Easy Street.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Even though I wasn't a fan of the season premiere, three episodes in, I'm enjoying Season 7's overall approach to splitting up story. They tried to do something similar last year, but it didn't quite work given the number of cliffhangers and the constant feeling that we were being jerked away from something very important. Season 6's "Here's Not Here" was one of the show's best episodes, but it's placement (right after the Glenn death fake out in "Thank You") worked to diminish the overall flow.
But so far, in Season 7, we've gotten three separate, mostly-closed off stories. Sure, we want to know what happens next, but we're not leaving in the middle of a huge event and jumping right into something else. In fact, highlighting that these are somewhat more self-contained stories, Robert Kirkman recently revealed in an interview that last week's Ezekiel episode was originally intended to air third. Meaning this week's chapter was going to directly follow the premiere, but things switched around because The Walking Dead producers wanted something more lighthearted after all the heaviness.
That reshuffling worked too. I'm glad this Daryl/Dwight-heavy episode didn't directly follow the premiere because it helped break up the gloom while also giving us the sense that time had passed. Plus, it wasn't all that grim within the context of the Walking Dead-verse. Yes, it involved the inhuman treatment of Daryl -- via isolation, dog food sandwiches, and a previously-unreleased "Easy Street" song by a band called Collapsible Hearts Club (thanks for the info, AMC!) -- and some twisted events over at the Savior compound, but there was also some perverse humor at play. "The Cell" brought us inside Negan's world and tackled, head on, the question of "Is simply being alive worth everything?"
The cost of being alive was at the very core of this episode, along with the striking similarities between Daryl and Dwight. I'm not saying they're shadows or shades of each other, per se, but there's a thematic reason for the stringy hair and the fact that Dwight swiped Daryl's crossbow and vest and such. There are parallels, and this week's episode really helped turn Dwight into a fully realized character and not just the zompocalypse version of Wile E. Coyote (though I was happy to hear someone finally address the fact that Eugene practically bit Dwight's penis off last season, since he seemed to recover pretty quickly).
At one point, estranged couple Dwight and Sherry (last seen in Dwight's intro episode, "Always Accountable") agreed that what they'd been through, and what Negan forced on them both, was "a hell of a lot better than being dead." And that's kind of the choice everyone has to face with Negan. Is it worth living, including many creature comforts (food, shelter, clothes, cigarettes, Who's the Boss? episodes), if it means giving your entire life over to a bat-wielding, psychotic a-hole who expects blind obedience?
Dwight, needless to say, is filled with regret and in "The Cell" not only was he forced to deal with a man, in Daryl, who simply would not break, no matter what, but he went out on a mission to retrieve someone -- a former friend who was now earning points as Negan's "property" -- who ran away, choosing certain death on the road over one more minute with the Saviors. Dwight, essentially, came face to face with people who had the courage that he probably wish he'd had.
But context is everything. That doesn't mean that guilt won't eat Dwight alive, but he did what he did to save Sherry. He had a valid reason. Daryl's reasons for not breaking made sense too. There's no way in hell he'll chose a life of medium comfort while feeling utterly responsible for Glenn's death. "The Cell" among other things proved just what a powerful and potent character Daryl is, as he can be silent for most of an hour and still project so much.
Things sort of transformed from poetic and meditative to overly talky toward the end of "The Cell" when Negan, the chatterbox that he is, decided to tell Daryl Dwight's entire story. It felt like it would have been better if less was said at the point since some of it veered into over-explanation, given how much the rest of the episode chose to show rather than tell, but all in all it helped Dwight's torment shine a bit more - it just felt like this information could have been given in a different manner.
You also have to wonder how Negan's gone this long without a serious rebellion attempt. As noted in this episode, his slaves outnumber him, but perhaps his top guys, his biggest "cut in line and make an egg sandwich" thugs, are the perfect combination of broken spirits and demented bullies.
It seems like Negan, while suitably nasty and dangerous, is falling more and more into cliche villain territory. For certain, Jeffrey Dean Morgan continues to breathe more life into him than he probably deserves, but the fact that he's keeping Daryl alive -- because he likes his spirit/moxie/guts -- is textbook overconfident evil-doer. It means, basically, that he's keeping someone alive that he shouldn't and it's going to come back on him. The same can be said about his "monologuing." Lucille's not going to save him it he gets caught flappin' his gums.
On the other hand, adding to Negan's effectively disturbing creepiness as a slave-master are the gross harem aspects of his compound. As bad as things are for the men, things must be much worse for the women who are forced and coerced into "consensual" sex. Not only does Negan claim what and who he wants, but he offers women up as a reward to his lackeys. Of course this is just one more reason why Daryl will never cave in. He's fiercely noble and doesn't need comforts of -- well -- any kind, really.
The Verdict
"The Cell" took us inside the world of the Saviors through the eyes of both Dwight and Daryl - respectively, a man who succumbed to Negan's will and another who refused to kneel. I enjoyed the fact that Dwight became a more rounded character through this, and Daryl's personal, silent torment over Glenn was fairly emotional. Negan himself though, after all the hype, is quickly starting to exhibit the kind of traits (which eventually lead to mistakes) that are reminiscent of countless other TV and movie villains.
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