#metcom

We all know that Daryl has developed a self-preservation tactic of adapting to whoever he is with. This chameleon-like ability is a “gift” of abuse. The hypervigilant child learns to read people and situations fast in order to survive. They become whatever they need to be to placate their abusive overlords. We’ve seen this idea play out with Daryl repeatedly, tho I don't think we ever fully doubt that Daryl’s inherent quality will falter under the various nefarious influences he is subjected to. After Beth, Daryl falls in with Joe and the Claimers and we see the alternative to their Americana what-if: Beth’s Sweet Home Atlanta life is juxtaposed with the dirtbag reality Daryl actually lived. The Claimers are clear stand-ins for Daryl’s dad and brother in this coming-of-age arc. A similar theme plays out with other characters, most notably Michonne and Morales, who, the show implies, could have been good or bad, based on whoever they were following. Even our hero, Rick Grimes, is far from a faultless leader, but Daryl follows him anyway, mostly without question. In s10, Daryl is led by Carol…but he is acting more as her conscience, her protector. He doesn’t just blindly follow her. Which is telling. Because Daryl and Carol really don't fall into leader/follower roles with each other. They’ll follow others (who are worthy) and lead others (when forced to). But with each other, it's more equal, more fluid. It shifts back and forth. It's a collaborative and ever-evolving partnership. They both instinctively try not to override the will and autonomy of the other. 

That said, Beth is absolutely right to push Daryl here, to step up and to try to lead, even if the way she does it is pretty juvenile. (Again, fair enough, she is a juvenile). She has been saddled with this filthy, sulky man baby. She is the one who’s just seen her father decapitated. And Daryl is like: Yeah, but I lost Carol, do you understand? C-A-R-O-L. She was my FAVE and now I'm stuck here with my least favorite of the bunch of you. Beth tries to get the gang back together but Daryl doesn't see the point, not if Carol isn't there and not if everything is just going to fall apart again. She is acting like a whiny teen and he's regressing fast, feeling guilty for all the losses he yet again did not prevent. He's vulnerable to any influence, primed to be led. It reminds me of a line from “Much Ado About Nothing”: Being that I flow in grief, the smallest twine may lead me. Beth is not much of a leader but she doesn't need to be. She's a twine for him to grasp onto. And as we see later, in s1 of the Daryl Dixon show, it doesn’t take much for adrift Daryl to grab onto something and someone. He follows Isabelle later just as he follows Beth here. 

In fact, one of the few times we see Daryl act autonomously is in searching for Sophia. His search isn’t ordered by Rick, who is consumed by Carl's condition. It isn’t endorsed by Shane, who thinks they should give up and move on. And it isn’t pressed on him by Carol, who falls into total emotional paralysis. Sophia means something to Daryl, not because he knows her very well, but because she symbolises something to him and to the group. Innocence. Hope. Possibility. The safety of childhood. She reminds him of himself. Daryl tells Andrea the story of being lost in the woods and no one coming to find him. When he finds that spot in the closet, you know just that Daryl spent nights like that, hiding in a closet, squeezing himself into whatever safe space he could find. What Daryl is partially doing in searching for Sophia is trying to rewrite history, hoping like hell that history won't repeat itself for another lost and abused child. This is why Sophia's death is devastating for him and for the group. While Carol mourns the loss of her little girl (or can't), the group mourns the loss of childhood, a version of the world in which children could grow up unbothered by violence and constant threat. Of course, this was never actually Sophia’s life and it was never actually Daryl's either. That's the symbolic loss he grieves. The loss of his own childhood, of what could have been but wasn't, of who he might have been if he'd had a different start in life. 

Just as Sophia symbolises Daryl's childhood innocence lost, Beth represents his lost teen years, that equally innocent juvenile time in which kids play drinking games and flirt with dangerous behavior and try on versions of themselves to see if they fit. The difference between Sophia and Beth is that Sophia was just like him while Beth is his opposite, a squeaky clean mirror image. For someone like Daryl, flirting with danger looks very much like privilege. This difference of privilege between him and Beth is what the scenes at the Golf Club and the cabin explicitly lay out. The first is representative of Beth’s prior life: privileged, safe, spacious and squeaky clean, with a side of respectable, not too damaging, alcoholism. The second place these two visit is the mancave in the woods that Daryl likens to one his father had. This setting is representative of Daryl’s prior life. Poor, degenerate and under constant threat.

On the farm, Beth’s family had an overabundance of food (remember Maggie telling them this back in s2?). They had roots going back generations, a large and loving family. As far as Daryl knows, Beth had a blessed life up until the ZA, and even for a while afterwards. For such a girl, peach schnapps is in fact a very fitting first drink. But Daryl decides to force his reality, his lack of privilege on her. He ruins her white cardigan, makes her drink moonshine instead. He takes her to the grotty and gratuitous mancave that resembles his father's. He becomes the Merle to her gentle and innocent teen Daryl. He gives Beth the rough reality check that no doubt Merle gave him. He tries to toughen her up, break her down. But Beth stands up to him and calls him out for being the emotionally manipulative manbaby he is being. Good girl. This is what happens when a child is parented well and comes from a stable home environment. Something Daryl knows nothing about. As such, even the connection they form at the cabin, emphasises the chasm of difference between Daryl's experience and Beth's. 

It is the differences between these two characters that makes their interactions so interesting. The different dynamics of unexpected pairings or groups is a great aspect of the show and of this era specifically. Others have already unpacked the similarities between Daryl and Carol's journeys with their respective blonde mentees (and to be clear, I am not disagreeing with their reading, I’m just adding another layer). What I’d like to point out is that we also get an adult mirroring of the adolescent dynamic between Daryl and Beth in Sasha and Bob. Bob – the recovering alcoholic who Daryl rescued but who also triggered him earlier in the season – takes Beth’s role, trying to convince a pessimistic and shut-down Sasha not to just give up and stay put. She thinks Tyresse is dead. She doesn't see the point in going to Terminus. She's afraid and won't admit it. So Bob gently works his positive magic on her, culminating in a kiss. The contrast between these dynamics is stark, with one depicting a mature romantic relationship between two hurt but competent adults while the other is volatile and juvenile throughout, ending eventually in separation that traps Daryl in a familiar guilt spiral. 

Before this, Daryl does of course quit being such a shit and warms to Beth. Not because he falls in love with her, just because he starts to see her as a person. This arc is effective partially because the audience is with Daryl on this journey. Prior to this, Beth hasn't really been a person. She's been Hershel's less important daughter. She's been Maggie's sister. She's been Judith’s babysitter and Carl's first crush. But with Beth, the writers fall into the same trap they always do with their female characters. They define them by their relationships, specifically by their importance to a male character. And then they use said relationship to important male character to cause exquisite and prolonged manpain. The only reason we and Daryl get to know Beth is so that she can be fridged a couple of eps later. And she never really ceases being a mirror for Daryl as, even after she leaves his care, almost as if tainted by her association with him in just the way he deep down fears, she is trapped by an abusive parental figure at Grady Memorial Hospital and starts to experience some of what Daryl experienced his whole life. Violence. Intimidation. Manipulation. And sexual assault.    

[Trigger Warning: Discussion of sexual abuse/coersion] Though not explicitly stated, there is some indication that Daryl experienced sexual abuse and this is part of what he’s processing with Beth. For most people, the teen years are when they start autonomously and tentatively exploring and defining their sexuality. But for Daryl, we can assume that his entry into the world of adult sexuality was rough and coerced, if not forced. Probably by Merle, thinking that he had to get his baby brother laid in order to make a man of him. So at some point during his teen years – maybe even at the age that Beth is here – Daryl was forced into humiliating sex with a friend of Merle’s or a checked-out sex worker or a random woman at a bar. He didn't get to meet some sweet, innocent girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. They didn't get to gently, hesitantly but supportively explore this exciting new terrain together. And to be clear, Daryl isn’t exploring it with Beth either. If anything, I think Daryl can romanticise Beth because of the non-sexual nature of their developing connection. There’s an innocence to it, to her, that makes the whole thing less threatening to his anxious, sexually traumatised innards. 

To Daryl, sexuality is scary, far too vulnerable territory to venture into. That’s why he couldn't go there with Carol at the prison, despite the flirtatious innuendo, the deepening connection and obvious care between them. With Beth, however, all that is off the table. Sexual contact is completely out of the question. She’s a thought experiment in the way that Carol – sex with Carol, feelings for Carol, actual and actionable adult connection with a fully grown woman – was not. Again, it's all part of his what-if scenario. With Beth, Daryl is asking himself honestly for perhaps the first time in his life: What if my sexuality had been able to develop organically? What would I want if I hadn't been sexually interfered with at such a formative age? What if I had been allowed to just meet a sweet girl and date and navigate that entry into adult sexuality in my own time, just like everyone else, just like normal people? Beth is the normal, to his “abnormal”. She's the wholesome, to his despoiled (in his view). She’s the unbroken mirror into which he gazes. 

As every abuse survivor knows, these hypothetical scenarios are as fruitless as they are torturous. If abuse happens when you’re a child, it is inextricable from your existence. There is no you without trauma. The question of who you would, could or might have been has no answer. Your damage goes as far back as you do, you can’t separate yourself from it or figure out how much is the organic you and how much is your response to what was done to you. That is why Sophia – the representation of childhood, and Daryl's especially – had to die. And that is why Beth – the representation of teenagehood, Daryl’s especially – had to die. They both represent parts of Daryl that could not be revisited, rewritten or revised. There is no going back. There is only dealing with the damage and moving on. This is why when Daryl sees Carol again, he tells her that “whatever happened happened”. He’s reached acceptance. This is also why when Carol sees Daryl again, she tells him that he is a man now, not a boy. Daryl hasn't suddenly grown up and become a man because he fell in love and had virginal sex with Beth. He’s become a man by letting go of all he didn't get during his teen years, including a healthy and autonomous entry into adult sexuality. Having accepted that sad but inescapable fact, he can start to figure out who he is sexually and what he actually wants as a man. Now, do I like that these girls were used to facilitate manpain and man revelation and man healing? No. But I do think that is what is happening. It was done much better in the case of Sophia. In Beth’s case, she is at least in excellent company when it comes to the cast of the female characters done dirty by TWD writers. I don't love that Beth became a symbol of Daryl's lost teen innocence. But I understand it a whole lot better than the idea of the man becoming a man or an adult becoming an adult through penetrative sex. I also like it a whole lot more than the straightforward romantic narrative insisted on by (younger?) shippers and creepy old men. It is simply too simplistic a reading when clearly there is a lot more going on in this arc.

This arc is a pivotal one for Daryl, even if it gets there through misogynistic means. Like the show, it’s loaded with symbolism. The golf club. The burning down mancave. The smoke. The peach schnapps, the moonshine. The funeral home (don’t think I have to unpack the meaning of the third location they visit). They are all representative of much more. A stopped grandfather clock also bookends this arc. When Daryl and Beth first enter the Golf Club, Daryl rights a grandfather clock that has fallen on one side. It starts to tick again and chime the hour. Later in the season, after Beth’s death, the crew decide to honour her memory by taking the trip she planned to take with Noah back to his home. The first sign that nothing is right in Noah’s community is a smashed grandfather clock, lying in the street outside the gates. Stopped. This image evokes Father Time, old times, traditional times, solid times, now gone. It’s reminiscent somehow of Hershel and his farm. But it also speaks to the idea that you can’t play with time, you can’t turn back the clock, undo life or undo death. What happened happened. Daryl’s abuse happened. Beth’s death happened. For a short time, Daryl and Beth started the clock on a liminal period in which they tried to recapture something that never really existed for either of them. They escaped into make believe in order to feel some sense of power and autonomy after experiencing devastating loss. But that liminal time had to end. Partially cos real time just kept right on ticking even as they played with fire. It never actually stopped. Until that is, Beth’s time as a person, as well as as a mirror of teen Daryl, was up.  ***

Notes (or Stuff That Didn’t Fit Elsewhere): 

In trying to motivate Daryl, Beth says the magic phrase, Carol’s whole post-Sophia raison d'etre: “Do something!” These two words lie at the heart of both Daryl’s and Carol’s individual motivations. They are Carol’s last words in s2, a pivotal season for her, for her and Daryl, and for her and Rick. “Do something,” she tells Rick, looking to him for leadership. It’s the last time she will. The next time we meet Carol she has decided that she will be the one to do something. She’s learnt to shoot, stab, defend herself and others. And eventually (and repeatedly) she will challenge Rick’s leadership by going over his head. She will do something by teaching the kids about knives. And she will do something when she takes out Karen and David. When Rick confronts her about these deaths, she tells him she had to do something (esp since he’d abdicated responsibility in favour of becoming a farmer). Carol will continue throughout the series and into the spinoff to be the one to do something, rather than waiting for someone else to do it. For Carol, this comes from her crushing guilt over her inaction at Sophia’s disappearance. She didn’t do anything. She looked to others for help, for leadership. She’s never gonna to make that mistake again. She’s always going to act. “Do something” is also at the heart of Daryl’s character but for a different reason. Daryl does things because he thinks that it is in doing things that he justifies his existence. In doing something, he has the opportunity to prove himself, show his value, earn his place. When they are standing by the pond, looking at the Cherokee Rose, Carol asks Daryl why he felt the need to look for her daughter. The reason is, as discussed above, much deeper, but Daryl’s response is: “What else am I gonna do?”. Carol seems unsure how to respond to this. She could be offended and looks a little so. But I think she also understands this as an insight into Daryl's character. Daryl can’t just be. He has to do. Something. Anything. He always feels a need to prove his worth with some useful action.     

The last time we saw the cabin Daryl takes Beth to, he was there with Tyresse and everyone was worried cos he was freaking out over the loss of Karen. Tyresse is now with Carol and we see Daryl acting with similar recklessness over the loss of his prison girlfriend. 

Others have already commented on how Daryl's manpain over the girl he knew for a couple of days…? weeks…? somewhat eclipses that of Maggie, her sister (as it also does when Maggie loses Glenn and Daryl makes it about his guilt). Interestingly, this is not something that happens after Sophia’s death. Daryl's grief never eclipses Carol’s. He holds space for her, but never makes it about his own triggers and grief. In fact, he takes himself off to lick his wounds in private and Carol is the one who needs to go fetch him back again. (Of course, later in the DD spinoff, he forgets that Sophia ever meant anything to him other than that she was his best friend's kid. Same with RJ and Judith. Not his kids anymore. Just some kids his friends had.)

Carol’s line in “Consumed” about Daryl being a boy before and a man now is why I personally believe them getting together would have needed to be after this point, not before. Not because Daryl was an actual boy before this. He was not a child. There is a difference between being actually 17yo and symbolically 17yo-ish. There is a difference between having been on the planet for 17 and a bit years (which is not long, kids, not long at all) and just needing to resolve some stuff from when you were 17. These are NOT the same thing. In these eps, we see how Daryl’s growth into a man was stunted and how it had implications for the trajectory of his romantic/sexual relationships. But I don’t believe Daryl would ever lose sight of himself in his teen fantasy enough to take advantage of an underage girl. To do so is inconsistent with his entire character arc. He would have become the type of person who uses their abuse to justify the abuse of others. He’d be Merle.  It's made clear that Merle himself was abused, he was a victim. Before he became a perpetrator. That was always the difference between Daryl and his brother. And Merle knew it too. He knew Daryl was better than him. Knew others saw it, valued him. And while part of him wanted that for his brother, another part envied it and wanted Daryl to be viewed with as much contempt as he was. At least then, he wouldn’t be alone in being despised. Hence, his dying act. Merle was trying to be better. He was trying to save his brother and also be his brother. He was reversing the pattern of abuse the only way he knew how. Instead of making Daryl follow his dirtbag lead, he followed Daryl’s man of honour lead. With him, dies another part of Daryl. A part of his past, a future he’s no longer bound to become. Because yes, Daryl will give into his conditioning occasionally. He lashes out at Carol, at Beth, at Laurent, but he never fully tips over into abuser/perpetrator territory. He always pulls himself back, makes amends, re-adjusts his course and does increasingly better as he matures. That’s his whole arc. Sleeping with Beth is contrary to it. 

Speaking of Merle, Daryl’s hallucination of Merle in “Chupacabra” mocks his search for Sophia, saying he didn't think Daryl was into little girls. Sophia was 12 when she died. When Rick’s crew shows up at the farm, Beth is probably 15 or 16? Beth is closer in age to Sophia and Carl, who is clearly crushing on her at the start of s3. She’s closer in age to Lizzie and Mika than to Daryl. She forms a (romantic?) connection with Noah at the hospital, who Daryl refers to in “Consumed” as “just a kid”. Meanwhile Daryl is closer in age to Axel, who Carol clocks sniffing around lil Bethie. (And I’m still not convinced Carol was wrong about Axel). So if there are elements in the cast or writing staff who want to describe a relationship with an age gap like that as in some way romantic then I would say it’s worth pushing back on that, questioning rather than blindly accepting it as appropriate. These dummies say a lot of stuff to fans to sell them the show. However, this show is not so badly written and this relationship is not so explicitly written that we can't understand Daryl's feelings towards Beth as being both romantic(-ish, in a hypothetical, Schrodinger’s cat type of way) AND entirely inappropriate to actually act upon. In “Chupacabra”, we get to hear directly from Daryl’s inner voice, his innermost critic. No other ep has given us as much insight into Daryl’s brain as that one. It set up exactly who Daryl was. And it’s patently clear that, to him, predating on little girls is shameful and not anything that a real man would ever consider.

Now at TrackMafia you know we love ourselves some cross-training and love ourselves some shoes. Running is great and everything, but to be the best we can be we’ve got to throw in some strength training and conditioning from time to time. The age-old conundrum is, what shoes do we wear? I often do a 20 minute tempo run before lifting so do I go for a shoe that’s better to run in or better to lift in? Do I sacrifice running for stability or potentially fall on my face while lifting in place of a quicker turnover on the treadmill? First world problems I know.

Enter the Metcon DSX or the Flyknit Metcon. The original Metcon (now in its 3rd generation) has always been a little stiff to run in - with a 4mm drop and completely flat rubber outsole it’s much more on the weights scale than it is the cardio scale, but the Flyknit version has a 6mm drop as well as flex grooves in the forefoot for flexibility, a heel counter for support, more cushioned midsole and the Flyknit upper makes it much more runnable than its counterpart.

So how does it test? Surprisingly well, actually. If I’m honest I was a little skeptical about how much you can run in it - I am a running shoe snob after all, but it actually felt great even at higher speeds. I definitely wouldn’t pass the 20-30 minute mark in them, but going from the treadmill to a squatting and clean/jerk session I completely appreciated the stability and support it provides through the heel - stability a running shoe most definitely does not provide.