Sunday, June 22, 2025

I SAW WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY (SEASON 2)

The Walking Dead: Dead City has finished its eight-episode, Season 2 spree, having abandoned its allusions to The Searchers, while keeping many searches intact (inside the anguished psyche and out), parenthesized by a gloomy, NY/Manhattan/New Babylon, neo-western scheme. 

Zeljko Ivanek's the Croat (a henchman supreme) and Lisa Emery's the Dama (a mad, ex-drama critic) did their best to help Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan Smith (abetted by a refurbished Lucille) resume his sadistic groove, forging a socio-political sequence straight out of Walter Hill's The Warriors

As Negan corralled (and diminished) his fellow baddies, Lauren Cohen's Maggie Greene tended to her rescued son, Kien Michael Spiller's Hershel, but something was always off about the lad, thanks to the Dama's demented influence. 

Between these conflict-bound factions, viewers were also treated to supporting, bookend players: Trey Santiago-Hudson's Jano, a Bass Reeves-ish marshal with a vision for a better tomorrow, and Kim Coates' Bruegel, an eloquent, museum curator, who in some ways channels Stuart Wilson's erudite yet barbaric Marek of Martin Campbell's No Escape. For certain, Jano and Bruegel established the season's underscoring, allegorical contrasts (with a nice, getting-to-know-you confrontation in the final episode), thus making them conspicuous emblems within the harsh, emblematic conflagration. (This component, in turn, runs parallel to the inevitable, "back-stabbing" confrontation of a more obvious relationship, but why should I spoil it, if you've not yet experienced it?)

Though Season 2 overflows with the expected flesh-feasting/severed-limb carnage, the fright factor hits its successful summit only because its at-odds characters resonate. The western allusions help the embittered conflicts, so that if Season 1 invoked The Searchers, Season 2 invoked The Wild Bunch, where tiers of salt were poured upon the principals' open wounds.  

This grudge-based approach creates one of the franchise's best tangents, but then Walking Dead has always triumphed through its allegorical depiction of human endurance. While franchises like Star Trek demonstrate the best in the human condition, there are certain dystopic paths that achieve the same results: case in point, Mad Max's adventures, the six chapters of George A. Romero's Dead saga and of course, by its blatant, thematic association, The Walking Dead's long-term progression. 

Dead City shows how daily strife can trigger both tragedy and triumph within the same tremulous breath. Those who fail to see this are those who have it easy, but Dead City isn't meant for them. It's meant for us.  

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