Big Apple Walkers: The Dead City Opens on AMC

The new Walking Dead has premiered, featuring Lauren Cohen's Maggie Greene/Rhee and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan, as they enter New York City, The Dead City. I suppose the dead-city reference stands for real-life NYC these days, albeit with no Walkers, only more vile vermin, but that's a discussion for another time.

The opening Dead City episode, "Old Acquaintances," like most ushering outings, is a warmup, but a good one. It plays like a western and even has a Wyatt Earp/Bass Reeves wannabe involved, Gaius Charles' Perlie Armstrong. I say he's a wannabe because this marshal goes down faster than either Earp of Reeves ever would allow, but he appears to be a decent enough lawman all the same. In other words, he has potential to grow on this show (fingers crossed).

The idea behind Dead City is for Maggie to retrieve her son, Hershel (Logan Kim), who's imprisoned by a madman (a Negan protégé), Zeljko Ivanek's The Croat. (Yeah, the name sounds menacing and for the record, has Slavic/Iranian roots.) The Croat reminds me of Stuart Wilson's Walter Marek in No Escape: smart, personable, but beneath the surface, something treacherous thrives. 

It's obvious that Dead City is another variant of  John Ford's The Searchers. A lot of stuff is, most notably, Taxi Driver and Return of the Jedi. The formula works and in this instance can be tweaked enough to become its own thing. 

Though derivative of other sources, Walking Dead always has been its own thing and in its various parts, a western of sorts. Any version of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead is. Escape from New York is, too, and its designation figures into Dead City. Even Dead City's prime poster looks like Escape's. Hmmm. 

If you haven't caught the Dead City premiere, you can view it on AMC+. See if I'm not right about the cowpoke implications. I bet you come away spoutin' the same: Yee-haw!