Crime
Reacher
The title character is bigger and bulkier now than in the Tom Cruise movies. But so are the problems.
Maggie Rhee and Negan Smith are two of the last folks on earth you would ever expect to team up. But they do. And maybe that’s because they really are two of the last folks on earth.
It’s been well over a decade since Maggie and Negan’s world fell apart. An illness infected every human on the planet, causing the dead to rise up as carnivorous, zombie-like creatures called walkers.
Maggie survived the initial outbreak by holing up on her family’s farm. The events of The Walking Dead TV series eventually caused her family to leave. Since then, she’s lost her father, her sister and her husband, Glenn.
Negan’s responsible for that last loss. See, he responded to the apocalypse by heading up a group of savage murderers called “the Saviors.” They used their firepower to force every group of survivors they came across to give them supplies.
And Negan’s favorite way of asserting his dominance? Killing off a random member of each group. Unfortunately, Glenn was one of his victims.
After Glenn’s death, Maggie wanted vengeance. She even led a new settlement called the Hilltop against Negan in a war. But then, just when Negan’s death seemed imminent, Rick Grimes (Maggie’s friend and former leader) spared him.
Rick’s mercy toward Negan changed Maggie. It helped her to stop hating Negan—though she never truly forgave him for what he did. And it allowed her to focus on leading the Hilltop and raising her and Glenn’s son, Hershel.
But now, Maggie needs Negan’s help.
When raiders kidnap Hershel, Maggie tracks them all the way to Manhattan. But their leader is a man called “The Croat,” who used to be one of Negan’s old cronies.
Maggie offers Negan protection in exchange for her son’s return. But Negan’s not optimistic of finding Hershel alive. According to him, the Croat was one of the most psychotic individuals he’d recruited to the Saviors back in the day. And even if Hershel does survive, he may not want to return to his mother. Turns out, the Croat is taking orders from a woman called “The Dama,” and she’s been poisoning Hershel against Maggie, trying to convince him to turn on her.
Neither Negan nor Maggie are happy to help each other, but they also don’t have a lot of options. Negan is wanted by the marshals of New Babylon, a new city serving as a sort of capital, for murdering a magistrate and four other men. And when Maggie teams up with him, she lands on their hit list, too.
Long story short, old grudges must be put aside if this dead city is to be brought back to some semblance of life.
If you’re familiar with the Walking Dead franchise, none of what follows will surprise you.
This is a vehemently bloody and gory show. When the walkers aren’t eating people alive, they’re usually getting blasted or beaten to zombified bits. But humans are just as liable to die by the living, as well.
Plugged In once wrote of the original Walking Dead that it “turns to focus on the depth of human depravity in a world without law and order. And viewers are given cause to wonder if the show’s name isn’t about the walkers at all, but the morally debased characters who are left.”
Well, that hasn’t changed.
Negan obviously has some issues: You don’t spike a baseball bat with nails and name it “Lucille” unless you’re dealing with some inner turmoil. But Maggie has a lot of hatred built up in her, too: for what Negan did, for the walkers, for the people who took her son. At times, she struggles to remember Rick’s lesson of mercy. And it begs the question of how far she’ll go in order to save her son—and how much blood she and Negan will shed before they’re done.
Negan and Maggie aren’t the only individuals being stretched to their moral limits: Hershel, as it turns out, is a little bitter toward his mom. Apparently, Maggie’s been a bit of an absent mother his whole life, obsessing over the loss of her husband even after she stopped hating Negan. It opens the door for Herschel’s captors to manipulate the teenager.
Perlie, a New Babylon magistrate tasked with finding and executing Negan, decides to set Negan free after learning that the men Negan murdered had beaten and presumably raped Negan’s wife—something the leaders of New Babylon had chosen to overlook. And those same leaders are preparing for war against Manhattan. They want the island’s fuel resources, and they’ll kill anyone who tries to stop them.
Aside from that, viewers can expect harsh language (including uses of the f-word), heavy drinking and LGBT characters. And, if the franchise’s history is anything to go by, sex scenes are also liable to pop up.
The Walking Dead: Dead City is a continuation of an incredibly popular story. But that doesn’t mean you should watch it.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Maggie recruits her old nemesis Negan to help her save her son after the boy is kidnapped by one of Negan’s old allies.
A flashback shows Negan killing Glenn, Maggie’s husband, right before her eyes with a baseball bat. Several people are devoured by walkers. (One woman is deliberately shoved into their path by a marshal.) We see walkers hung from a gallows outside a city (and it’s obvious they weren’t walkers when they were hung). Walkers are thrown from city rooftops in an attempt to kill people on the streets below. A marshal accidentally shoots his colleague. A man covered in cuts from torture attempts to escape his captors via zipline, but they sever the cable he’s gliding on, causing him to fall 20 stories to his death.
Maggie uses a pipe to bash in the skull of a walker that tried to eat her (and in her rage, she continues to beat the creature long after it “dies”). Many walkers are shot in the head.
We see New York City in ruins and later learn that the military tried to contain the outbreak there by destroying the bridges and tunnels leading to Manhattan Island. It’s rumored that Negan killed five people, though he claims that’s not how it happened. We’re told that the marshals will execute him by dangling him upside down and sawing him in half from his groin to his head. We learn a girl’s father was murdered and that she discovered him the next day as a reanimated walker. The Croat (the leader who kidnapped Maggie’s son, Hershel) has a scar where his ear should be.
People get into several knife and fistfights (and some characters receive nonfatal wounds). Women are roughly shoved around by men. Characters are frequently held at gun or knifepoint. The Croat threatens to torture Hershel, but he’s interrupted before he can harm the boy. Negan tries to throw a marshal overboard but Maggie stops him.
Maggie drinks in a bar and pretends to drunkenly flirt with the bartender in order to garner information from him. Later, the bar’s proprietor is executed for “liquor, drugs, gambling [and] whoredom,” which are all prohibited by new laws.
We see two prostitutes (a woman and an effeminate man). We see the outline of a man in a shower. A man urinates offscreen. People are covered in bugs when they hide in infested garbage. Negan says his dad would often flake out on him.
There’s a single use of the f-word and 10 uses of the s-word. God’s name is abused once, paired with “d–n.” There are also uses of “b–ch,” “d–mit,” “d–k” and “h—.”
Luis and Renata, a brother and sister surviving in Manhattan, search for a fuel source to power a life-saving machine in a hospital. Meanwhile, rather than allowing said fuel tanks to fall into the hands of New Babylon, the Croat decides to blow them up. The explosion draws the attention of walkers from across the city, forcing him, Negan, Maggie, Luis and Renata into the same shelter to settle their differences.
Decaying walkers try to bite and scratch humans. Humans kill the walkers by stabbing them in the head. A man who’s been scratched by a walker dies from the resulting infection and fever. We see the bloody wound, which is filled with pus. Shortly after his death, somebody puts a knife in his skull (offscreen) to prevent the man from turning into a walker. Similarly, a man says he had to “brain” his uncle after the uncle died. We hear someone else kill a loved-one-turned-walker offscreen.
In a flashback, the Croat murders the uncle and brother of Luis and Renata at a family gathering. Their brother’s pregnant wife sobs in horror as her husband is brutally killed. In the present, Luis tries to kill the Croat a couple of times, but Renata stops him. She explains her merciful choice to Maggie, saying that she’s tired of being angry and fighting all the time. She fears that if she starts killing, she’ll never stop. It inspires Maggie to make similarly merciful choices. And, in turn, Maggie finds a way to instill hope in Negan.
The bodies of dead walkers are used to created methane fuel. Someone blows up several tanks of this fuel, and a few people get injured in the explosion. (We see their bloody wounds.) Negan, we learn, was literally stabbed in the back by Maggie in a prior episode. He nurses this wound throughout the episode. Armed soldiers march through the city. A poster shows that Maggie and Negan are wanted “dead or alive.” Negan punches a guy in the face.
To save her family from the Croat, Renata threatens to blow up a gas tank, which would kill her in the process. A man keeps some walkers chained up in his bar; he has removed their fingernails and teeth to make them harmless.
A couple dances and kisses. Two guys play a game about who they’d like to marry, kill or sleep with. People drink at a party and in a bar. Some stickers say “Legalize Baloney,” which prompts a teen to ask if baloney used to be illegal.
We hear about six uses of the f-word and nearly 20 of the s-word. God’s name is misused 10 times, four times paired with “d–n.” We also hear “b–ch,” “d–khead,” “h—” and “t-ts.”
Luis and Renata, we learn, are trying to save the life of their sister-in-law’s preborn baby. The baby is coming two months early, they say, so they risk their lives and threaten others to find power for an incubator that will save the baby’s life. Many people come together to support the mother as she gives birth. Old enemies put aside grudges to help each other. It seems a few people learn how to forgive those who wronged them in the past.
Maggie places a makeshift cross over someone’s grave. Renata wears a pendant of San Lazaro (also known as St. Lazarus of Bethany), the patron saint of hope and mercy. She says her dad used to tell her that in every scenario, she can either choose “the fight” or “the light.”
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
The title character is bigger and bulkier now than in the Tom Cruise movies. But so are the problems.
In Prime Video’s coming-of-age series ‘Sterling Point,’ Annie Jacobson learns more about her family secrets when she spends a summer on a Canadian island.
Fans of Rapunzel’s sunny, theatrical outing, ‘Tangled,’ will find that her Disney+ series “gleams and glows” in equal measure.
