Daryl and Beth are putting the "rough" in "roughing it," sleeping in car trunks and eating rattlesnake while Daryl is completely shut down. So Beth assigns herself a new quest: to find some booze so she can take up drinking. They raid a country club that was clearly once made into a refugee camp, but is not a charnel house with reanimated corpses hanging from the ceiling. But there are also some of the regular kind walking around for Beth and Daryl to stay ahead of.
Beth's very first wine bottle ends up being used by her to kill a zombie, and Daryl takes his frustrations out on one of them, ruining the fresh change of clothes Beth just scored from the clubhouse. When Beth finally finds a bottle in the bar, she cries instead of drinking, so Daryl smashes it. "Ain't gonna have your first drink be no damn peach Schnapps," he declares, so at least now they have a mission.
So he takes her to a house he once raided with Michonne, where Mason jars of homemade moonshine set the mood for amateur anthropology and a game of "I've Never" that goes from depressing to ugly in a hurry. It's the kind of place that was the setting for Daryl's bitter childhood and adolescence, you see. But it at least leads to breaking down Daryl's wall of anger and self-hatred. And he finally reveals the big mystery of what he was doing before the apocalypse, which was just being loser Merle's loser sidekick.
As for Beth, she predicts that one day she'll be gone and Daryl will be the last man standing, so he'd better get it together. And so for catharsis, they burn down the only shelter they've had since the prison. I hope it was worth the therapeutic value.
It may be nighttime, but Daryl and Beth aren't sleeping. Instead, they come busting out of the trees in front of a bashed-up car like this was where they meant to show up. They look as if walkers are chasing them at this very moment. While Beth tries the ignition, (nothing, but a click, obvi) Daryl covers her by pointing his crossbow at one of the 360 directions walkers might approach them from. Hearing them coming, he ushers her into the cavernous trunk and follows, fortunate that they found an early 1980s model. Daryl ties a rag inside the trunk lid to hold it nearly closed without latching it, because wouldn't that be a way to go, after everything else? The walkers come past in a herd, not directly visible through the tiny crack under the trunk lid, but making their walker-noises and jostling the car as they stumble past it and probably reeking as usual. The night passes in misery, shown by flashing lightning and the ebb and flow of the walkers outside and lots of jarring jump-cuts. Through it all, Daryl keeps his crossbow leveled at the tiny gap, like it's going to do anything if they're discovered.
In the morning, both the storm and the herd has cleared, and when Daryl and Beth emerge from their temporary crypt, the car door that was broken before has since been torn clean off. They're lucky none of the zombies stumbled and fell on the trunk lid and slammed it shut on them. They collect what treasure they can from the car -- a mostly empty water bottle, the twine from the roof, the side mirror, and the headlight fragments, all going into trash bags -- before moving on. Hey, guys, you know eBay's down, right? The thing is, neither of them has said a word to the other. Well, at least it doesn't look like I'll have a lot of dialogue to transcribe.
Daryl stalks a squirrel in the woods, but misses, probably for the first time in his adult life. Not only did the squirrel get away, the bolt's shaft cracked when it hit the tree. Looks like he's only got five left now, but I don't know how they lasted this long to begin with. Meanwhile, in a muddy clearing that houses the world's saddest makeshift tent, Beth digs a small hole in the ground with her bare hands, then uses the mirror and the headlight fragment to focus the sunlight enough to start a campfire. Then she and Daryl string the hubcaps around the camp in the primitive alarm system that's always worked so well for everyone. Daryl then goes after some different prey: a rattlesnake, which he dispatches by pinning its neck to the ground with a forked stick before stabbing it through the head. And Beth examines a small bug she scooped off some wet leaves, but she isn't desperate enough yet to pop it in her mouth. This could hardly be grosser than watching Daryl skin the snake and then eat its charred carcass afterward, while she picks at her portion like an exotic hors d'oeuvre.
Finally she speaks the first words of the episode: "I need a drink." Wait, what? Daryl tosses her the naked, ratty-looking Mountain Dew bottle they've apparently been using as a canteen, but Beth meant a drink drink. Daryl ignores her as she says she's never had one before, because of her dad, "But he's not exactly around anymore, so…" When he refuses to even look up from his almost-food at her, she says, "Enjoy your snake jerky," plucks her knife out of the fallen tree she stuck it in, and heads into the woods alone. She whispers, "Jerk," but only when she's sure she's out of earshot. Almost that second, four walkers come into view at some distance through the trees. Beth hides behind a trunk and gently tosses a rock off to one side to distract them, which works for three of them, but the fourth keeps coming. It looks as though Beth is going to have to use her knife on that one, but at the last moment it turns away and wanders after its fellows, to investigate a noise that just took place a safe ten feet to Beth's left. And then they just keep going, I suppose. Beth turns to see that Daryl has followed her with his crossbow, just in case she needed backup. Moments later, she's following him back through the woods, thinking he's on board for her booze cruise, but she's pretty pissed when she realizes he brought her back to where she just left. "I'm not staying in this suck-ass camp," she says, flipping him a girly bird. Daryl finally speaks, grabbing the offending wrist and saying, "Hey, you had your fun." Beth asks if he feels anything, besides that of everything being fucked. "So you want to spend the rest of our lives staring into a fire and eatin' mud snakes? Screw that. We might as well do somethin'." You could start pronouncing your g's. Beth insists she can take care of herself, and is going to get a drink. Daryl doesn't exactly rush to follow her.
Beth eventually leads Daryl onto an overgrown golf course, with a cart tipped over on its side. Looking at the clubhouse in the distance, she asks, "Golfers like to booze it up, right?" Daryl doesn't bother replying. He probably didn't hang out with too many golfers anyway. There are a half-dozen walkers coming up the green, but Daryl and Beth just ignore them as they approach the building at a slightly brisker walk. Beth steps over a body to try to get in the door, while Daryl loots the corpse of its golf club, like the zombie plague hit him right at tee time. With the door locked, they go around and find a back entrance that isn't, for some reason. Thus they find themselves in what may have once been a large meeting room, but was at some point converted into an emergency shelter for waaay too many people. It looks like a hoarder house, but with human bodies and sleeping bags littering the floor and the sound of walkers doing whatever they do instead of breathing. I don't know why Beth and Daryl aren't worried that some of these bodies aren't going to get up and come after them, until it becomes apparent that the walkers in the room are hanging from the ceiling by their necks. Presumably that's how they were killed, but they obviously didn't stay dead. Daryl picks up a flashlight whose batteries still work so we can all get a better look, but he's still not talking so it's not clear what happened here. Beth examines a few knickknacks, including a souvenir spoon from Washington, D.C. What a coincidence. She wonders why Daryl is bothering to shovel cash and jewelry back into a spilled purse, but he's not sharing on that score either. By now the walkers are rattling at the door, so they head on deeper into the building.
Moving on into the kitchen, where their flashlights pick out nothing but mess and disarray. It's like the place was picked clean of food, an then picked clean of clean. Beth does manage to locate a dusty bottle of red wine on the top shelf of a trashed pantry, though she has to step over a corpse (which lucky for her doesn't suddenly decide to bite a hunk out of her ankle) and do a bit of climbing to retrieve it. She'll never get to enjoy it, though, because back in the hallway, a walker comes out of nowhere and gets in her face. Beth smashes the bottle on its skull, then desperately stabs it in the face with the jagged neck a few times before she's able to get her knife out and finish it off. "Thanks for the help," she says to Daryl, who just now showed up. "You said you could take care of yourself," Daryl reminds her. "You did." That could almost have been mistaken for a compliment.
In a downstairs hallway, they have to crawl under a tipped-over trophy case and right a half-toppled grandfather clock to continue making progress. But it might be worth it, because they've found themselves in the shop, complete with fresh clothes on racks. It doesn't look like the other former survivors ever made it in here for some reason. Daryl loots the counter like this is a mere power blackout, while Beth takes some fresh clothes off the rack to replace the filthy tank top and vest she's been wearing since the prison and probably before. She returns wearing a white cardigan over a yellow polo shirt, quite practical for roughing it in the woods, and finds Daryl contemplating what looks like the upper half of a woman's corpse arranged on the lower half of a mannequin with a sign pinned to it reading "Rich Bitch." They're both probably wondering why anyone would go to the trouble, but Beth's the one who tries to take her down, insisting that it does matter. Daryl compromises and covers the half-dummy/half-human with a sheet. Which would have been a much better storyline for Mannequin 2 if you ask me.
Exiting the store, they pass the grandfather clock again, which must have started up again when Daryl straightened it up, because it loudly strikes three. That's probably not the right time, but I'm sure it sounded just like a dinner bell to the zombies that come after them from the adjoining halls. Daryl herds Beth into a former rec room and makes his stand there, using a golf club on them as they enter one at a time. One of them, however, he just kicks down until he's dealt with the others, and after they're taken care of he just pummels the thing on the side, not bothering to go for the head when he's got something right here to take out his grouchiness on. Finally, with a mighty swing, he takes off half the thing's head, sending it splattering right onto Beth's new clothes. I guess that's why Beth can't have nice things. Rather than heading back to the shop, she just ditches the cardigan and heads into the hallway, still wearing the newly ruined shirt. But she doesn't mind, because from here she can see the bar. "We made it," she says. "I know you think this is stupid, and it probably is, but I don't care. All I wanted to do today was lay down and cry. But I don't get to do that. So beat up on walkers if that makes you feel better. I need to do this." This was clearly the scene of some carnage as well, and as Beth steps over some bodies to get behind the bar, Daryl noisily claims a framed document on the wall by breaking the glass. Beth finds a quarter of a bottle of peach schnapps. "Is it good?" she asks. "Naw," Daryl says. What he actually means is that there's no orange juice any more, but that would be too many words. There isn't any of anything else left, either, so Beth gets to work finding a clean glass on the littered bar while Daryl heads over to the dartboard. He starts hurling the darts with deadly accuracy. Not at the dartboard, but at the faces of the country club's board in their frame on the wall. Beth ends up putting a hand on the bottle's cap like it's going to explode, and starts crying instead of drinking. Daryl throws his last dart and smashes the bottle on the floor. "Ain't gonna have your first drink be no damn peach schnapps," he says, and shows her to the door. Who knew he was such a connoisseur?
Crossing through the woods, Beth hazards a guess at Daryl's former occupation, the way her late boyfriend Zack used to do. Specifically, she guesses that Daryl was a motorcycle mechanic in the old days. Way to remind him of the loss of his beloved chopper, Beth. Daryl says his past life doesn't matter, even when Beth says it's just normal conversation. "Never felt normal to me," he says. By now they've come out of the trees to the backyard of a rundown shack, which he says he found with Michonne. He leads her to a shed around back and collects a crate of mason jars to hand her. It's moonshine, so maybe the title of the episode refers to a noun rather than an adjective. The inside of the place is a disaster and looks like it has been since long before the dead walked the earth. He finds a plastic glass to wipe out and fill with a finger or two of the clear liquid, saying, "That's a real first drink right there." She hesitates, saying that her dad once warned that bad moonshine can make you go blind. "Ain't nothing worth seeing out there anymore anyway," Daryl says reassuringly. So Beth takes a sip, and declares it the most disgusting thing she's ever tasted. But she cheerfully drains the glass and makes to pour one for Daryl, who declines, saying someone has to keep watch. Beth mockingly asks if he's his chaperone, and he grouchily leaves her to it, saying, "Just drink lots of water." "Yes, Mister Dixon," she snots. Wow, look who's a snarky drunk.
Later, while Daryl is haphazardly boarding the windows, Beth discovers a tacky-ass ashtray that is a) overflowing with butts and b) shaped like a bra. Daryl can do better than that, saying his dad used ones just like it for target practice over the TV. In fact, this place is just like his dad's, complete with the "dumpster chair" for drinking in one's underwear, a bucket for a cuspidor, and the "internet" in the form of an old newspaper. Just then a walker wanders up to loiter outside the window, but there's no hurry to kill it unless it doesn't quiet down. Beth says they might as well make the best of their confinement, and offers Daryl a jar. "Unless you're too busy chaperoning, Mister Dixon," she adds. This time Daryl accepts. "Home sweet home," he says, settling down in the dumpster chair.
Beth explains the rules of "I've Never" to Daryl. In case you're not familiar, you say something you've never done and anyone who has done that thing must take a drink. It's also necessary to explain why Beth has to explain the rules, as Daryl says he "never needed a game to get lit before" and Beth watched her friends play. And look what happened to them. Beth starts off by saying that she's never fired a crossbow, so Daryl has to drink. "Ain't much of a game," he observes, which he may regret. For his turn, he says he's never been outside Georgia. "Good one," Beth says, taking a drink. Beth says she never got drunk and did something she regretted, so Daryl takes a drink, saying, "I've done a lot of things." Only one drink, though. For his turn, he says he's never been on vacation. And camping doesn't count, because that was something he had to learn. This game is starting to get depressing. And Beth takes it further in that direction, saying she's never been in jail. Daryl isn't amused, and asks if that's what she thinks of him. Beth downplays it, saying even her dad got locked in the drunk tank once. "Drink up," Daryl growls, and Beth takes another guess, asking if Daryl was a prison guard before. That was another wrong one. Before taking his turn, Daryl gets up to pee, but doesn't even leave the room to do so, which is both gross and a pretty clear warning sign of his current state of mind, if Beth would pick up on it. He's also making a lot of noise and purposely talking out loud. And then he takes a bunch of her turns too, which is yet another party foul. "Never eaten frozen yogurt. Never had a pet pony. Never got nothing from Santa Claus. Never relied on anyone for protection before. Never relied on anyone for anything! Never sung out in front of a big group in public like everything was fun!" Well, this certainly isn't any more. "I sure as hell never cut my wrist looking for attention!" Wow, cold.
The walker outside starts making noise again, so Daryl tells Beth that he's going to teach her to use a crossbow right now. He drags her out into the yard and, with an arm roughly around her, uses a couple of crossbow arrows to pin the zombie against a tree. He goes to retrieve the arrows for more target practice, but Beth goes around him and stabs it in the head, putting an end to the game. "Killing them is not supposed to be fun," she yells at Daryl. He asks what she wants from him, and she says she wants him to stop acting like he doesn't care about anything, even the people they lost. Daryl says she doesn't know anything, and she says she knows that he just sees another dead girl when he looks at her. "I'm not Michonne, I'm not Carol, I'm not Maggie." Well, at least you're not Lizzie, either. Beth insists that she survived, and accuses Daryl of being afraid. Daryl angrily denies this, but Beth remembers Daryl's reaction to when Sophia -- "that little girl," because Beth never knew her after all -- came out of her dad's barn. She says he's afraid of letting anyone get too close, and he turns it around on her, reminding her that she never cried when she lost two boyfriends. "Your whole family's gone, all you can do is go out looking for hooch like some dumb college bitch!" He rages on that everyone they know is dead, or might as well be, because they'll never see them again. Still yelling, but more raggedly now, he says, "Governor rolled right up to our gates. Maybe if I wouldn't have stopped looking. Maybe because I gave up, that's on me." Beth is starting to realize what's going on with him, and when he all but sobs, "And your dad…maybe I could have done something," she hugs him hard from behind. And that's how he ends up crying. Well, look who's a weepy drunk.
That night, Daryl and Beth sit out on the screened-in porch, and Beth says she gets why her dad quit drinking. "I wish I could feel like this all the time," she says, not sounding remotely drunk. "That's bad." Daryl says she's lucky she's a happy drunk, and she agrees, "Some people can be real jerks when they drink." Daryl admits it, almost coming close to apologizing. Then he tells Beth a story about how he and Merle were watching TV drunk one morning at Merle's drug dealer's house, and Merle kept bitching about the show, which happened to be a favorite of the dealer's kid. So a fight broke out, and guns came out, and Daryl thought he was dead, "Over a dumb cartoon about a talking dog." But then the dealer punched Daryl in the gut and made Daryl throw up, so they all had a good laugh and moved on. Which is what leads to the big reveal of what Daryl's vocation was before the zombie apocalypse: "I was just drifting around with Merle, doing whatever he said we were gonna be doing that day." He says he was nobody and nothing, "some redneck asshole with an even bigger asshole for a brother." Well, I am both let down and not surprised. Beth figures he misses Merle, like she misses Maggie. Well, probably not exactly the same way. She also misses her older brother Shawn, and her dad. Wasn't there another sister, who got killed fleeing the farm? I don't know, hardly matters now. Beth talks about how she thought they'd all be able to stay at the prison forever, and Glenn and Maggie would make Hershel a grandfather, and they'd do holidays and picnics and birthday and Hershel would get even older, and when he died, "He'd be surrounded by people he loved." Well, at least he was beheaded by something that belonged to someone he loved. Now she starts crying and says, "That's how unbelievably stupid I am." Daryl kindly points out that that's how it was supposed to be. Beth says she wishes she could change, like Daryl, who she says was "Made for how things are now." He says he's just used to ugliness, "growing up in a place like this." The house, that is. Beth says he got away from it, whether he believes it or not. He says she might have to remind him, so she reminds him instead that he doesn't depend on anyone. "I'll be gone someday," she adds. "You're gonna be the last man standin'." Daryl doesn't put up much of an argument to that, as she says he'll miss her when she's gone. "You ain't a happy drunk at all," he says. She says she is; just not blind. So I guess it's not bad moonshine they're drinking, then. She tells him to stay who he is, and not who he was. "Places like this, you have to put it away…or it kills you." Yes, that seems like the most likely cause of death these days. "Here," she clarifies, pointing to her heart. Daryl says they should go inside, but Beth has a better idea: "We should burn it down." So Daryl gets up and says, "We're gonna need more booze."
But now they're using it for acceleration, splashing it all over the walls and ceiling of the main room as a tune by some folk singer from the local Irish pub spins up, singing about moving on from the past and forgiveness and all. Out on the yard, Daryl lets Beth light the match (which they must have found in the house) and uses that to light one of the bricks of cash from the country club. Which he then tosses onto the porch. The fire flares up instantly, and as it grows, the two of them stand there forever, flipping off the house symbolically. Soon the whole structure is engulfed, and Daryl ushers Beth into the dark, zombie-infested woods, which will soon be on fire as well if the house doesn't burn out PDQ. I'm sure that made him feel better and all, but soon that's going to seem like another time he got drunk and did something he regretted.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.