The Walking Dead: Dead City Recap: SmackDown

We’re halfway through the character experiment that isThe Walking Dead: Dead Cityand I have to say it now before it takes over the entire recap: I don’t get how Maggie puts up with Negan. It’s not that he’s being cruel to her or toxic. He’s just annoying. He’s not helping her as much as he seems to think he is. And he’s a constant reminder of a trauma she’s still living with daily. In this episode, she goes from tearing up over a picture of her dead husband to having to face the man who murdered him in seconds. I know she needs him, but I feel for her. At least it’s almost over. “People Are Resources,” episode 3 ofDead Cityinched our three factions closer together, introduced a new survivor, and revealed some interesting traditions. An alliance is formed and the stakes are raised. It’s the middle of the season, all right!

This week’s three storylines have minimal overlap, so I will go through them one by one, starting with Miss Ginny. The episode kicks off with Negan’s ward, who, as you may recall, ran away from her new living situation at the end of the previous episode, in a flashback to her travels with Negan. He finds her in the woods, next to the walker of a man Negan killed the night before, looking for her stuffed dinosaur.

Negan complains that they’ve been looking for a safe home for the girl for months and absolutely pops off about mental health while the two search for the lost toy. He tells Ginny that whatever’s keeping her from talking needs to go on the back burner, more or less. There aren’t any therapists to help her process what she’s been through, he says, so get to getting over it. (Speak for yourself.) How has having undiagnosed personality disorders worked out for you, Negan? He’s concerned about safety and survival, so I understand why he’s frustrated. But it was still a bit harsh. Eventually, he compromises with the girl and proposes they communicate by whistle. The dinosaur was in her bag all along, but torn, and Negan repairs it for her.

In the present, Ginny makes her way to New Jersey and starts paddling across the river to Manhattan. While wandering the city, she drops her dino again. Be more careful! It gets picked up by a scavenger, played by Aixa Kendrick, who brings it to the group Maggie and Negan are staying with. Maggie recognizes the dinosaur and knows Ginny must be close but keeps quiet about it. That’s probably smart. She, unfortunately, can’t afford to lose Negan right now. At the end of the episode, Ginny (who followed the scavenger) watches as Maggie almost burns her beloved stuffed animal. Does she do it? I don’t think so, but we don’t see for sure.

Backing up, Negan and Maggie got better acquainted with their New York survivor allies. They hunted a wild deer, participated in a prayer circle complete with personal tokens and humming, learned a little more about the early days of the outbreak in the city, and heard how the Croat moved in and started cutting down their numbers with his fanatical ways. The Croat is set up in Madison Square Garden, where loud music lures walkers towards them and creates a barrier. They even have the Turkey float from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade wandering the area. It’s a haunting image. Tommaso, however, knows a secret way in through Penn Station. So they start to plan their attack.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Croat is doing in Manhattan what Negan did in Virginia. He’s created a cult of personality, offering “creature comforts” and a “sanctuary” that terrorizes those unwilling to join up and doesn’t really value human life. Negan can say he isn’t that guy anymore and that he didn’t really mean what he did, all that he wants. But that doesn’t change the fact that he has a legacy.The Walking Deadoccasionally touched on this in the later seasons. There was aparticularly good episode in Season 10just after Angela Kang took over as showrunner where Negan met and had to contend with, for lack of a better word, one of his fanboys.Dead Cityhas the opportunity to dig even deeper into the repercussions of his philosophy and actions.

Negan also knows it, even if he hasn’t processed it. Negan immediately starts spinning a yarn about a similar “fellow down South” 12 to 15 years ago. Maggie, along with the audience, knows he’s talking about himself. He just can’t help it! He uses his own downfall as a pep talk to convince the survivors that they can stand up to the Croat. I don’t know if that demonstrates too much or a lack of self-awareness.

Maggie takes a quiet moment to take out a small box and look at pictures of her family, her father’s watch, and a drawing of Glenn. Negan interrupts to ask if she wants to talk. He promises that he knows how to shut up and listen, “contrary to popular relief.” He also reassures her that, despite the doubts of their new allies, Herschel is alive and their plan is going to work. Hands shaking, Maggie says that she and Herschel fought the day he was kidnapped. She feels like she’s been fumbling through parenting, screwing him over and over and over. “There weren’t a lot of people who meant anything to me in this world,” she says. “But there were enough. And whatever’s left of all of them is inside this box. And I’m…”

She trails off. Negan responds by telling Maggie what happened to his new wife and son. They were living outside of New Babylon. Annie got mugged on a supply run, and Negan killed the perpetrators for revenge. They went on the lamb, but he stayed behind and just has to hope that they’re still alive. “I thought you knew how to shut up,” Maggie replies. Boy, did that make me laugh. Sometimes you don’t need to reply to someone’s personal story with a vaguely related anecdote of your own. There’s a right and a wrong way to do that. Considering that Negan is the reason for Maggie’s parenting alone, he really needed to take his own advice and STFU. Those stories don’t connect! The only thing is that he like … also has family members he’s worried about. Who doesn’t? It’s been the apocalypse!

At the end of the episode, Luther (the de facto leader of the NYC survivors) calls Negan out. Luther tells him that he wants Negan and Maggie out ASAP. He reads him the New Babylon Marshall’s Wanted poster, which reads like the Burn Book inMean Girlsfor some reason. “Anti-social. Prone to extreme violence. Above-average intelligence and charisma. Do not trust him. He is a fugly slut.” Anyway, Negan refuses Luther’s banishment and kills him with a cheese grater. That definitely won’t have any negative consequences … how soon can Maggie ditch him again?

Finally, speaking of the New Babylon Marshalls, let’s check in on our pal Perlie Armstrong. The Croat is holding him in a box suite at MSG. One of the Croat’s followers comes in with the Croat’s dinner. While he eats, he explains how his sanctuary has power and amenities. The leader is a former engineer who uses methane gas produced by the abundance of dead bodies in the city to make fuel.

Then the Croat finds a maggot in his meal and does something wild that I can’t wrap my head around. The sequence of events is this: he takes the key to Armstrong’s handcuffs, forces the follower who served the food to swallow it, and then slits his throat. Then, he has Armstrong drugged and chained up in a fighting ring, where Perlie realizes he’s supposed to put down the zombified follower and dig the key out of his guts. This happens in front of the Croat’s cheering cult, by the way, for entertainment purposes. MSG does have a storied history of boxing matches and WWE fights but like … wow. Was this the Croat’s plan for his prisoner the whole time, or did he really kill that random follower because of the maggot? Did he just improvise the whole thing?

At the end of the episode, the Croat taunts Perlie with a letter asking for help from his dead relative. Perlie cuts him off and reveals that he’s looking for the Croat’s frenemy: Negan. I don’t really know why it took them an entire episode to realize they were on the same side … but I guess we wouldn’t have gotten to see some sick zombie kills and intestine diving otherwise. Between the fight club and the cheese grater, this definitely was one of the nastier episodes in the show thus far. It even surpassed some original flavorTWDepisodes on the violence front. That does bode well for the confrontations we’re gearing up to in the back half of the season. The setup is keeping it interesting, but it’s still set up. Let’s get to the good stuff, please.

• Fans ofThe Walking Deadwho have attended New York Comic-Con in the past know that the Theater at Madison Square Garden is special to the franchise. For years, the cast gathered for panels in the venue and received the full rockstar treatment. And, if you will indulge me a personal note, I and a group of other journalists once got lost after aTWDpress conference and ran into Jeffrey Dean Morgan, as well as Norman Reedus, in the MSG parking deck. Weird way to experience nostalgia while watching a post-apocalyptic show, but there you go.

• I’m not going to forget that Negan said he sent his wife and son on a “wagon train” to Missouri. What in the Oregon Trail is that?! We’ve got apocalyptic public transportation now? Why can’t I watchthatshow?

• Maggie and Tommaso’s sweet little conversation about whether or not it’s safe to have a kid in the city was bizarrely normal, don’t you think? I could have that conversation right now in my zombie-free life.

• Of course the Croat has a Dead Wife Backstory TM. Is anyone shocked? He says they were killed and eaten by cannibals while he was out looking for food. It doesn’t really matter, but I wonder if they were the famous Terminus cannibals.

• Thanks to my yearly sad girl winter watches ofInside Llewyn DavisI recognized the needle drop at the end of the episode in about three notes. The folk song in question, “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” was sung by Llewyn’s IRL inspiration Dave Van Ronk instead of Oscar Isaac but no less melancholy.