I’m not usually one to get upset over the lack of sex scenes in a show, but this episode needed one and it’s bizarre to skip over it. The only question remaining is whether they venture forth as friends or lovers). (Then again, we know they get their own show so their eventual make-up is already spoiled. It’s nice to know that Daryl finally got a little love, but it’s a love that ended badly almost instantly, and the final scene between Daryl and Carol was just depressing. In the end, however, I felt like this was a less interesting version of “Laura” and that Daryl and Leah deserved more than half an episode. Once Leah enters the picture, we get a better sense of what the episode is actually about, and things pick up considerably (minus the maudlin dialogue).

If you let yourself just sink into the mood and aesthetic of the first half of the episode, it isn’t as boring as it seems. There were some absolutely gorgeous shots of the river that probably rival anything we’ve ever seen in this show from a visual standpoint.

It was a little slow at times, but the slow pace fit with the dreary subject matter. I have mixed feelings about this episode. “I was right then,” she says, and you can see the grief on her face. She says he should have let her go on the boat then, if that’s what he thinks. “And that’s all that matters to you, being right?” he fires back. She says she’s sorry about Connie but that she isn’t sorry for going after the horde, or doing what needed to be done to take down Alpha. Not Leah, not Rick, not Connie.Ĭonnie, he snaps back, was Carol’s fault. He can’t keep blaming himself for losing people. What else is there at the end of the world worth fighting for if not love? And sure, that includes brotherly love and all the rest but this show sells pretty much all relationships short.Īt least Carol and Daryl have an interesting relationship, though I’m not sure I love where it goes at the end of “Find Me.”Ĭarol, who is hearing this story for the first time back in the “present” timeline tells Daryl that it’s not his fault. Why The Walking Dead shrinks so entirely from giving us interesting love stories is beyond me. The fact that the most graphic sex scene in this entire show is probably the one between Shane and Lori in Season 1 is also kind of ridiculous.Įven looking past the fast-forwarding of Daryl and Leah’s romance, it strikes me that tucking this entire relationship into a bottle episode is kind of selling everyone-Daryl, Leah, us viewers-short. The fact that the “sex scene” in this episode is almost entirely a blurry suggestion is kind of ridiculous. A sexless decade isn’t easy for anyone, but it’s probably especially hard in the End Times, when death is always a zombie bite away. Daryl has essentially been celibate for the entire run of The Walking Dead. The biggest problem here was how little it was fleshed out. It took me a minute to realize he was talking about Rick and not Merle, simply adopting Leah’s proclivity for calling her friends siblings.īut other than a little cheesy dialogue, I enjoyed Daryl and Leah’s relationship. So this kid was her son-but not really-he was actually her sister’s son-but not really her sister.ĭaryl says he’s looking for his missing “brother” who died in an accident but whose body was never recovered. I didn’t give birth to him but he was mine. It’s also an example of over-writing-of dialogue that ought to suggest more and say less. When Leah finally opens up to Daryl it’s a flood of emotion about her lost son, her dead squad.

I liked a lot of the scenes between these two, though mostly the ones where they were gruff with one another. He leaves her a note telling her that he chooses her and to come find him-hence the title of the episode. She’s gone, maybe dead and gone, he never finds out. John goes on to search for June and ultimately finds her, though their relationship is never as interesting or well-written as that first episode.ĭaryl, on the other hand, does not find Leah when he returns to her cabin-filled with regret at his choice to leave. By the end of “Find Me” Daryl has chosen to ditch Leah so he can keep searching for Rick (or so that he can deny himself love and companionship and thus the threat of loss) just like June abandoned John in Fear.

The walking dead season 10 episode 18