THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Season 2, Episode 6, BRIDGE PARTNERS ARE HARD TO COME BY THESE DAYS

Written By:

Rich Cross

The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2, Episode 6, BRIDGE PARTNERS ARE HARD TO COME BY THESE DAYS

When it comes to major advances in the story arc, Episode Six is the least consequential in the season so far. The script delivers a few incremental forward steps but, compared with the stories that precede it, there’s less going on in Bridge Partners – although a random intrusion by a wild animal does briefly lift the tempo and the sense of jeopardy. But it’s not enough to make this a memorable Manhattan moment.

After Bruegel rescues Maggie and her gang in Central Park, he takes them back to his headquarters, and makes them an offer that he hopes they won’t refuse. Positioning himself as the power broker controlling all of the pieces on the board, he commits to sending Maggie and the remnants of the New Babylon forces home laden with barrels of methane. In return, Perlie, Maggie and the others will have to help Bruegel take out the Burazi, The Dama and The Croat, and take control of the city.

But, like Hershel, Bruegel is unaware that The Dama appears to be dead, and that an unexpected struggle to succeed her is now underway. A deflated Croat, weary of the pressures of running The Dama’s enclave considers returning to his homeland. But when he realises that Negan engineers the antagonism between him and the Dama, he turns on Negan, battering him as the Burazi look on. When Negan gets the upper hand, he expels The Croat to emerge as the Burazi’s unchallenged new leader.

The elevation of these two alpha males to the status of the season’s key antagonists is far from surprising, despite the fact that Negan started the season as a trophy prisoner. The script by showrunner Eli Jorné tries to inject some freshness into Negan’s latest return to power, by emphasising his sense of contrition and self-doubt, and transferring Negan’s trademark bombast and theatricality to Bruegel. But the looming showdown between the pair risks sidelining the conflict between New Babylon and The Dama’s forces which previous stories spent so much time building up.

The Burazi accept Negan’s coup without comment, and he quickly adopts a new adjutant and confessor in the shape of the historian Benjamin. Gripped by doubts as to whether he is capable of redemption, he sends away his partner Annie and Joshua (who’ve been kidnapped and brought to Manhattan by The Dama as leverage) without speaking to them. It does feel odd that Jorné decides to sidestep the drama that an agonised family reunion would open up. Perhaps that reluctance comes from the realization that Negan’s decision to stay in Manhattan is inexplicable. Now a free man once again, he could just embrace his family and head home.

But that’s nowhere near as strange as the arrival of an enraged wild bear at Bruegel’s compound. It bursts on scene just as Maggie and Hershel experience their latest fallout. Hershel’s loyalty to The Dama seems unbreakable, and he’s determined to alert her to the impending attack by Bruegel. After his mother interrupts a botched bid to poison Bruegel’s soldiers, he storms off just as the bear is looking for its next meal. It’s a short-lived CGI-driven set-piece and, though it’s not very spectacular, it is one of the most arbitrary surprises in Dead City to date – and one heavily trailed by AMC in the US. It’s also a life-and-death incident completely detached from the main plot.

While Hershel’s story appears to be going round in circles, as the petulant adolescent once again commits to betraying his mother, Ginny’s tale is at last approaching a more significant endpoint. She heads off to exact retribution on Negan, seizing the opportunity to point a pistol at him. When she collapses, as the result of an infected injury, Negan’s conflicted instincts lead him to take care of a young girl who wants him dead. So, unlike the spiky situation with Hershel and Maggie, some sort of Negan and Ginny reconciliation seems likely.

Bridge Partners is Lauren Cohen’s (Maggie) first outing as a director on the series, and it’s a challenging debut. Jorné’s muddled script, which makes slow progress on the main storyline and retreads some familiar paths, offers Cohen few easy wins (random bear notwithstanding). It does at least handle what’s long felt like the inevitability of Negan’s resurgence, although quite how the battle lines for the season finale will be etched onto the streets of Manhattan still seems unclear.