Dead City’ Season 2, Episode 6 Review — Barely Watchable, Unbearably Silly

I’ve been pretty bad at posting reviews for the second season of The Walking Dead: Dead City. Readers have been asking me where my reviews have been, and all I can say is that I was traveling in Ireland and Scotland and didn’t want to spend my time there watching this . . . pretty awful TV show. It was my first real holiday in a very long time, and while I did work quite a bit on my travels, I just couldn’t bring myself to watch, let alone write about, Dead City.

I caught up on the episodes I missed this past weekend and then went into this one thinking it was the Season 2 finale. Imagine my surprise – nay, my sheer joy – at discovering that we still have a couple more episodes to go!

Before we get to Maggie and the bear, I wanted to comment briefly on the past few episodes. Actually, I just want to comment on one scene from the fifth episode, because it really encapsulates everything wrong with this spinoff. Spoilers ahead.

The scene in question takes place when New Babylon’s Major Narvaez (Dascha Polanco) orders the execution of the woman who took them in and Maggie (Lauren Cohan) as well as Marshall Perlie (Gaius Charles) who lied to his superiors about killing Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Narvaez is a cartoonishly despicable character which, I suppose, is fitting give how cartoonishly villainous most of the bad guys are in this show. In fact, most of the characters in this show are either utterly flat or over-the-top evil.

In any case, she hangs the first woman but before she can hang Maggie, zombies break through a gate and start shambling through the assembled crowd. The weird cult-like group that Maggie and the New Babylonians were staying with has started up a moaning chant after their leader’s execution, and as the zombies walk into their midst, biting and grappling them, the people just die without a sound or fear or struggle whatsoever. The New Babylon soldiers, meanwhile, just sort of stand there until the zombies get to them before they start shooting, and when they do start shooting their aim is so bad you suspect they couldn’t hit the side of a barn (oops, sorry Carol).

The genuinely idiotic Ginny (who is apparently 12 but looks 17) frees Maggie after betraying her earlier (after Maggie weirdly started to free Perlie and the cult lady, Roksana (Pooya Mohseni), but then locked them back in their cell in one of the most baffling moments in the whole series). Maggie rushes off to save Hershel (Logan Kim) from Narvaez but the already-zombified (and somehow freed) cult lady shambles up and bites Narvaez in the neck instead, and she goes down fast . . . without a fight, without a scream.

It’s honestly one of the worst staged zombie attacks I’ve seen in any TWD show, including The Greatest TV Show Of All Time, Fear The Walking Dead. It’s just so inert, so lifeless, every character behaves like they could care less about surviving. All these people should be hardened survivors at this point in the apocalypse but they go down without a fight, shooting wildly at the air or just standing there, dying quietly as super slow zombies trudge around them.

Weirdly, Narvaez wasn’t the only villain killed this episode. The Dama (Lisa Emery) – who we learn is a critic (oh snap, is this a sick burn from AMC aimed at critics or something?) – is burned to death in a hilariously goofy moment, leaving the Croat (Željko Ivanek) in charge of the Burazi. Of course, in Episode 6 he discovers that Negan has been manipulating everyone when he notices . . . blood on Negan’s boot, which can only belong to the dead rat or something. No other blood could possibly have made it onto Negan’s boot in this zombie apocalypse filled with violence. When he challenges Negan, he loses and Negan exiles him. So now . . . well now Negan is in charge of the Burazi, who have literally no loyalty to their leaders whatsoever.

Much happens in the sixth episode, but most of it is pretty boring like the rest of this season. Maggie and Hershel have some conflict about her being a deadbeat mom (I find it somewhat unbelievable that teens in the apocalypse would be so concerned with this sort of thing, but whatever). She finds him trying to poison everyone’s drinking water with zombie blood which seems mildly extreme given that he hasn’t really been portrayed as all that radicalized at this point.

The really big moment of this episode, however, comes right after this scene when a bear shows up, hungry for human flesh.

Yes, a bear attacks Maggie and Hershel, breaking down a metal door and then hunting them while killing zombies left and right. It’s a massive CGI bear that looks about as bad as you’d expect (though not as bad as that fake deer from Season 7 or 8 of the main show). It’s a big angry grizzly bear, the kind that I’m pretty sure is not native to Manhattan, but it has a weakness: Knives. Granted, this is the kind of bear who would be hard to take down with a gun, even a very big gun, but one knife to the head and one knife to the eye (Hershel can aim now!) are enough to get it to act as stupid as the rest of the characters in this show and get its head spiked on a random fence. Turns out killing bears is a lot like killing zombies, after all.

This egregiously goofy moment basically had me in stitches to the point that I could barely (heh) pay attention to the rest of this unbearable (heh) episode. It looks like Bruegel (Kim Coates) is going to be the new Big Bad along with the governor of New Babylon. Coates is doing the lord’s work here. He’s absolutely fantastic and steals every scene, spinning gold out of a ludicrous script. Any character this good is definitely going to die soon.

I wish I could say that JDM is doing a good job also, but frankly this show is basically ruining Negan all over again so I don’t know that I can offer up much praise for his performance except to say that he’s more watchable than Maggie. But kudos to Logan Kim who has definitely upped his acting game this season. There are honestly a number of pretty good performances this season (Ivanek is consistently entertaining) but they’re all dragged down by a terrible script and a story that keeps going nowhere fast. I’m so bored. Even a bear attack can’t rouse me from this stupor.

Two more episodes to go and . . . I just want everyone to die. I don’t care if New Babylon or the Burazi or Bruegel’s group wins. I don’t care if Negan or Maggie or Hershel dies. I’m actively rooting for Ginny to kick the bucket. I’m happy Narvaez is dead, but a little let-down that the Dama went out in such a weird way, and so early on.

Scattered Thoughts

• We learn that Bruegel’s “champion” zombie in the preposterous zombie arena battles is actually his bodyguard, Tony, who clearly has some, uh, learning disabilities. This explains why the zombies fight each other since one is actually a living human, but only when it’s this pairing. Why other zombies would actually fight each other when this never actually happens outside of said arena fights, is baffling. It’s like the writers have no clue what they’re actually doing, pay no attention to lore or the rules of the fiction, and just put whatever idea they came up with on the fly, probably smoking grass, into the script. “Heh, wouldn’t it be cool if like, uh, like we had the zombies fight each other in arena fights, heh. That’d be so sick, let’s put that in there.” AMC, please hire some script quality control people for the love of all that is holy.
• I’m really not a big advocate of killing off main characters all the time, but at this point the plot armor is so unbelievably thick when it comes to the surviving heroes that you just never feel any tension. Oh it’s a giant friggin bear who can knock down metal doors! Okay, and? We know Maggie will survive. We know Negan will survive. Over in the Daryl Dixon show, we know Daryl and Carol will always survive. They’re super-survivors. Everyone else is zombie-fodder, especially the most likeable new characters, but our survivors will never, ever, ever die.
• Bruegel and the Croat and the governor of New Babylon and probably Perlie (for mentioning his daughters) will all be dead by the end of the season. That’s my guess. I didn’t get screeners for this one. I don’t think AMC likes my reviews very much. They were probably happy to see me miss a few weeks!
• Is anybody actually watching this show? There’s almost zero buzz online for it. The reddits all seem pretty quiet. Fans don’t seem very happy. I haven’t even gotten attacked very much by randoms with Maggie avatars!

I’ll add more to this section if I think of anything. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on Dead City’s second season so far? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.