Well, now I don’t know what to think. After an episode of frenzied plot twists, the next installment of Dead City suddenly decided to lapse into some sort of fugue state that legitimately seemed to have no idea what to do with itself. However, with one episode to go, The Walking Dead’s most inconsistent spinoff (since the last one) somehow seems to be dragging itself out of its self imposed lull by suddenly throwing parallel setpieces at us and finally puts some welly into the lagging pace.
But how long can the franchise possibly keep this up, and more importantly, how long are viewers going to accept that they’re watching a show that, for a period of seven weeks, hasn’t managed to set a consistent tone of quality or quality of tone.
Still, whatever your opinion of Dead City’s second season, the zombie-fueled, out of control rollercoaster of emotions ain’t done yet…
As the episode starts, we find both Maggie and Negan in something of a maudlin state. With the Dama dead and the leadership of Manhattan up in the air, both of these highly conflicted people busy themselves by looking out for the children in their care and going out on personal quests to ensure their safety. With Ginny rapidly succumbing to a septic wound, Negan leaves pointless historian wannabe Benjamin to look after her and sets off alone to the zombie plagued Bellevue Hospital in order to try and scrounge some antibiotics for his fading ward.
Meanwhile, Maggie is still locked on her course to track down her wayward, brainwashed son, Hershel and finally release him from the hold of the deceased Dama, but during her search, she makes something of an extraordinarily odd ally – the recently deposed Croat. Tricked and manipulated by Negan and cast out from his own gang, the old man has lost all sense of purpose, but nevertheless agrees to aid Maggie in finding her son because he has nothing else better to do. However, Maggie and Negan soon realise that their respective quests will not only include copious Walkers and booby traps, but thanks to the fact that Maggie is near-delirious from a lack of sleep and Negan obtains a mild concussion, the duo seem to undergo their own, respective vision quests that help them adjust their current goals.
But while Negan’s adventure sees him hallucinate his various wives and family and seemingly embrace the more violent aspects of his past, Maggie’s traumatic gauntlet of mazes, Walkers and dizzying heights leads to something way more sinister. As the Croat quietly leaves and she finally comes face to face with Hershel, he has one more betrayal left up his sleeve as it seems the death of the Dama have been greatly exagerated.
So after the random slog of the previous episode (coups, navel gazing and a bloody big bear attack), Dead City seems to have partially recovered from the haze of all those fortnight old plot twists, shaken off the cobwebs and managed to regain a sense of urgency. It does this by cutting out the majority of bullshit that’s been slowing things down and doing something it should have been trying in the first place – focusing solely on its two main characters and prioritising their arcs instead of letting them whither on the vine while they introduced yet more gangs and characters in storylines that ultimately went nowhere (what exactly is the point of Perlie right now). However, while the episode still suffers from some dodgy writing, it’s more focus gaze manages to help get it back up to a steady trot after it had plonked itself down to a standstill.
To start with Maggie, we find that her episode arc is actually a thinly veiled farewell to Željko Ivanek’s Croat who, after the chaos of Dead City’s plotting, has remained a fairly stable constant as the series has continued. Broken and lost, his sudden decision to aid may seem to good to be true (and in a way, it is), but as unlikely as the union is, at least it gives the paranoid old goat a farewell worthy of him. However, aside from monologues about his mother and the old country, he kind of acts like a hollowed-eyed, one-eared Richard O’Brien as he leads Maggie though the Crystal Maze-like obstacle course to reach a ludicrously protected safe house, but taps into the type of trap-loaded setpiece The Walking Dead doesn’t usually get to explore. However, while the concept is sound as a pound, the sequence is weirdly complicated by the fact that Maggie has suddenly been overcome with exhaustion that she can hardly stand straight and also struck with crippling Acrophobia. As a result, it gives the writers licence to suddenly have Maggie act so bizarrely out of character, that it’s a little silly to watch – I can’t remember if it was ever mentioned that Maggie has a serious fear of heights, but I certainly know that none of the recent episodes bothered to set up a lack of sleep that leaves her staggering around like a drunk.
Still, the sequence that sees her trying to cross a cracking glass bridge as Walkers add some unwanted extra pressure works well, even if the visuals are a bit iffy.
Also straddling the line between silly and exciting is Negan’s trip to Bellevue that pulls a similar trick making the guy suddenly act out of sorts after a nasty bump on the head. After setting up the backstory of his cancer ridden, first wife Lucille earlier as he tends to Ginny (another character that literally has no use), he goes out on a mercy mission and after he gets a concussion, he has visions of both her and his next wife, Annie and his son Joshua (whom he recently turned away). However, rather than being touching, it’s just fucking odd, and not in a good way, and having him act weird enough to learn a life lesson from a confusing head injury seems about as lazy as Maggie’s exhaustion.
However, while is may all seem annoying convenient, it does get the show moving again and leads us to a very interesting ending. Firstly, as unlikely as his episode arc was, it seems to have reset him back into a mindset that has him wanting to take up his old, more brutal ways if it means protecting that what he holds dear. On the flip side, if Negan’s situation seems promising, Maggie’s is downright intriguing as it turns out that, in a plot twist I genuinely didn’t see coming, the Dama is actually still alive after faking her death and even though she is still visibly a little cooked, her sudden return is legitimately alarming. For a show packed with dead things, the sight of a crazed, partially burnt old woman lunging directly into camera may be the most potent horror image the shows had in yonks and it’s made all the more spicy as it’s Hershel’s betrayal that makes it possible. While the season has waited a strangely long time to pull that particular trigger I guess it’s going to be the season’s big, emotional finish. Here’s hoping it can continue to wake the show up.
Improving on the narrative no-man’s-land of the previous episode by actually having a point, episode seven is nevertheless a weirdly written installment that has more holes than the unmaintained streets of a ruined New York. Yet for all the careless plotting, the show finally manages to obtain the narrowed down focus that’s thus far evaded the season as it’s raced through its complex set up. Still, plenty of Walker action though, which helps.
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