The Walking Dead: Dead City — Old Acquaintances review S1 E1
Disclaimer: when AMC announced The Walking Dead was ending and three mini-series were replacing it, that didn’t sound like the best idea. Darryl and Carol made TWD’s most popular remaining characters invulnerable while Rick and Michonne was going to fix a problem of taking two of the big guns off the board for the final season. But Negan and Maggie teaming up for The Walking Dead: Dead City? That sounded like it had the makings to either be disastrous or potentially the most interesting spin-off of the trio.
Dead City’s debut episode, Old Acquaintances, is still trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up, but it was at least interesting. And there were some elements to it that hasn’t been done repeatedly in the Walking Dead universe. Yet it failed in creating a legit reason for Maggie to team up with her most hated enemy and that was easily the biggest question mark when this show was announced.
Some years have passed since TWD’s series finale. Maggie isn’t in that money pit Hilltop anymore. Instead, she’s scoping out New York City, which is littered with hordes and hordes of walkers. Makes sense. A city filled with a million people would have an uninhabitable city filled with a million walkers.
Immediately, the directing and cinematography grabbed my attention as it has an old 1980s thriller horror vibe to it. Loren Yaconelli only directed one episode of the main series but crafted her own tone with the short-lived spin-off World Beyond. It works in creating a different visual style for a Walking Dead series to give Dead City a unique atmosphere.
Maggie tracks down Negan, who’s rolling with a little girl Ginny (Mahina Napoleon). Where’s his wife, Annie, and their kid? No direct answers this episode although it’s clear a number of years have gone by which is enough time for all kinds of tragedies to occur in this universe.
Case in point, Hilltop got raided — which could also just be a typical Tuesday — and these invaders took hostages, including Herschel, to ensure the next month’s tribute would be ready. He’s not the sweet little kid from the final WD season and now is a teenager, played by Logan Kim. That playbook sounds familiar…
Maggie demands Negan come with her as the group’s leader, Croat (Zeljko Simic-Ivanek, 24), had that telltale whistle of a Savior. This felt like a serious stretch. For starters, the Saviors were basically wiped out in the war against Alexandria, Hilltop and The Kingdom. Secondly, it was 10 years at least since that conflict. Would Negan really know anyone who decided to franchise out The Saviors tag?
It sure feels like tracking down a kid in inhospitable territory is more of a job for Daryl Dixon than Negan. And Maggie is freshly pissed off at Negan for the whole bashing her husband’s brains out with a barbed wire baseball bat. It’s been a decade+, Maggie — let.it.go.
Seriously, Maggie tolerated Negan and was kinda OK with him in the final season so this feels like a serious regression of that very shaky bond. And Maggie really has several other communities worth of loyal allies and capable fighters to exhaust on her emergency contact list before reaching out to Negan. I get it. The writers wanted Maggie and Negan hanging out on a mission — logic be dang.
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To further spice things up, there’s a trio of marshals, led by Perlie Armstrong (Gaius Charles, Salt). They’re bad news, which is helpfully indicated by their black hats and trench coats. Oh, and throwing a woman into a mini horde for aiding and abetting Negan’s escape from justice. We’re gonna need this backstory ASAP as again, it’s been over a decade since Negan did anything particularly shady. And I’d still argue Rick and company started that war with the Saviors by indiscriminately killing Saviors in the middle of the night.
Naturally, Perlie and his marshals find Maggie’s notepad so they’re able to track down where she’s headed. Maggie doesn’t have any energy for Negan’s bond with Ginny as she’s back to having nightmares about Negan killing Glenn and Herschel screaming for her. Perlie’s crew catches up to Maggie and Negan, but she gets the drop on the younger deputy Jano (Trey Santiago-Hudson) and brings him onto her makeshift ferry to NYC.
That’s a good thing since Maggie making “I hate you eyes” at Negan for six episodes was gonna get old real fast. At least Jano can provide another character to help balance out the dynamic. Negan’s over the whole Maggie despising him thing and asks her how many husbands and fathers has she killed? That’s a fair question, Maggie.
Along their surprisingly uneventful stroll through the city, walkers start dropping from roof tops. That must have been a heck of a roof top party. This is also a spectacle that hasn’t been done before in TWD making for a wild visual. A street sweeper blaring music is leading the hordes through the city on a set path for some reason.
To steer clear of them, Maggie, Negan and Jano hide behind some trash. In New York City? They were extremely fortunate it was just a pack of roaches instead of zombie rats.
The marshals gun down enough of the horde to free Maggie and crew up to head into an abandoned building. Perlie wants to talk things out with Maggie, but gets a little twitchy and somehow manages to shoot Jano instead of Negan. Guess Negan and Jano do look enough alike…
Perlie’s other marshal can’t hold back the horde at the door. Where’s Hordor when you need him? Also, why didn’t Marshal #2 not oh I don’t know, shoot his gun to stave off the horde just a little?
Maggie and Perlie get into a tussle, which Maggie wins and like any sensible combatant, she tosses his gun??? Maybe in this world John Wick doesn’t exist…
Negan and Maggie, party of two, try to navigate the building without attracting the walkers when a creepy lady blows out his candle. Now that was an effective ending.
Except it’s not. We need some reinforcement that the kidnapper is the bad guy so Croat interrogates Herschel about Negan. Why would anyone care about Negan at this point? Especially one who’s the (Zombie) King of New York? One of Croat’s hostages escapes and tries a daring breakout using a rope. Spoiler: This doesn’t end well for him.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan are going to drag Dead City to respectability no matter how shaky the setup. With a fresh new backdrop, a menacing enough villain and a short episode count, this spin-off looks to have plenty of life to keep TWD fans entertained.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Photo Credit: AMC