When series creator Dan Harmon returned to Community for Season 5, after a generally maligned Season 4, the characters explained away the sub-par episodes as being caused by a gas leak… Basically, writing the whole thing off as a hallucination, rather than new writers taking over the show who just did not understand how Community works. Well, The Walking Dead: Dead City? Welcome to your gas leak era.
Spoilers for this week’s episode “Novi Dan, Novi Početak” past this point, but Dead City manages to not just turn in one of the weirdest episodes in Walking Dead history, but also literally does so thanks to a gas leak. Or something. In fact, both Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) go on weird journeys this week that barely make sense. Maggie ends up climbing a skyscraper with The Croat (Željko Ivanek) and dealing with the fear of heights she never previously had in TWD but miraculously gained in Dead City Season 1. Meanwhile, Negan deals with the most bizarre plotline I’ve seen on any of these shows in nearly two decades.
Specifically, he ends up wandering through another building to get medical equipment, which has a gas leak in it. And so basically everything in the former hospital — he’s mostly in the pediatric care wing — is either real, a hallucination, or both. He wanders through a room of perfectly calm child walkers. He sees a vision of Lucille (Hilarie Burton Morgan), his dead wife — not the baseball bat. And he also sees his current wife Annie (Medina Senghore) and their kid, whom he incongruously refused to see in the previous episode*.
(*His excuse was that he didn’t want them to see him all Negan’d out, but come on.)
I guess my big question is: what are we doing here? We’re not learning anything new about Maggie or Negan in this episode (or, I’d argue, most of this season), and sending them off on missions where they wander around buildings is the sort of boring boondoggle that’s frustrating when you’re playing a video game; and downright grueling when you’re watching a TV show. Add in the inconsistent dream logic that infects Negan’s storyline thanks to the gas leak, and you have an episode that is almost entirely impossible to follow. Why are Maggie and The Croat going up and over a dangerous glass bridge, when they could walk across the street? I don’t know. Why is the only place there’s medical equipment a downtown hospital that’s suffering from a gas leak and may or may not be filled with baby zombies, let alone why is Negan going in alone? Unclear.
The bigger issue is that the bones of the ideas for this season make sense. Maggie is wrestling with her son growing up, and Negan is wondering how far he’ll slide into being the old version of himself. But there’s no real connection between the two arcs, nor is the show doing anything interesting with either of them, as the characters themselves seem to want to “nope” out of both situations as quickly as possible. Having both characters wander around inside of buildings isn’t parallel structure; it’s just something they’re doing.
There’s still one more episode in the season, so despite the meandering nature of these episodes, plenty of time to wrap it all up in rollicking fashion. So for now, let’s write off this week’s episode as Dead City‘s gas-leak year.
The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City premiere on Sundays on AMC and AMC+. The episodes premiere at 9 pm ET on AMC and AMC+
Here’s the full list of episodes in The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 with premiere dates:
- Sunday, May 4, 2024: The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 2, Episode 1 – “Power Equals Power”
- Sunday, May 11, 2024: The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 2, Episode 2 – “Another Shitty Lesson”
- Sunday, May 18, 2024: The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 2, Episode 3 – “Why Did The Mainlanders Cross The River?”
- Sunday, May 25, 2024: The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 2, Episode 4 – “Feisty Friendly”
- Sunday, June 1, 2024: The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 2, Episode 5 – “The Bird Always Knows”
- Sunday, June 8, 2024: The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 2, Episode 6 – “Bridge Partners Are Hard To Come by These Days”
- Sunday, June 15, 2024: The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 2, Episode 7 – “Novi Dan, Novi Početak”
- Sunday, June 22, 2024: The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 2, Episode 8 – “If History Were a Conflagration” *season finale*
Where To Watch The Walking Dead: Dead City
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