The Walking Dead “Still” Recap & Review

In this episode, Beth cries, Daryl eats a snake, and then they play ‘Never Have I Ever’. Spoilers ahead!

In another Beth and Daryl-centric episode, we first see them riding out both a storm and a horde overnight in the trunk of a car. Not the most comfortable spot to be spending the night in, but when you have a horde surrounding you, I suppose you have to suffer in order to survive.

They find a place to set up camp but there is tension between the two; Beth doesn’t seem to understand why they aren’t actively looking for other members of the group, but Daryl seems too involved with the snake he’s devouring to care what she says. And, seeming like she’s desperate for attention, Beth decides she’s going to solve her woes the best way she thinks she knows how. Hunt down some booze since she’s never had a drink before. She leaves camp for the stupid search and of course Daryl reluctantly follows–whether he feels he owes this to Hershel to make sure she survives or just doesn’t want to be alone is unclear.

The pair find a golf course where Beth is determined to ‘booze it up’. But instead of booze, they find what seems to be a former survivor camp where everyone has committed suicide or has been murdered. Beth finds a Washington DC spoon (another hint at where they’ll be headed at the end of this season?), and Daryl takes thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry. Much better to trade than a spoon. However, Beth may be beginning to prove herself as she takes out a walker on her own, and perhaps begins to remind Daryl to get in touch with his ‘human’ side again. Or not, because he plays golf with the brains of one of the walkers…

After some more searching, Beth finds what she’s been looking for; a bottle of peach schnapps. She cries for a bit while Daryl plays darts with the photos of former club members, trying not to look like he would rather be anywhere than there. Finally, he gets fed up and smashes the peach schnapps, but instead of telling Beth to grow up, he says he knows just the place with the perfect stuff for a first drink.

They travel to a nearby house where Daryl finds a stock of moonshine and tells Beth to drink up, despite her concerns of ‘going blind’ from a bad batch of the stuff. She gets Daryl to play the game “Never Have I Ever…” where one person says something they’ve never done, and if the other person has done that, they take a drink.

The game goes downhill fast as Daryl’s past suddenly comes rolling out of him, confessing that he’s never left Georgia, been on vacation, or even been given a gift from Santa Claus. This causes him to become angry, and it’s anger we haven’t seen since the first season when he found out Merle was left handcuffed to a roof. The ruckus attracts the attention of a walker and Daryl drags Beth outside to attempt to force her to learn how to shoot a crossbow. He pins the walker to a tree with two arrows, but instead of taking the bow, Beth ends the walker with a knife to the skull.

Finally, Daryl’s emotions overwhelm him and what he truly feels is beginning to come out; how he couldn’t save Sophia, Dale or Hershel–how he couldn’t protect the prison properly like it was all his responsibility. His world came crashing down around him and he didn’t have the correct social skills to display it all until now. He thinks he is to blame for what he thinks is the death of all the other survivors. ‘What gives him the right to live over them’ seemed to be his mindset. Beth offers a hug as Daryl fights back tears.

Later that night, the two are sitting on the porch drinking a little and Daryl opens up again about his past with a story of how he almost died making fun of a cartoon. Luckily it seemed like big brother Merle was always there to protect him, but that’s become his job now. Beth mentions that Daryl will survive the longest, even after she’s gone (foreshadowing, perhaps? Or maybe she just knows she’s not cut out for this world and would meet her end quickly on her own), but Daryl doesn’t want to think of that. He wants to think about survival. At the end of the conversation he says, “We should go inside.” but Beth offers a counter, “We should burn it down.”

Of course, with Daryl having revealed earlier that this house reminded him of the one he grew up in, it seems like a way of moving on from the painful life he used to live into something that might actually be a little better. You know, if he can forget for a bit that he lives in a zombie apocalypse now.

By the way, I hope they have a backup for where they are going to stay since they decided to burn down what shelter they’ve stumbled across…

In the end, I found this to be an incredibly well written and acted episode. Character development is important and I think they accomplished what they set out to do, which was give us more insight into the characters as they re-learn how to survive on their own without the help of a multi-functional group.

Rating:

Check out the promo for The Walking Dead season 4 episode 13 “Alone” below: