THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY, Season 1, Episode 3, PEOPLE ARE A RESOURCE

Written By:

Rich Cross

walking_dead_dead_city_people_are_a_resource

by Rich Cross

Episode three of Dead City has an ‘eve of the mission’ feel, as events foreshadow the looming showdown between Maggie and Negan’s raiding party and The Croat’s well-armed militia.

Scripted by Walking Dead newcomer Keith Staskiewicz and directed by Kevin Dowling, who previously handled the two-part opener to the Walking Dead’s final season, this is the first episode not written by showrunner Eli Jorné. There are some shifts in the tone and texture of the storytelling as a result, but nothing that feels out of sync with the thematic concerns of People Are a Resource. This does feel like the right point in the opening series to turn up the introspective and reflective dial to better invest the coming confrontation with greater emotional impact.

When it comes to the business of despatching the island’s endless undead, things are not quite as intense as in the first two episodes – although there’s still a decent quota of decapitation and pointy-stick action. Instead, Staskiewicz turns his attention to the life decisions that the survivors scattered around the city have made in order to arrive at this point. The story explores the risks that characters are prepared to shoulder in order to honour their commitments to others and – just as importantly – what it takes to demonstrate loyalty (born either from love or from fear) to those whose fate you share.

The intimate exchanges between Maggie and Negan continue to be compelling as the pair try to negotiate their impossibly fraught history and share difficult personal secrets. Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan have created such a strong rapport on screen that, even at their quietest and most thoughtful, their characters’ sense of regret and remorse feels palpable. Maggie reveals parental guilt about her judgemental, scolding relationship with Hershel and her son’s petulant rejection of her attempts to keep him safe. Negan confesses his distress at being unable to protect his wife from predators and the ruse he played in order that she and their child might find sanctuary. Both of them are struggling with the anguish that comes from trying to deliver the best life possible for those that they love while not always feeling equal to the responsibility.

Soon after that moment of respite and shared vulnerability, events confront the pair with unwelcome new moral dilemmas. In order to encourage Tommaso, Amaia and others in the scavenger group to join their attack on his stronghold, Negan draws thinly-veiled parallels between his past behaviour as the head of the Saviors and the activities of The Croat. Maggie encourages the group to see that a take-down of the Manhattan warlord and his Burazi gang is possible.

But while both Negan and Maggie are fixated on an assault on the Burazi’s Madison Square Garden headquarters, the group’s strongman Luther is sceptical. His opposition leads to a one-and-one confrontation with Negan, with the most unfortunate of consequences. Maggie’s need for Negan’s abilities leads her to contemplate an unconscionable decision to hide news from him – to avoid him being distracted by personal priorities of his own. Such actions are in direct conflict with the pair’s growing mutual reliance and bring a frisson to the build-up to the raid.

Flashbacks build up the story of the taciturn young Ginny and the gently tender relationship between Negan and his young charge. Her willingness to sacrifice safety, and disobey his instructions, show the strength of her connection to him and her unshakeable resolve.

Through his interview with Marshall Perlie Armstrong, The Croat gets to strut his maniacal stuff and show off his bad-boy credentials while Perlie silently observes as he tries to get a sense of what makes this unhinged dictator tick. A gruesomely one-sided cage-fighting bout reveals more of The Croat’s murderous methods and leads him to uncover some surprising news about an old adversary, while Armstrong realises how narrow his options have now become.

Dowling handles the action elements well and makes space for some strong visuals – a lone canoeist making their way to the island in a makeshift craft is among the most striking. Yet this is fundamentally an episode about characters, commitments and the impossibly tough choices confronting them.