"He always stood out as being an exceptionally insane son of a bitch..."

For me, “Dead City” has been my least anticipated of the three upcoming spin offs from AMC’s “Walking Dead” Universe and that thought has been solidified with its premiere episode. Whilst not a total disaster “Old Acquaintances” falls down into the same trappings that plague later seasons of the original hit series and revels itself into usual genre cliches and tropes. If you’re coming into this franchise off the backhand of all the other content, you have to expect these things by now, and whilst the episode in itself was mostly entertaining, I couldn’t help but be let down by the actual story at play here. 

The audience is dropped an unknown amount of time past the original series finale, and many events have seemingly happened off screen (my favorite thing in television, major character conflicts and progression occurring OFF camera). Negan has built a connection with a young girl from another settlement “Ginny” and the entire emotional stakes of Negan and Maggie’s re connection and quest fall upon that bond of two characters who’ve never been seen together before this episode. That’s the first major problem with this story and series premiere. It’s been shown to us, time and time again that Negan and Maggie don’t want to work together but given the franchise’s endless need to continually deliver content (and the genuine chemistry of both Cohan and Morgan), this show throws them together into another fetch quest type story where Negan wants to ensure Ginny’s safety in one of Maggie’s settlements (whether that be Hilltop or elsewhere) and Maggie needs to get her son back from a mysterious bad guy called “Croat” who has some form of connection to Negan. 

It’s all very coincidental storytelling, but we’ll allow for the entire series to play out before I pass judgement on the show’s narrative (it feels very weak so far). One of my largest problems is the characterization of Negan. In the series finale of “Walking Dead”, both Negan and Maggie share a discussion surrounding their hatred for each other and Negan’s eventual apology and declaration to Maggie that he now understands how she felt when Glenn died because he was put into a similar situation in which Annie (his wife, god knows where she is?) was also put in a line up. It felt like the natural end progression of that character arc between the pair, a beautifully constructed passage of dialogue shared between the two of them that gorgeously tied up all of the unresolved emotional trauma they shared. Now “Dead City” has arrived and undone every great part of that. 

Negan is back to teasing Maggie and acting like an asshole (him saying “I could kill you right now” was awful) even though he acknowledged that he was in the wrong completely and even allowed himself to be excluded from the Commonwealth and that group of characters because of his guilt, how could anyone watch the series premiere of “Dead City” and not be bothered by this? Sure, he could have lost Annie and fallen back into his usual Negan trappings in both speech and actions, but his care for Ginny suggests otherwise. The writers seem to understand that ‘doucebag’ Negan is the far more ‘entertaining’ character and one the fans seem to love and quote more (I’ve seen more online edits for Negan from Seasons 7-8 of this series than any other character), but also want to acknowledge that he has changed simultaneously? It didn't work for me, and ruined the episode.

There’s some really goofy other aspects of the episode that seemingly nobody has touched on either in the reviews I’ve read from it. The scene in which a kidnapped man runs around on the roof and tries to zip line off of it was one of the dumbest moments from the franchise for me. It failed at creating suspense and horror for the situation and all I could do was laugh. It wasn’t a large moment from the episode so it doesn’t play too hard into why I generally disliked the premiere but it didn’t help either. It’s too early to pass judgement on the antagonists, whether it be “Croat” or the marshals, the show hasn’t given enough for me to say anything about them yet, that’ll be for the next five episodes.

What did work for me was the production of this project. Clearly AMC has spent a lot of money to produce something that is visually appealing, this is the first Walking Dead project that I feel has the grand scope of a large budget horror film. Seriously, the effects, cinematography and general atmosphere has never been stronger across the franchise, shame it’s wasted on such a poor script. For these things alone paired with the pitch perfect performances of Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, this episode has earned a passing grade from me. As a whole, it’s a perfectly mediocre pilot that reaches highs and lows across both visuals and storytelling, this grading is temporary until we get the entire show’s story played out, then I’ll revisit it and see if my criticisms still hold true (they really need to make me give a shit about ‘Ginny’ at the least). 

PS: Whoever at AMC headquarters decided to shift the name from "Isle of the Dead" to "The Walking Dead: Dead City" should be fired ASAP.