‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’ Episode 6 Review

The Walking Dead: Dead City’s biggest problem is that Season 1 is simply much too short. It’s the best Walking Dead we’ve had in years, but it’s over in just six episodes. Of those six episodes, five were good and the season finale was very good, which isn’t something you hear me say often when it comes to AMC’s zombie franchise.

In last week’s episode we learned the truth about Maggie’s plan for Negan, though it seemed pretty obvious when Ginny went to Maggie’s community and discovered that the Croat hadn’t taken all their food. He only took Hershel and he did that to force Maggie to find Negan for him, though we also learn that he’s just working for the Dama, and isn’t actually the leader.

I admit, there’s some stuff about this setup that bothers me. For instance, at one point the Croat refers to Maggie as “the Widow” which is just ridiculous. In a world of widows and orphans, why does Maggie get this legendary reputation? It’s a zombie apocalypse. Your chances of being a widow are pretty high! I don’t like it when these shows mythologize their own characters in ways that just aren’t realistic.

In any case, the idea that the Croat would be able to find Maggie and then convince her to find Negan is all a little much. That he and the Dama want Negan to help them unite the various communities in New York City in order to fend off New Babylon is a bit silly also. But I’ll let it slide because the show ended up being a lot of fun, and both Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan are at their best throughout. They bond throughout the show so much that you can tell Maggie isn’t happy about betraying him. She even feels sorry for him when he tells Ginny that he killed her dad. He’s trying to hurt her for her own good, like throwing rocks at a puppy you don’t want following you into danger.

But Maggie still needs Hershel and so she turns Negan over to the Burazi, where they both assume he’s in for some terrible fate. When Maggie talks with Hershel later she sounds like she’s going to go back to save Negan so she can put the whole thing to bed once and for all. But Negan doesn’t really need saving, or at least not from a fate worse than death. It’s not a great situation, of course. The Dama makes it clear that she’ll hurt Hershel if Negan doesn’t play ball, so he really has no choice but to work for her.

We learn other things:

• The Dama is pretty sadistic. She got Hershel to trust her and like her and then she took his pinky toe. Maggie finds a bunch of Hershel’s drawings and they’re all of the Dama and her room.
• Hershel is kind of the worst. I think maybe I’m just burned out on how basically every teenager in every show these days is constantly bratty, headstrong, reckless and so forth. Not all teenagers are awful all the time! I think he’d actually be pretty happy to see his mom and not treat her like crap right away. And I get that he’s upset by her Negan obsession, but she did just trade Negan to free him so . . . get over it?
• I really don’t like the marshal and found his arc strange. Why have him be so sadistic in the first episode? It makes it hard to relate to him at any point the remainder of the series, and even though he does come around and ends up being reasonable and helping them, I just never could get past what a prick he was, and not just in a law and order way. He was cruel and violent
• His boss, the leader of New Babylon, makes it very clear that she’s more interested in the methane being produced in Manhattan, which sets up the stakes for next seasons when, presumably, New Babylon begins its incursion and Negan is forced to lead the fight against them.
• I will say this: The apocalypse is surprisingly matriarchal in these shows! My guess is that in a real zombie apocalypse, women would be in a lot of trouble, but here Maggie is the leader of her community. The leader of New Babylon is a woman. The leader of the Burazi is a woman. The leader of The Commonwealth was a woman, and the leader of Fear’s latest villains was also a woman. The leader of the Whisperers was also a woman. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for women in leadership roles. I just think in an apocalypse society would become rather more primitive and backwards which makes this all feel a little less realistic or plausible. It’s not a big deal, but it’s something I’ve been noticing and thinking about.

I forgot to mention the stabbing. This was easily the worst part of the episode. When Maggie and Negan fight, she stabs him in the chest with a pretty serious knife. It looks painful! But Negan apparently doesn’t bleed. He doesn’t even seem hurt afterwards. You’d think he’d be bleeding through his jacket and have to get it tended to, but it just magically vanishes. Weird!

All told, a very enjoyable season with some stumbling early on and the occasional stupid Walking Dead stuff that just doesn’t make sense, but still a great deal stronger than anything in the main show or Fear The Walking Dead in a long time. The smaller cast was a nice change of pace also as the other shows had become rather bloated by the end. You certainly do lose something not having more characters to care about—especially because you basically know that neither Maggie or Negan is going to die—but overall I enjoyed the show, and this finale definitely had me on the edge of my seat.

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