Once upon a time, The Walking Dead was known for some of the most shocking, out-of-left-field twists on TV. Character deaths, major status quo shifts, outlandish fake outs, you name it, The Walking Dead probably did it, and all in the name of keeping its viewers violently off balance – and even though in hindsight, most of those twists were probably actually quite lazy acts of stun-inducing script writing, they were pretty effective at keeping us completely off balance.
Until they weren’t, that is. Yep, after years of trying to shock us with a callous mortality rate, we all became numbed to even the most out there attempts to knock us off our jaded asses. However, in this new era of The Walking Dead where the franchise is in mortal danger of becoming actual must-see TV again (not quite there yet), the desire to blow our socks off with an episode that suddenly rewrites the entire playbook still obviously lurks within the Dead City creative team. Welcome to episode 5; forget what you think you know.
Despite their respective experiences keeping them apart, mortal enemies Maggie and Negan are both feeling the pinch from the controlling people they’re forced to be aligned with. After successfully bringing Bruegel and humis gang under the banner of the Dama, Negan now has to try and pull the same trick with New York’s other major gang, the one led by the bone-wearing Christos; but after a tense opening, the man with the bat realises that despite their fiersome reputation, it turns out that this group of hulking bezerkers are actually sheltering children. However, just as Negan seems to be getting through to Christos, the Croat arrives with orders to punish the gang for an apparent act of sabotage that occured the night before.
Meanwhile, while Maggie, Perlie and Hershel try to locate the methane production facilities of the Burazi, they find themselves betrayed by an impatient Ginny who finally gives Narvaez the excuse she needs to take over and start violently recruiting the Foragers to New Babylon’s cause. After discovering that Negan’s death at the hands of Perlie was nothing but the purest bullshit, she proves she means business by first hanging the Foragers’ leader, Roksana, and then threatening to do the same with Maggie, but when a freak Walker attack brought on by the Foragers’ wails tears through the camp, sides ate reassessed on the fly – especially when Bruegel and hid heavies show up.
However, eclipsing all these events is the growing rift between the Dama and her lap dog, The Croat who, thanks to a bit of prodding by Negan, has finally had enough of being treated so poorly when it is he who has primarily made his her vision for Manhattan a reality. Gargantuan power shifts, seismic deaths and the occasional serious wound all merge to provide an episode that turns the entirety of Dead City on its head.
So to make things crystal clear, I’m not suggesting that the metric ton of handbrake turns this episode attacks the series with are elegantly plotted twists that strike you with their complexity rather than it just feels like the writers have just all mutually decided to just fuck with us just to keep the pace going – but that doesn’t mean that The Bird Always Knows isn’t an entertaining dollop of WTF TV. At times, the sudden shocks feel like they’ve been concocted to mindlessly create the illusion of random chaos; at others it seems like they’ve thrown in a death or two because they haven’t got the slightest clue what to do with a certain character; but every now and then, one of the rapid fire rug pulls smacks of promise and a measured clearing of a slate in order to let bigger ideas grow. The result is an unmitigated mess that batters you so senseless for 48 minutes that you’re not so much personally involved, but instead watching a horrible car crash happen in slo-mo that you can’t look away from.
As the bedlam spreads, some underutilised characters have a chance to finally come off the bench with Ginny in particular given an outlandishly busy arc after literally doing fuck all for four whole episodes. Turning traitor, turning back and sustaining a potentially mortal wound is a lot to absorb in one go, but she’s somehow eclipsed by the fact that Dascha Polanco’s Narvaez finally makes that long hinted at play for power, kills some people, has that long awaited showdown with Maggie that’s been brewing since the start of the season – and then fucking dies after cramming in a season’s worth of character beats in a single episode.
If I’m being brutally honest, it’s not unlike the same trick the Daryl Dixon show tried when it also abruptly cleaned house without warning and ot should come across as fairly unsatisfying. And yet thanks to that reckless pace the season’s been setting up to now, the utter waste of an entire character who barely had time to make an impact isn’t anywhere near as annoying as it should be.
Elsewhere, the entire Christos subplot is literally done away with even quicker, which makes the entire thread concerning Negan uniting all the gangs utterly moot in an instant, but you get the sense that the writers are haphazardly killing off characters along with entire plot threads to ensure that we take our eye off the ball for the big status shift of the night. While Christos gets his skull smashed in, Roksana gets hung and Narvaez racks up more zombie bites than a House Of The Dead arcade machine with a defective light gun, the main headline we’re left with is the death of the Dama herself who, after a blazing row with an underling sick of her endless putdowns, is roasted alive in a freak accident that the Croat allows to happen. It’s a big moment for the character who has been yearning for a main villain push since he first arrived, but as the petty sadist finally gets his due, we find that even in his flourishing moment, he’s still only a tool of others. While there’s no proof yet, I’d bet dollars to pesos that Bruegel is responsible for framing Christos for the power outage, but we certainly know that Negan’s totally responsible for the Croat finally finding a spine as a few verbal nudges here and a crushed pet rat there finally lights the touch paper that starts a literal inferno.
While it’s true that all the machinations and deaths contained within the episode are fairly heavy handed and (as usual with The Walking Dead these days) smacks a little of some ungainly plotting, once again that brisk pace prevents you from thinking just enough as all the carnage soon mounts up. Does it once again come at the cost of Maggie, Hershel and Perlie (who is honestly becoming less interesting by the episode)? Yes, but the damage is strangely minimal considering all the good stuff this season has belonged to the bad guys. But we get a bunch of twists, another zombie attack and a genuine sense that we now have no idea where this season is going and as of right now, being unpredictable is a tremendously good thing for The Walking Dead to be.
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