He can only handle ricks stick.

 

Daryl may have been preoccupied with keeping Denise safe on the med run, and what was wrong with Carol.

 

a little was bad driving and a lot was just to piss off Denise.

 

I'm not sure what they were trying to show us there. Was it just to show us Denise had knowledge and skills outside of medicine, to demonstrate her potential to blossom, maybe? Was something wrong with the transmission itself, which may come to play in a future episode? I'm kind of leaning towards the former.

 

It was kind of an annoying brotherly thing to do, so I think that's why it was done. Didn't that fuel truck probably have a manual transmission?

 

I think it was nothing to do with Daryl and instead to show us some of Denise back story. The alcoholic parents, the neglect, probably growing up poor since she talked about driving old beaters. Seeing a sad side of her so we feel worse when they put an arrow through her head.

 

I didn't understand it at all. He wasn't grinning at Denise to let us know it was deliberate. He kept shifting up and down every 5 seconds. There is no shortage of cars in the ZA, if this one didn't work well, why use it? Just another terrible scene IMO. Whatever they were trying to convey, they didn't.

 

Since he spends most of his time riding motorcycles, it's not to hard to believe that he might not have all that much experience driving a stick shift. A lot of avid bikers don't like driving cars or trucks.

The scene was there to allow Denise to give some backstory about herself.

 

I been riding motorcycles since 5 years old - If he can ride a bike - all but scooters shift - then no way he can't drive a stick shift. Although you clutch with your hand on a bike and foot to shift - its really easy to swap and foot clutch and hand shift

More than anything I think they truck was old and had transmissions problems. Might have been able to double clutch it. I drove at one time a really old oil truck that didnt like to shift smooth. Double clutching helped.

In the end its just writers giving an excuse for denise to show she has skills or talk about her back story before she went bye bye

 

What I thought also. Brought back memories of learning stick in a U-Haul lol

 

It seemed strangely in-character, honestly. Daryl has his own style of driving a stick shift just like he has his own style of eating.

 

To be fair, once she mentioned the stick thing Daryl just kept doing it to piss her off.

 

Hey, I put the 'C' in country and I've never met a true 'n true country boy who couldn't drive a stick shift. Heck, most country gals can drive one.

 

Denise sounded a lot like a man in this scene.

 

Yeah, I agree, at the end there he was doing it even worse just to screw with her. But early on, it seemed like honest user error.

 

It was a curious scene in the beginning, although I agree that after she started trying to correct him he made it worse just to mess with her. The scene served two functions, to show a little bit more of her character before she became collateral damage. It was also there to show us that despite his gruff exterior, Daryl does have a sense of humor to mess with someone's head.

As far as his seeming inability to use a stick - not all stick shifts are created equal. There a hundred variations on the basic format and it could be this particular truck had a system that Daryl was not familiar with but Denise was.

 

How?

 

On the other hand, Daryl's not really a touchy-feely kind of person, so it might have been awkward trying to shift with 3 people on the bench seat.

 

this was the biggest error the show has ever made. Failed humor.