“Still” was a young girl’s strange necrotic journey from a “suck ass camp” in the woods to a moonshine shack in some, um, different woods. “Still” heavily focused on developing both Daryl and Beth and their relationship with each other. Unfortunately there were no revelations gained, no truths unearthed that the audience didn’t already know or suspect going into “Still”.
Before the moonshine showed up, “Still” was very nearly a dialogue free episode. Beth decides she wants to go get her drink on because she’s never done it before and surviving on snake jerky in a highly effective small camp is not her idea of life. She decides to go it alone, for all of half a minute, on her quest for some liquor. They quickly come across a “country club” – remember these are the backwoods of Georgia and not Greenwich, Connecticut here – and decide to take a look.
Soon Daryl and Beth are hobnobbing with the pre-apocalyptic social elite. Well the corpses of the social elite. It isn’t immediately clear if they decided to kill themselves or if they were killed be some survivors after the fact but most are dead. Of course there is some zombie peril awaiting them deeper inside the bowels of the club but it is some standard fare more used for Daryl to take out his aggressions on than anything. In what was the first instance of economic inequality for the show, the two find a pro shop and the torso of a woman on top of a mannequin’s legs with a sign reading “Rich Bitch” adorned around her. Beth finds a change of clothes at the pro shop, which are immediately ruined by zombie entrails, and a third of a bottle of peach schnapps and, before taking a drink, begins to do the thing she just told Daryl she wouldn’t allow herself to do – cry.
The entire conceit was basically trite way to give the two a goal instead of aimlessly wandering but it was far too obvious a plot device to do so. Sure, Daryl’s silence for the first half of the episode would make anyone blow up and want to go off on their own but, to her own admission later in the episode, Beth is probably the least likely person to be able to survive on her own, especially for booze. Daryl’s decision to hoard random jewels and money while in the country club is also odd seeing as how he would know better than to weigh himself down with worthless stacks of cash. The country club sojourn is a fairly elaborate set up for the episode’s emotional payoff.
Daryl takes Beth to a rundown shack in the middle of the woods, which is where Beth is treated to a little Daryl history lesson while sipping on some moonshine. Apparently, Daryl grew up in a house just like the one they have come across. During the drinking game Beth and Daryl play, Beth reveals she believes that Daryl had been in jail at some point or another. This infuriates a tipsy(?) Daryl who loses his cool and pins a zombie to a pole with his crossbow arrows. It all leads to Daryl breaking down and revealing to Beth that he blames himself for the Governor’s return and the prison’s destruction, which is the reason why he has been so nihilistic of late. After the consolation hug the two open up to each other, while apparently drunk without showing symptoms, with Beth sharing her optimistic hopes and Daryl sharing that he was just a drifter with Merle before it all. Such is the shocking revelation of what Daryl used to do before the apocalypse. Beth suggests they have a cathartic shack burning session so that Daryl can leave his past behind him. And with a blazing cabin and defiant middle fingers raised the episode ends.
It was evident that Beth and Daryl needed to bond after since the midseason premiere. The two characters were not often together at the prison so their relationship was, basically, completely new territory. And while they have now sufficiently bonded there were certainly multiple opportunities that “Still” missed to whittle away at Daryl’s tough exterior. Following Daryl’s break down, there is moment where it feels like Daryl should actually open up to her more. Instead Beth gives Daryl the guidance that it is who he is now, not who he was in the past, which he must hang onto. While you can’t completely emasculate Daryl’s character it would’ve been an interesting view into his psyche had he revealed some emotion during their talk instead of just regaling Beth with a story of his drifterness. He hinted at maybe missing taking orders from his brother, and perhaps that’s why he never challenged Rick to lead, but it was too subtle a moment for a show that doesn’t do subtlety.
What’s ridiculous, however, is that they decide to burn the cabin in the middle of the night. Have they forgotten that they still need to survive a zombie apocalypse? Instead of holing up in the cabin for the night and burning it in the morning they now must either wander all night or make camp at night. This decision was the cherry on top of the odd choice sundae that the episode was.
“Still” was a clearly contrived story to force Beth and Daryl together to bond. It was by no means a home run but it did achieve its objective. The episode definitely felt slow, however, and that is because it focused solely on Beth and Daryl. When there are so many survivors from the prison out wandering it seems odd that an entire episode would revolve around something as inconsequential as Daryl and Beth letting out their anger and bonding. It seems clear that The Walking Dead doesn’t want to reveal the new settlement on the railroad tracks quite yet so expect more episodes like this in the immediate future.
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