The Walking Dead: Dead City
1×03: “People Are a Resource”
Directed by Kevin Dowling
Written by Keith Staskiewicz

* For a recap & review of 1×02, click here.
* For a recap & review of 1×04, click here.
Flashback to Negan and Ginny in the woods somewhere. He was trying to find a safe place to take her. He was angry that she ran off for a moment when he turned his back. Negan and Ginny came across a guy who tried to kill them the night before; he must’ve crossed somebody else. Ginny was upset because she dropped her “dino.” So Negan was determined to try retracing their steps back to wherever she lost it. Now we see Ginny has ran off from New Babylon and she’s headed for Manhattan. That’s a really bad idea. Obviously Ginny’s a brave girl, and it seems she’d rather be with Negan in danger than without him in safety.

In the city, the Tribespeople, along with help from Negan and Maggie, are huting a deer that’s wandered onto a dead-end street. Tommaso uses one of the modified nail guns to kill the deer. It’s brought back to Luther for butchering. The Tribespeople discuss The Croat’s booby-trapped city with Maggie and Negan. They also talk about the beginning of the outbreak. There were “bodies coming up from the ground” and some “falling from the sky.” The army didn’t show up until it was time to blow the bridges and tunnels to cut Manhattan off. Then The Croat turned up later to unite people with “creature comforts” while offering a “kill or be killed” deal of protection. After more talk of The Croat, it’s too much for Maggie, so she ducks out for a second to compose herself instead of breaking down in front of the others. Meanwhile, Ginny’s made it to the shore of Manhattan where she sees all the ruins and heads out looking for her surrogate dad.
The music heard in the last episode that nearly caused Maggie trouble on the zipline is part of The Croat’s grand plan that keeps walkers roaming through the streets like a mote around his territory. Tommaso and Luther don’t want to charge at The Croat, particularly with their weakened numbers. Amaia wants to go fight, to get revenge. Negan takes this chance to tell a story about a bad man who built a sanctuary in the South once upon a time and how things worked well for that man and his army of psychopaths. It’s a warning against sitting by idly while someone like The Croat takes over; if they wait too long, it’ll be far too late. This starts to maybe change Tommaso’s mind.

Back at The Croat’s HQ, he and his Burazi bring Perlie in to lock him up. Perlie sees some strange stuff on the way in, like what appeared to be a dead body being stuffed into a massive container full of liquid. Some kind of biological warfare? The Croat is some kind of scientist. Who knows what sort of sick shit he’s dreaming up in that makeshift laboratory. Perlie’s handcuffed up in a room where he’s eventually joined by The Croat. There’s a nice meal and some booze to enjoy. The Croat explains to Perlie he worked in “alternative energy.” He says that when the body breaks down it creates methane; his strange experiments out there in the lab are a way to solve the fuel crisis in the post-zombie apocalypse wasteland. He’s interrupted by a maggot in his meat. He’s very pissed off that the meat wasn’t inspected properly. The Croat then makes the man who served his meal swallow the key to the handcuffs on Perlie, after which he beats the man to death and tosses him over the side of the balcony.
Back at the Tribespeople’s building, Tommaso explains there’s a way to get into The Croat’s territory and the prisoner’s cells. The community also find out from Maggie that Negan knows The Croat. She says it’s a way to help luring The Croat out. Negan’s sure he can use The Croat’s lust for revenge against him to bring him out in the open. But not everybody’s still happy about this plan. Luther says Hershel’s “already dead,” so it’s pointless. Maggie won’t accept that; she never, ever will.

“Because above all in this vicious, monstrous world, we must stay safe.”

Maggie looks at a drawn picture of Glenn when Negan comes by with a little item he thought Hershel might like from a gift shop nearby. There’s a sweet part of Negan that has clearly always been inside. He’s trying to keep Maggie’s faith alive, so she doesn’t fall into thinking horrible things. All Maggie can do is think of the past and the last argument she had with her son before he was taken by The Croat. It’s natural to blame oneself, especially as a parent, but she’s just being too hard on herself here. All Maggie wants to do is save Hershel; he’s all that she has left at this point. Negan tells Maggie about when Annie went into town to trade and a bunch of men beat, stole from, and raped Annie. Things got bad after that, so Negan sent Annie off somewhere hopefully better. Negan says sometimes all they have “is hope.”

Flashback to Ginny and Negan searching for her dinosaur. He was urging her she needed to start speaking, so they wouldn’t get separated. Negan was trying to push her past “the coping shit” and onto “the staying alive shit.” Unfortunately dealing with mental health in the post-zombie apocalypse is not like it was back before the collapse of society. You’ve just got to move on somehow. But Negan tried to be tender, too. He only wanted to keep Ginny safe and find a place where she’d have more permanent safety. In current day, Ginny sees someone in the city killing walkers; a pretty competent survivalist by the look of them. Might be a way for Ginny to try tracking down Nega. Or, could be trouble.
Back at the Tribespeople’s building, they all join hands at the table, humming together as they prepare to eat a meal. It’s almost like a little ceremony for those they’ve lost, too. Out in the city, The Croat is rallying his own people. He says that “Death is no end; it is our fuel.” He sees people as “a resource.” It’s the new form of death capitalism: people’s bodies are no longer just products of labour, they’re the very products of the commodity that is fuel. Perlie’s being taken out to the tank where they put a mask on him when he again refuses to join them. He’s drugged up and sent into a cage, where a zombie’s let inside with him. He has to fight half drugged and handcuffed to a pole. He grabs the zombie, puts it in a chokehold, and uses his cuffs to cuff its head off. Perlie then digs through its guts because it’s the same guy The Croat killed earlier and he gets the key to his cuffs. But he still can’t escape the cage, so he has to fight more zombies let into the cage. He uses his own boot to beat the zombies; this man will NOT die easily, if at all.

The scavenger that Ginny saw earlier is actually a friend of Tommaso and Amaia’s, and she ends up back at the Tribespeople’s building with a bunch of scavenged things; one of which is a dinosaur and Maggie takes it for Ginny. Maybe Maggie’s holding onto even more hope than she’s let on so far. That is, for others; maybe not for herself and Hershel, even if she won’t let others talk negatively. Negan is busy trying to talk to Luther and finds out he and Maggie are being asked to leave. Luther’s got a copy of the Wanted poster with Negan’s face plastered across it. He doesn’t exactly like having Negan around. But Negan won’t leave. Soon, Negan’s almost squat to death in Luther’s arms. He uses a cheese grater on Luther’s face. This, luckily, sends Luther to the floor where he lands oddly on a pipe that sinks into the base of his skull. Negan finishes the big man off with a gentle push of the head backward further. This won’t look good, even if it was self defence.
Later, The Croat tells Perlie about losing his family to a family of cannibals who needed a meal. Terrifying. The Croat then takes the envelope out of Perlie’s boot and reads the letter inside. The letter is from the dead man Perlie visited, assumedly his brother; a painful letter. Perlie urges The Croat to stop reading, and then they get around to a mention of Negan, which strikes The Croat like a lightning bolt.

Great use of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” at the end of the episode.