The Walking Dead: Dead City – People Are a Resource review S1 E3
We’re at the halfway point of Dead City and given the smaller scope of the mission even in this crazy scenario it’s about time to start making some headway to getting things accomplished. Instead, People Are a Resource mainly focused on Ginny and Perlie.
Shifting the spotlight to supporting players isn’t a terrible idea for a new ongoing series, but if Dead City is just a one and done special, there’s no real need to devote time to other players.
Ginny’s time was split between flashbacks to her early encounters and lessons with Negan and her arrival to NYC to find her mentor/protector/friend. The inherent issue with Ginny’s storyline is she has to have a certain amount of plot armor to avoid any calamity before she reunites with Negan. Even if that means rolling through the city during the day and just outracing walkers.
Along the way, she drops a stuffed dinosaur she carries everywhere with her. As part of a Negan lesson, he stole it while trying to get her to talk. That failed, but at least he was able to get Ginny to mimic his whistle. Whenever she does that, Negan will come running.
Ginny managed to drop her dino and a masked stranger picks it up to add to her haul.
Back at the camp, Negan lightly shares his origin with Tomasso, Amaia and Luther while casually omitting the part where the three communities rallied to stop him and his Saviors.
Maggie kinda does him a solid by telling the crew that Negan and The Croat were old pals, but adds Negan blew his ear off. While emotions and the past is getting brought up, Maggie finds Herschel’s drawing of Glenn. Negan has terrible timing in offering a baseball cap like (Glenn and) Herschel used to wear. At least Maggie takes him up on his offer to be a listening ear.
She’s upset as Maggie’s last conversation with Herschel was them arguing. Hope to make her feel better about her situation, Negan finally reveals what happened to his wife and son. They lived outside of New Babylon and Annie went to town to trade.
When she didn’t return, Negan found her robbed and beaten, but not dead. Annie wasn’t around long on The Walking Dead, but getting killed off screen would have been a sucky fate for a character that had a significant role last season.
Still, Negan being Negan, he tracked down the five robbers and killed them. This explains why the New Babylon marshal, Perlie, is after Negan. Life on the run wasn’t what Negan envisioned for his family so he sent them on a train to Missouri, while he stayed behind and eventually found himself watching over Ginny. He tells Maggie “What else do we have besides hope?” Maggie gives him crap for still not knowing how to shut up but accepts the cap all the same.
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Luther, Tomasso and Amaia and some of the few survivors sit around the table with mementos of their fallen/missing friends. This was presented like it was this deep meaningful moment, but kinda fell flat.
Meanwhile, The Croat wants some answers from Perlie. Just to show he’s not messing around, The Croat makes one of his minions swallow the keys to Perlie’s handcuffs and then kills him. If Perlie wants out, he’s gonna have to get into the makeshift MMA cage and kill the minion, who’s now a walker.
As he hypes up the crowd, The Croat says their dead is their food as people are a resource. This was a less than subtle way to work in the episode title. Perlie isn’t too rattled and calmly decapitates him to retrieve the key while The Croat and his followers observe. When three more walkers are brought in Perlie simply takes off his boot to kill them. He’s resourceful at least.
Away from the cage and back in The Croat’s luxury box, he reads Perlie’s brother’s note. That’s enough to crack Perlie who shares his two fellow marshals are dead and he’s come to NYC for Negan. That definitely gets The Croat’s attention.
Turns out the masked lady is a friend of Tomasso and crew and after Maggie spots it, she hands her the toy dino.
Luther also made a find — Negan’s wanted poster — and wants them gone ASAP. Negan isn’t down with not helping Maggie and refuses, earning a bear hug for his trouble. Luther gets a cheese grater to the forehead and while reeling from that pain, gets impaled on a stray pipe on the floor. That’s probably not going to help Negan’s case about he and Maggie being useful allies. But does Negan really care?
Clearly the burning (pun intended) question from this episode is will Maggie really set Ginny’s dino on fire?
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Photo Credit: AMC