every side; nearly overrun, Carol breaks into what was once a posh condominium, and once the entrance is locked, the two climb several stories to a dwelling obviously once owned by someone with great wealth. That someone now hangs by a noose from a chandelier—as a writhing Walker.
DARYL / CAROL 2: The duo searches the place for food, but their noise awakens two Walkers, with the hanging creature being so agitated/attracted to the movement, he tears the noose, falls to floor and immediately goes after Daryl, who kills the creatures while Carol uses a fire extinguisher to blow a hole through her Walker’s mouth. Looking over the balcony, their spirits are dashed as the street they just escaped is filled with dozens of Walkers.
Two days later, Daryl reports that every room in the building is devoid of food, but they will not starve, thanks to Carol’s can of wieners—which she wanted to save for a special occasion. The Walker horde has not moved, so Daryl asks Carol is she’s up to attempting to break out at dawn; she responds with a cynical—
CAROL: ”at least we go down fighting.”
Daryl is taken aback by Carol’s tone of resignation, until he’s distracted by what appears to be someone using a signal mirror in a building several blocks away; Daryl uses a piece of glass to signal back. Although there’s no real communication, Daryl and Carol are at least a bit hopeful. The next morning, the duo is startled by a man lowering himself to their balcony…
DARYL / CAROL 3: The wiry man—introducing himself as Julian Chamberlain—nervously tries to calm the armed duo with a joking charm offensive—and a rabbit to cook. Later, as the trio eat, Julian reveals he did become aware of the Americans, but used the rooftops to reach them, completely avoiding the “squids”—his term for Walkers.
Julian’s impressed the duo survived the tunnel, noting that it was initially sealed off to protect London from the rest of Europe, adding things were once manageable…until they weren’t, with humans turning on each other, breaking off into tribes, people looking to blame their plight on others, etc. At first, no one could get in, then, no one could get out. He once tried to escape by boat with friends, but they were killed, so he was landlocked—unable to sail on his own.
The Mutual Interest Club’s wheels turned with the mention of a boat, and though Daryl was a bit pushy about the subject, Carol eased Julian into the idea of joining them on a boat trip to America…with a little convincing push from swigs of beer.
Julian agrees to sail to America, and after cleverly chiming Big Ben to draw the Walker horde out away from their end of the city, Daryl and Carol meet up with Julian in the lobby, where their newfound friend admits he’s not much of a sailor, having failed getting through Royal Naval College, which worries him, as he fears one wrong decision would get them killed. Julian psyches himself into wanting to forget the trip, until Daryl quickly reminds him that the assholes who succeeded at the Royal Naval College—the “real” sailors—are all “squid” now, but Julian is not, the implication that he’s the winner because he’s survived when they did not. His confidence bolstered by Daryl’s words, Julian leads the Americans to his boat, and in time, the trio sail through the Tower Bridge, and out to sea…
DARYL / CAROL 4: At sea, Julian initially believes they’re lost, yet the map and compass calculations appear to point them toward America, with an estimated arrival of eleven to seventeen days.
That evening, Carol shares her feelings about the vision of Sophia from the tunnel:
CAROL: “You know, back at the tunnel, it felt so real. It was like she was coming to tell me it was okay to…let it go. All of it. Something lifted. I feel this peace. Lighter. I’m kind of excited about what comes next, moving forward. Do I sound nutty?” (SEE NOTES)
DARYL (Chuckling and putting his arm around Carol): “That’ll never change. I’m happy for you. I am.”
CAROL (Knowing Daryl does not share her optimistic view): “It’ll get better, you know.”
The next morning, Julian reminisces about his lost plans—how he used to save his money in the hope of sharing his life with someone, only for the Walker apocalypse to unfold. In time, the boat runs into a violent storm, which rocks the boat enough to send a loose boom cracking into Julian’s head; bloody and near incoherent, Julian is laid in the hold while the Americans attempt to control the boat. Carol—losing all of her earlier optimism—tries to express what sounds like a preemptive farewell:
CAROL: “Hey—whatever happens—”
DARYL: “Stop it!”
CAROL: “—I’m glad I found you.”
DARYL: “Nothing’s gonna happen!”
CAROL: “I’m just saying, if it does, you know?”
DARYL: “Well, it ain’t! We’re going home! You got it?”
Daryl steers the boat against the waves, but he’s losing control….
DARYL / CAROL 5: Sometime in the morning, the boat has been beached; Daryl awakens face down in the sand, cursing what has happened, and sees no sign of Julian. Carol calls out to him, and he races to help her up, but she reveals her vision is blurred to the degree she sees three of everything. While Daryl rummages for first aid supplies in the boat, Carol tries to get her bearings, but her head injury has her at a loss to notice details. Such a detail is the apparent form of Julian standing at the shoreline, staring out at the ocean. Calling to him, Carol’s blurred vision does not allow her to see than the man turning had turned into Walker, until he was almost on her. Carol tries to fight the creature but falls with Walker-Julian close to biting her until Daryl stabs him the head.
Honoring Julian’s short life as a sailor, Daryl sends Julian’s corpse floating out to its final voyage on the water.
DARYL / CAROL 6: That evening, Daryl discusses fixing the boat, but as he covers the feverish Carol with a blanket, he notices a bloody tear in her jacket’s upper right area. Daryl fears the worst, until he sees a shard of metal lodged in her tissue. Knowing what must come next, Daryl gathers a bottle of Scotch, fishing wire, scissors, and a knife, which he sterilizes over the fire. Through agonizing pain Carol endures Daryl’s removal of the shard.
Later, as Daryl rinses out a shirt, he sees something quite bizarre coming over the fog-enshrouded hill: at least a dozen men—all wearing horned helmets, armed with one of their number on horseback—approaching the boat. Daryl wastes no time running back to the campsite to cover himself and a still feverish Carol in a tarp, gripping his crossbow as he watches the strange men ransack the boat. The man on the horse nearly spots the Americans until a whistle sends him riding off with the others.
DARYL / CAROL 7: The next day, Daryl packs up their meager belongings, supports Carol as they enter a wooded area, discovering a park sign for The Nature Reserve of the Costa Del Morte, informing Carol that they’ve landed in Spain.
Walking along, they spot several tree-net traps suspended in the air…filled with Walkers. The sight of traps does not give either any good feelings about their new, temporary home.
That evening, the two find a wood shack, where Daryl begins phase two of Carol’s treatment—that being a makeshift suture of her wound while trying to keep her awake through the procedure with a serious inquiry:
DARYL: ”You know, you were telling me on the boat about what you saw at the tunnel.”
CAROL: “Mm-hmm. Yeah. You lied. You always lie.”
DARYL: “I never lie to you. Ever.”
CAROL (Pointing at her head and heart): “Oh you hide some stuff. You hide what’s up here. You hide what’s in here.”
DARYL (Staring at her): “Alright, You got me. I hide stuff. Something happened to me there, too. I was ready to give up. I thought it was all over. Then she was there.”
CAROL: “Isabelle?”
DARYL: “Yeah. I found in me a fight I didn’t know I had.”
CAROL (Teary-eyed): “Me and you both.”
DARYL: “Let’s keep doing that. Let’s keep never giving up.”
CAROL (Joking): “We got hot dogs to eat.”
DARYL: “Yeah, we do.”
The two end the evening playing a game of “I Spy”, and by morning, Daryl—out in the woods-- catches a rabbit, but ducks into hiding at the sight of a passing jeep loaded with men.
Fearing for Carol’s safety, Daryl races back to the campsite—finding no sign of her….
NOTES:
In the opening scene, we are greeted with the first verse from Rainer Maria Rilke’s unforgettable “Requiem For a Friend” (1909), written in tribute to his friend, the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, who unexpectedly passed away 18 days after giving birth to her only child. This episode uses the first verse under the assumption that viewers will think it’s a reference to Carol (not so much Daryl) letting go of their cherished dead—Sophia and Isabelle, respectively. While that’s the most likely point of the Rilke quote, part of the poem speaks of the dead’s remote, unattainable freedom or knowledge, which he (Rilke) asks Paula Modersohn-Becker (after she’s passed on) to help him with more than once--interpreted as asking for strength and/or peace from the dead, yet they do not need to come back to the corporeal realm. Daryl and Carol’s last interactions with the ghosts (or the tunnel gases bringing out their most painful losses from the subconscious), with both giving them the strength to go on certainly calls back to part of Rilke’s messages.
As one would expect, Daryl Dixon’s third season would pick up its focus as the previous season ended—on the bond between Daryl and Carol, with the latter finally telling her friend that she has closure regarding her daughter. Although viewers should take that as a milestone in Carol’s character development, one can only wonder if her closure is all so strong or true, as she’s suffered no less than three additional deaths of children she had been close to (the Samuels sisters & Henry), each tearing her apart (at least as presented in the series) as much as Sophia.
Apparently, Daryl is not too fond of emotional declarations made in the shadow of the possibility of separation, as seen during the storm when Carol tried to express her feelings for him. There is some TV-born precedent for his behavior, as he’s never had the opportunity to express similar feelings before losing those closest to him, such as Merle, Beth, Hershel, Carl or Rick. A defensive mechanism to be sure and justifies his resistance.
I’m pretty sure Carol’s shoulder wound alarmed some viewers into believing she had been bitten, and were quite relieved it was “only” a metal shard from the shipwreck. When dealing with fantasy series not set in environments where magical medical technology can treat and/or cure just about anything (e.g., Star Trek), viewers are often required to just accept how injuries, infections and other serious trauma are simply weathered in the WD universe; between the S2 finale and S3 premiere alone, Daryl was stabbed in the shoulder by Codron’s unsanitary knife, while Carol ‘s shoulder had a metal shard embedded in it. Although Carol develops an infection, it does require a bit of squinting to accept how either did not succumb to internal bleeding (Daryl) or a lethal infection (Carol) with nothing more than bottles of Scotch, field-sterilized knives and fishing wire…
We are introduced—briefly—to two sets of potential antagonists: the men in the jeep, and the horn-helmeted men using horses. Both groups seem untrustworthy (for a number of reasons usually found in post-apocalyptic fiction)
This episode's visual FX ranged from impressive to obvious digital elements to a degree more obvious than some 60 year old matte paintings from lesser talents.
GRADE: A for the continued strong, realistic character development of the series main characters, something (as I’ve posted before) most fantasy TV or movie productions are never able to attempt in any mature manner.
