S01.E04: La Dame de Fer

[nodorothyparker]

Airdate 10.01.23

Quote

Daryl and Isabelle must negotiate with Quinn, the proprietor of the underground Demimonde club -- the last vestige of art and expression in Paris.

 

[BasilSeal]

"The Iron Lady"

Guest appearance by a zombie Margaret Thatcher perhaps?

[OoohMaggie]

The usual Ep4 not appearing on the AMC+ page, yet was cured quickly with repeated page refreshing as per last week.

It was nice to see Bautista in a change of roles 🤔

For me it was the least liked episode so far, everything just seemed so blatantly obvious as to what was going to happen, a reminder of the worst times of TWD. Will the Villain strangle the baby? 🙄 Will the enduring barricade around the tower collapse as soon as the brat breathes on it? 🙄 Pigeon guy 🙄

Stabby guy seemed to have remarkable powers of endurance, barely a whimper was heard when he dropped down into that drain 👏

lets hope "The Nest" offers something interesting, we've got Carol coming over in the not too distant future, I hope they start exploring the whole boat across the Atlantic story soon. I enjoyed the slow, rustic start to events and I wonder if that's  going to be continued, or if the pace will be picked up somewhat.

Altogether I'm hoping for better next week and I thought we were seeing Daryl back on two wheels this week 🤔

Edited October 1, 2023 by OoohMaggie

[Mr. Sparkle]

8 hours ago, OoohMaggie said:

For me it was the least liked episode so far, everything just seemed so blatantly obvious as to what was going to happen, a reminder of the worst times of TWD.

I agree, this is the first time I looked to see how much time there was left in the episode. The only surprise was that the young nun's boyfriend wasn't killed, he was just injured. 

Not terrible, just sort of moved the plot to the next locale. Plenty of plot armor for our heroes. 

[Straycat80]

Still not clear on why Laurent is so special and why he has to go to this place, the nest. I’m assuming Isabelle went back to the ex as in ‘keep your enemies close’. I don’t understand what the two groups of people are fighting about in Paris. I’m starting to feel lost on this show. 

[OoohMaggie]

11 hours ago, Superclam said:

Not terrible, just sort of moved the plot to the next locale. Plenty of plot armor for our heroes. 

Indeed, the force is strong in these.

As I don't watch the news or read newspapers I'm usually playing catch up, i've only just seen a clip of the floods in NY, it looks positively biblical 😱

I hope you've managed to avoid the worst and you don't have a basement apartment, poor souls.

[Mr. Sparkle]

Thanks. Speaking just for myself, other than wet socks, I did fine. It's back to normal for almost everyone. 

Two other TWD/general horror tropes:

• OMG! The kid is getting killed! No, just a dream. 
• Let me look through this opening. AAHHH!!! Zombie!!! 

[iMonrey]

13 hours ago, Straycat80 said:

I don’t understand what the two groups of people are fighting about in Paris. I’m starting to feel lost on this show. 

I'm afraid the show is falling into the same trap the rest of the franchise has suffered from for about the last five or six years. A group of plucky freedom fighters versus an evil regime that goes around and basically bullies everyone. Saviors, anyone? 

We've seen this same scenario play out over and over again, it just feels so lazy and unoriginal. And it's especially disappointing in this case because the story started out with real promise.

Add to that a tedious cycle of "We have to get Laurent, we have to find Laurent, we got Laurent, oh no, someone else got him, we've got to get Laurent back." 

Yawn.

And when the story gets this lazy it's harder to dismiss the other tropes, like Quinn getting the ever-loving crap beaten out of him by Daryl but then in the very next scene he's got nary a bruise nor a scratch on his face.  Or how on earth that one guy could still be alive after Daryl stabbed him in the stomach over and over again.

[heisenberg]

The star of this week episode:

[Boofish]

14 hours ago, Straycat80 said:

Still not clear on why Laurent is so special and why he has to go to this place, the nest. I’m assuming Isabelle went back to the ex as in ‘keep your enemies close’. I don’t understand what the two groups of people are fighting about in Paris. I’m starting to feel lost on this show. 

Here is my best take

1. They think Le'Carl is special because his mother was bitten/infected yet he survived birth

2. Isabelle went back to to keep Quinn from going after Daryl and Le'Carl

3. Technically there is one bad group. La'Captain Stubbing (I cannot remember her name) was using Daryl as a test subject on the Love Boat. Daryl started a mutiny and got away. Le'Negan who was already in France running one of her Chick Fil A franchises, was told Daryl killed his brother. Now why La'Captain Stubbing couldn't just let Daryl go has not been explained. 

4. The Nest is a growing religious movement and they somehow have convinced themselves that Le'Carl is their "Messiah" and or Savior. Now how they found about his miraculous birth has not been answered as far as I can tell. Daryl agreed to take Le'Carl to the nest in exchange for a ride back to America.

This episode could have been better without all the unnecessary suspense. We already know Daryl and Le'Carl are not about to die. I would definitely rank it last in terms of favorite. I really thought the resistance group was not long for this world with there soda bottle and rags as weapons. I'm glad they lived.

[OoohMaggie]

6 hours ago, Superclam said:

I did fine. It's back to normal for almost everyone. 

Well that's good to hear, although wet socks can be extremely annoying, I still don't understand though, how so many people think that driving their small family saloon into three feet of water could end in anything other than total disaster 😱

6 hours ago, Superclam said:

OMG! The kid is getting killed! No, just a dream. 

That first scene did have me wondering, until Super Walker was trying to

extract Le Brat from beneath that tin sheet!

Edited October 2, 2023 by OoohMaggie

[gutbuster]

Oh, I actually didn't think this was too bad. I thought Daryl seemed more dimensional than usual, and Norman did a good job.

I was ready to be pissed when Laurent parted that sea of walkers like Moses, but seeing that it was a dream wasn't much better. 

I'm concerned that splitting up Isabelle and Daryl is going to put the best part of the show on pause. I really don't need any one-on-one with Daryl and the kid. They did a really good job of showing them growing fond of each other in a realistic way. The moment in the apartment was nice. There's always something so pure, innocent, and a little sad about the way Daryl accepts affection from other people.  But you could almost see how nice it was for him to hold somebody and not really know what to do as far as reciprocating.

Quote

1. They think Le'Carl is special because his mother was bitten/infected yet he survived birth

2. Isabelle went back to to keep Quinn from going after Daryl and Le'Carl

3. Technically there is one bad group. La'Captain Stubbing (I cannot remember her name) was using Daryl as a test subject on the Love Boat. Daryl started a mutiny and got away. Le'Negan who was already in France running one of her Chick Fil A franchises, was told Daryl killed his brother. Now why La'Captain Stubbing couldn't just let Daryl go has not been explained. 

1. I agree, but I wish there was more than that. I don't think it should be that far of a reach that he'd be born okay. The zombie thing only happens after death anyway. Many babies are born when their mothers die in childbirth. ANd for all they know he'll turn too if he dies.

2. I also thought she mentioned something about him having resources or the power to help find them ways to get out of the city safely? Was Quinn's interest in Isabelle solely in getting back Laurent, or did he still want her, too? Is the woman who was baby sitting Laurent with Quinn or does she just want to be? She seems very "look at me, please acknowledge I'm here and you need/want me" with Quinn.

3. Did they set him adrift off the boat or did he make a run for it on the dinghy? I don't recall. I thought it was the former and that's why head lady was irritated. But unless Daryl stole something VERY important, I don't see why the effort and resources to specifically go after him. I mean really. The people in charge are devoting what seems to be primary resources to retrieve him. For what? Even if he destroyed valuable items or set back some research, so what? All of these resources are worth wasting just to punish him? 

I guess now that he's tied to the kid it makes more sense, because they don't want the kid giving people hope or whatever, but I don't care for this part of the plot at all. Are these people like the Saviors? I haven't quite grasped the scope of their power.

I hate to say it but I also enjoyed the return of Henchman Daryl. That interrogation was clearly a callback to the Randall situation, to show us how much Daryl's skills have improved. I loved Isabelle's concern that Daryl was the Pigboy, but he's like "Nah, I made that sh!t up."

This also led to my enjoyment of Daryl's pincushion begging to not be left behind after elbowing Daryl in the face when walkers were closing in on them. It was so contrived that he told Daryl exactly how to get where they were going, eliminating any use Daryl had for him, and then expected to be carried along like dead weight.

Ever since the burny walkers, and the speedy walkers that were hinted at, I've been on the lookout for different walker behaviors. I thought the peek-a-boo walker at the Eiffel Tower seemed like one. Kind of more aware then walkers usually are. I thought he was the same one who looked through the sand bags, and then the way he peeped on Laurent under that metal sheet was so slow and creepy...I don't know how to explain what I mean. Something about he way he was moving seemed less random. But it might not have been the same one and I'm just looking for things to be cooler than they are.

I also wondered how Laurent got into his hiding spot without any of them seeing him. He was pretty well out in the open when they were spilling out of those plot-filled sandbags.

 

[KeithJ]

9 hours ago, iMonrey said:

how on earth that one guy could still be alive after Daryl stabbed him in the stomach over and over again.

Not only that, he managed to get away from Daryl in the tunnels but then he tripped / fell for some reason?

[iMonrey]

1 hour ago, KeithJ said:

Not only that, he managed to get away from Daryl in the tunnels but then he tripped / fell for some reason?

I did get a kick out of Daryl saying "Bon Appetit" and leaving him to be zombie food.

[rmontro]

5 hours ago, gutbuster said:

I was ready to be pissed when Laurent parted that sea of walkers like Moses, but seeing that it was a dream wasn't much better. 

I don't know, if they would have said that Laurent had zombie blood, therefore the zombies wouldn't attack him, I would have been okay with it.

[Boofish]

40 minutes ago, rmontro said:

I don't know, if they would have said that Laurent had zombie blood, therefore the zombies wouldn't attack him, I would have been okay with it.

I'm ok with any explanation honestly. Nothing is new or groundbreaking about the zombie apocalypse. In my opinion, it was around way before TWD but TWD opened the industries eyes to the money making machine that this type of story has become. It doesn't bother me who did it first as long as it's interesting. If you can only tell a story one time and one time only Hallmark and Lifetime would be out of business. So after almost 12 years, if they discover a way to control this I'm all for it. And if another show beat them to it, that's not a signal to me the idea was stolen. You can do 100 things the same way and enjoy them each for different reasons.

[BasilSeal]

On 10/2/2023 at 3:15 AM, Straycat80 said:

Still not clear on why Laurent is so special and why he has to go to this place, the nest. I’m assuming Isabelle went back to the ex as in ‘keep your enemies close’. I don’t understand what the two groups of people are fighting about in Paris. I’m starting to feel lost on this show. 

It's not really clear if Laurent is actually special, or whether he's merely symbolic of hope for the rebuilding of civilisation. Laurent is born after his mother has been bitten in the first days of the apocalypse, he's apparently delivered by C section after his mother has died so his survival is both miraculous in itself and  also symbolic of the triumph of life over death. It remains to be seen whether being born to someone infected will give him some sort of immunity to zombie bites or make him part of a possible cure.

This could be the case but given that it's pretty much the plot of The Last of Us, i think it likely that they won't go down this road even if it was their initial intention.

The two groups in Paris represent the struggle between fascism and liberal democracy. Laurent says that one day the Eiffel Tower will be rebuilt because he believes that civilisation can be restored. La Negan just wants to exploit the situation to gain power, to use the survivors as tools to serve her and her power base, it's important for her to remove Laurent because he gives people hope that there is something better than just existing. I don't think there's any way she could know of the circumstances of Laurent's birth so i can't see how she could want him for any mad scientist cure research.

There's clearly something more to her motivations though, her pursuit of Daryl doesn't make sense if it's just for revenge / punishment (not that this has ever stopped TWD before), but Daryl has somehow messed up her plans WRT the ship that brought him from the US, they appear to have brought specimens for research, presumably a cure, whether US walkers, or people to be turned into walkers isn't clear, nor is it clear whether Daryl was part of a pressganged crew, or a potential victim. It could be that as US walkers are different, they are somehow vital to La Negan's research, if an American specimen is vital this could be why Daryl is so important if his escape deprived her of the ships cargo of zombified yanks.

On 10/2/2023 at 2:25 AM, Superclam said:

The only surprise was that the young nun's boyfriend wasn't killed, he was just injured. 

i actually thought this was a refreshing change to TWD standard operating practice, where the redshirts sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the plot armoured characters. i think it fits with the message of hope when their leader says 'we go in as one and we come out as one', and they do.

Edited October 5, 2023 by BasilSeal

[tennisgurl]

This episode was alright, it felt more like an episode that just moved the characters and plot from one place to another. I hope that things pick up again quickly and that this show doesn't fall into the tropes that turned the mothership into such a train wreck. We get plucky rebels, we get some boring bad guys running their own boring bad guy empire, we have endless boring fight scenes with random thugs, I don't want the show to just turn into that again.

Its wasn't a bad episode or anything, just lacking next to the rest of the episodes, which I guess says something for the shows quality. During the worst of TWD I would have killed for an episode that was just "alright".

Edited October 5, 2023 by tennisgurl

[borealis]

3 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

This episode was alright, it felt more like an episode that just moved the characters and plot from one place to another. I hope that things pick up again quickly and that this show doesn't fall into the tropes that turned the mothership into such a train wreck. We get plucky rebels, we get some boring bad guys running their own boring bad guy empire, we have endless boring fight scenes with random thugs, I don't want the show to just turn into that again.

And since The Daryl Show seems to have the CRM, which was the focus of World Beyond, PUHLEASE don't make me actively root for the FASCISTS cos the rebels are such idiotic ding dongs! Please for the love of all that's holy don't make the teens/children in this show entitled, insufferable douchebags that are going to tell/show the adults a thing or two. I really wanted the fascists to turn those teens into test subjects, then go have a Super Rave w/all the industrial techno they could handle!! Ugh!

TLDR; don't make me want fascists to win & have fun

[iMonrey]

On 10/5/2023 at 1:50 PM, BasilSeal said:

The two groups in Paris represent the struggle between fascism and liberal democracy.

Well, sure. Problem is, we've seen this same struggle play out over and over and over and over again between TWD, Fear, Dead City and World Beyond (maybe not so much WB, I tuned out of that after Season 1). There's just nothing new to explore about that. It's like the show has decided the way forward is to relocate to different places and just tell the same story again. Same ingredients, different bowl.

[BasilSeal]

20 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Well, sure. Problem is, we've seen this same struggle play out over and over and over and over again between TWD, Fear, Dead City and World Beyond (maybe not so much WB, I tuned out of that after Season 1). There's just nothing new to explore about that. It's like the show has decided the way forward is to relocate to different places and just tell the same story again. Same ingredients, different bowl.

The early seasons focussed on the individual characters trying to survive the apocalypse, initially just to get from day to day, then to try and build some sort of community. There was very much a repetitive theme to it all as they build a community then the big bad guy comes along and tries to destroy that community because, well, erm, because they are the bad guy, and that's what bad guys do, yes, that's it.

That's always been a flaw in TWD's narrative, maybe, bad guys doing bad guy shit for some reason worked ok in a comic but in a more realistic medium we perhaps expect more complex and nuanced motivations to drive the action and plot. 

Kirkman's main trope was to continually place his characters in horrible situations and force them to make horrible choices, the rest was always secondary, having  disparate groups fighting over resources was just the simplest way to achieve this in the long run, even when it would have made more sense to cooperate, though the writers frequently got around this point simply by making the bad guys batshit crazy. they'll keep your head in a jar or wear your skin as an overcoat because that's just how they role in the apocalypse.

They've squeezed 12 years worth of shows out of this  rinse and repeat cycle but finally they concluded it by having the characters build a lasting community which is big enough not to fail. What we're seeing now is arguably different. People who've got this far have found their niche, they've found a way to survive that works for them. the fight now isn't about day to day survival, it's about how civilisation is rebuilt. In the US they have the Commonwealth which is now a benign democracy, and the CRM as a fascist dictatorship. there's a similar set up in France with the Union of Hope versus Genet's Pouvour (power to the living) movement.

I think to be fair to the writers if they want to give the show life beyond the initial concluded story line then they have to go for this bigger theme. whether it ties in with the CRM and events in the rick and Michonne spin off remains to be seen, personally i think it probably should but we'll see. 

You can argue that it's more of the same, disparate members of Team Rick fighting the big bad, and you'd have a point but i would argue that it's no longer quite the same thing. they're fighting for something different, and at least this time there is some reasoning behind what the big bad guy, (of in this case gal) is doing.

Baby steps, and all that.

[nodorothyparker]

Finally got the chance to watch this whole episode start to finish after just seeing bits of the last two the last couple of weeks.

I'll join the chorus of not being entirely clear of the motivations of a lot of these people or how much it even matters. I may be overthinking this, which I concede is often the case with this franchise, but I was mostly left wondering if even Quinn knows what his motivation is. Is he Le Kid Jesus's father or is he just fucking with Isabelle to even make that claim? Does he care at all about the kid and what is he really hoping to get from Genet? He strikes me as one of those guys who will do or say whatever to keep on keeping on without really believing in much beyond his own survival and comfort. I did love that his female companion was just not down with the babysitting or whatever other bullshit he's up to. Yeah, he left me to watch this kid over my objections but you want him? Take him. I'm over here busy being French and fabulous in the ZA.

I'm also not clear at this point why Genet is devoting so much effort to chasing Le Kid Jesus. I know she says something about not wanting to give people false hope or a rallying point, but is she also looking to pull a Last of Us on the kid and see if he has any unusual properties from a scientific standpoint? Daryl's vision of him parting the sea of walkers aside, we really haven't been given much to go on that there's really anything special about the kid at all beyond the asterisk of his birth and being precocious and ridiculously sheltered.

Speaking of which, the underwater walker fight was gorgeously shot. It was one of the few times I might not have disagreed with talking heads about it that they're "making art." The flip side of that being that Norman Reedus filmed underwater makes it patently obvious that Norman Reedus is 54 years old. The mop of long hair doesn't fudge it at all there.