I don’t know. Maybe I’d been so surprised that second season of Dead City wasn’t the frustrating slog that the first season was that I was being generous. Maybe I was so disappointed that Daryl Dixon’s second season was a step down from the first that I wanted to believe that The Walking Dead could maintain its upwards course. Whatever the reason, I’d actually let myself hope that Dead City was going to knock it out of the (Central) park, but after the massive status quo shift that occurred last episode, the show was always going to go either one of two ways.
In a huge shuffle which saw major antagonists such as the Dana and Narvaez suddenly bumped off and sizable plot threads suddenly either diverted or dropped entirely, the aftermath was either going to emerge with renewed, unpredictable focus; or collapse into a sort of confused lope as the jumbled storylines staggered around in disarray. Which has Dead City chosen? Of course it’s taken the latter.
After being rescued by Bruegel and his men, Maggie Hershel, Perlie and the secretly injured Ginny are led out of Central Park and granted an opportunity to get their collected heads together. Of course, Bruegel’s kindness comes with some conditions and as he details his plans to take out all the other New York gangs and throw his lot in with New Babylon, the subject of the methane is thrown about as a bargaining chip.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Dama being roasted to a crisp, the Croat has to deal with his emotions after being pretty much responsible for her death despite his strings being well and truly pulled by Negan who further presses his advantage as suggests his former protege leave Manhattan and start a new life. However, after the Croat discovers some incriminating evidence on the sole of Negan’s boot, the two clash and in front of a stunned Burazi, the latter manages to depose and exile the former.
Meanwhile, back as casa de Bruegel, Maggie catches Hershel in the act of poisoning the gang’s water supply and rightly assumes it’s a lingering part of the hold the Dama has over him, but before she can confront him properly, they are interrupted by an attack from a crazed bear – no really. While Maggie manages to ultimately take down the rampaging grizzy, Hershel escapes and Maggie leaves trying to find him; but both are utterly unaware that the woman he’s so obsessed by has been frazzled to death.
Now fully in control of the Burazi, Negan has some moments of self reflection before another, oddly civilised reunion with Maggie sees him send her to where her son might me, but now that he finally has a chance to be reunited with his family, will he accept them, or send them away for their own good?
Regardless of his decision, a seriously sick Ginny finally hopes to get a measure of retribution.
I don’t know why I thought the huge villain culling of Dead City was going to work, because I’m fairly sure that when Daryl Dixon tried it during its second season it ended having the exact same effect. While I was totally jazzed at the audacious nature of such a twist while it was in action, the aftermath of all these shock deaths and seismic shifts once again feels like the writers didn’t actually have a plan in place once they implemented it. The result is a meandering episode which tonally zig zags all over the place before randomly throwing in a bear attack somewhere around the middle that barely (snicker) has any ramifications whatsoever and a bunch of emotional confrontations that strangely carry no weight.
With no Dama to play the Croat off of, Negan immediately loses the edge that the storyline had thus far given him and while there are certainly opportunities for some fireworks once the Croat figures out his duplicitous acts, the script downplays it into nothing more than a unsatisfactory squabble that sees the previous figure of menace accept his exile with a minimum of fuss. You could argue that with all the history between the two, the death of the Dama and their previous conversation about leaving this life behind, the fight going out of the Croat makes a certain amount of sense, but it isn’t particularly gripping. Also, Negan’s decision to send his family away once and for all for their safety feels horribly underdeveloped considering that it’s been the fear for his family that got him into this situation in the first place. The final proof that Dead City has lost what edge it had managed to accumulate throughout the series is thatvwe have yet another meeting between the two main characters that somehow contains no crackle of drama whatsoever and once again, The Walking Dead’s habit of overegging its story to the point where they lose the very thing that made them interesting in the first place has now claimed the show’s chief selling point.
What makes this even more baffling is that this episode was helmed by Lauren Cohan herself in her directorial debut, and while shes been admittedly given tough episode to juggle tonally, she presents every scene weirdly flat and if she couldn’t bring a break up between Negan and the Croat to life or add sufficient drama to her own character having a face to face with the man who killed her husband, she’s got no chance of breathing life out of the tired threads featuring Hershel or Ginny. I’m not entirely certain what I’m supposed to be feeling about the possible mortal wound that Ginny has been keeping a secret, but it sure isn’t intrest and her story has been such a non-event this season, I actually had to look up why she had beef with Negan again because I had legitimately forgotten. Similarly, I’ve now lost what little intrest I had in Hershel’s issues as its been dragged out too long without actually feeling like its had the adequate focus to flesh it out. To be fair, it isn’t entirely Cohan’s fault as the problems with the Hershel and Ginny stuff has been kind of bland from the get go, but she does have a few things going for her episode.
For a start, even though the bear sequence has nothing to do with anything, it’s still a fairly nifty scene to watch as a scarred grizzly smashes Walkers into pulp as it comes after our heroine. Another thing that works really well is the space given to Kim Coates Bruegel to allow him to fly and the actor, seemingly realising that he’s technically now the main antagonist, runs with it, going full smarm with a side order of sneer. Adding to those villain vibes is that he has the zombified form of Narvaez stashed in his office and he reveals to Perlie that she filled him in all of the details, meaning that he wants in on the whole New Babylon deal, which means at least the season has somewhere left to go.
The only real tension to be found in this episode comes mostly from whether this dip in quality is merely just a blip, or whether it’s signified yet another instance of The Walking Dead tanking its own season in order to score some huge twists. But from where I’m sitting from, the show has somehow suddenly left itself no real engrossing plotlines with only two episodes of the season to go and I’m starting to think that the zombie virus has somehow spread to the showrunners.
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We Have Issues 