I apologize for the tardiness of this review. I think there’s a part of me that is just . . . not motivated by The Walking Dead anymore. Call it burnout. Call it apathy. Call it what you will.
I like Dead City. It’s pretty good! It’s probably the best Walking Dead I’ve seen in the past few years, far better than anything Fear has put out since Season 3, and better than the last couple seasons of the main show.
But I’m still just kind of bored, I guess. I don’t care what happens to Maggie or her kid. Negan is great and the villainous Croat is fun, and the fact that the two of them have a past makes it pretty compelling. And yet, I find myself drifting. Are there any real stakes here? Will either of the main characters die?
Probably not. In this episode, the good guys make an assault on the stadium where the Croat has his base set up (another stadium—someone should call Madison) and he’s set an elaborate trap. I’m not entirely sure how he knew they were coming but he was ready for them. A huge fight breaks out where the cage fight took place last week, and I felt . . . nothing.
Maggie would be fine, I knew. And I knew that some of these new characters would die. They’re just as hardened fighters and survivors as Maggie, but they’re disposable and stupid because that’s how AMC treats anyone who isn’t part of the core group. It’s all so predictable. Also, why didn’t they go into the cage right away? Seems like a good place to kill zombies through the fencing instead of just letting them surround you on all sides as you fight in individual little pockets. You’d think surviving this long in the apocalypse would mean you’re the best of the best, but most of these people are idiots.
Negan’s confrontation with the Croat was a nice, tense scene, and I like that he saved the marshal only to have the marshal turn right around and arrest him. “You’re kind of a dick,” Negan says in response, which made me chuckle.
My favorite part of the entire episode was the flashback to the Sanctuary where we get to see Simon (Steven Ogg) for the first time in years since he was killed off long ago. I have a special place in my heart for Steven Ogg thanks to his role as Trevor in Grand Theft Auto V which remains one of the greatest video game performances (and characters) of all time. We learn that the Croat was the kind of guy who would happily torture and kill a child, which doesn’t bode well for Hershel. Simon yells at him that they draw the line at kids, and Negan seems a bit conflicted. Later we learn that he must have tried to kill the Croat because he blasted his ear off.
The Croat shrugs this off with Negan in the present timeline. “So you blasted my ear off! It’s okay, I have another one!” he says, trying to lure Negan into complacency. It doesn’t work.
In any case, things look fairly grim for our heroes as we head into the final two episodes of this season. It looks like next week we may get some variant walkers, which would be cool. All told, another entertaining episode. I just can’t shake the apathy I feel toward the spinoff—and the franchise—in general.
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