MovieChat Forums > The Walking Dead (2010) Discussion > What happened to the Daryl character?

What happened to the Daryl character?


Is it only me who liked him quite a bit for the first few seasons but pretty much stopped caring about him about 3 seasons ago? Can anyone explain why that is?

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They just stopped covering the character as much and the character just got dumbed-down, IMO. I also was really into Daryl when they were hinting at exploring that darkness in his past, and him possibly discovering an emotional side. He had all those moments with Carol, and was shown reading those books, trying to improve himself and his life - and then they just dropped it all.

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I have no clue. I'm curious myself. My guess is, Norman Reedus knew he was the cash cow of the show and started phoning in his performance by grumbling his lines, so the writers gave him less and less to do.

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Curious as to why that's your guess. Norman Reedus doesn't really strike me as lazy.

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Well, I don't know what to say, I've never seen an actor literally grumble every one of their lines, especially when in the first 3 seasons they spoke clearly, to me it's phoning it in. What do you call it?

I know Norman is old, so maybe not lazy but definitely too old to do the more physical stuff in the show like running, that's why he always has a motorcycle to ride. I think it was Talking Dead where Andrew Lincoln talked about a scene where he had to run up a road, he said he had to do about 50 takes then said if Norman was doing the scene, he would have done it once and said he wasn't doing it again. Don't know if that's lazy or just cos he's old.

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I don't know, but he just doesn't strike me as lazy in general so I wonder if thecwriters didn't purposefully make Daryl a shell of himself so as to make a big deal out of him later. Or something. I'm among those who watch it now out of habit.

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I think it is an actor's choice, the Daryl grumble started in season 4.

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I like it when actors get some creative control. Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler springs to mind.

If this was indeed Reedus's choice, yeah, not the best move. Not that I don't like grunters. 😅

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Old? He's only 49.

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I knew guys and saw actors in their 30;s and looked much younger. Dr. Bashuer in Deep space nine was supposed to be a very youn g doctor and the actor looked it though he was in his mid 30's. Then withinh a few years he went looking 25 to looking 45. The same with Darryl. In the first season he appeared to look 25 now he look like he's 55.

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Norman Reedus lives a rough lifestyle..smoking, drinking, drugs, partying. It's caught up to him.

But it does match his character..people in that situation would age a lot from stress.

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Cause now its like he's just a stoic prop in the background who occasionally grumbles a few lines and has no character development at all anymore.

In the early seasons he was an interesting character, we saw glimpses of his dark past, we saw a sweet caring side of him with carol and Sophia, he had a very interesting relationship with his brother, we learned he was abused by his father. We saw him truly grow and become Rick's number 2 and a valuable member of the group.

But now he barely speaks, he barely gets any kind of growth or storyline, it feels like he's just phoning it in now going through the motions.

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It seemed to me that after they killed off Beth they began to completely ignore his character and started leaving him on the sidelines...like they didn't know what to do with him.
But then again...that's around the same time they started acting like they didn't know what to do with everyone.

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Poor writing. It seems they don't know what to do with him anymore.

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I agree - poor writing. It's like they forget he's in the show and then someone notices him and thinks "hey, we're paying that guy he should do some work" and then they make him go stand in the background.

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