The episode begins as Daryl (Norman Reedus) drives the cart into a town, and Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) says, helpfully, “This is the town of Angers.” They stop in a square outside a rundown theatre, and Daryl gives Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) his gun with an instruction to protect the horse. Maybe he regrets sending Asteríx the mule to certain death last week.

Daryl and Isabelle go inside. Isabelle’s contact is a musician who has been living here for years. A door behind a rack of theatrical costumes opens, and a wild-eyed man with eccentric Beethoven hair emerges, addressing them in French. The subtitles are also in French, so I can’t tell you what he’s saying. As he approaches, Daryl holds up a hand to stop him, and tells Isabelle to ask about the radio, without so much as a “my-name-is-Daryl-Dixon-I-come-from-a-place-called-the-Commonwealth.” Crazy Beethoven realizes Daryl is “Anglais.” “I speak,” he says. “Sky blue, grass green. Where is Brian? He is in the kitchen?” I’m hazarding a guess that this man is not of entirely sound mind.

Beethoven takes them downstairs into a cluttered office where there is a radio. Daryl rattles its bits ineffectively, reminding me of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Isabelle says something in French about a place called Le Nid, and Beethoven replies “Yes, of course. The radio could call to there.” Daryl stops pretending he knows anything about technology and asks the man to fire up the radio. “Oh no,” says the man in dismay, and asks if they would like a show. “What the fuck?” says Daryl, and Beethoven tells Isabelle that he used some of the radio parts for “amplification.” “Do you like Ravel?” he asks and starts playing Boléro through a makeshift sound system. He goes upstairs, telling Isabelle and Daryl to follow him into the auditorium.

The episode opens with a flashback. Isabelle (Cleménce Poésy), dressed in eveningwear, stands on a rooftop looking out over pre-apocalypse Paris. Behind her is a brightly lit nightclub, electronic music blasting. She goes inside, weaving her way between dancers, eyeing people and being eyed by men. She chooses a man with whom to dance, and they break it down in slow motion until she walks away. She lets two other men buy her drinks as the evening passes, and she snorts some cocaine. We see the scars on her wrist from her suicide attempt. Guess we’re not flashing back far enough to find out about those.

Eventually, she puts her coat on and leaves, stopping in the lobby while she waits for the elevator. In her purse are men’s watches, which she has spent the night stealing. She stares at herself in the mirror doors of the elevator. She doesn’t like herself. Her hair looks great though, 10/10 for that. Screaming comes from inside the club, and she walks into a quiet corridor, taking pills out her bag and swallowing some. We get it: the nun was once a drug-snorting, pill-popping thief. Everything slows down again as her high hits. 

Daryl (Norman Reedus) washes up on a beach, tied to a capsized boat. Exhausted, he collapses on the sand. He is parched, but half-buried in the sand further up the beach is a child’s plastic bucket. It could be full of saltwater or dog urine, but he gulps its contents without doing so much as a finger test.

Leaving the beach, Daryl figures out he is in France when he sees a French sign. He is unmoved by this discovery, or perhaps so shaken by it that his face is briefly paralyzed. He plods onwards, and likely realizes around the same time as we do that France, like the cast of The Walking Dead, looks hot even in the apocalypse. 

He finds a boat, which helpfully contains some bottled water, a map, and a dictaphone with working batteries, twelve years into the apocalypse. Oh la la! The British owner of the boat voice-journaled, and we see a montage of Daryl cooking fish and looking at the map as he listens. Tragically, the Brit’s wife died, and he speaks mournfully on the tape of how his daughter wants to go home. Daryl does too. He picks up a stuffed penguin as he contemplates home. Is this a sniggering gesture towards the fact that he will shortly meet a different kind of “penguin,” in the form of a nun? I very much fear it is.