The Walking Dead S07E03 Review: Psychological Breakdown

The Walking Dead, Season 7, Episode 3: The Cell

So, can season seven recoup the damages of the dire season six? It honestly holds out to how well done this whole Negan storyline will end up being. It's often said that any work of fiction is only as good as its antagonist. And sometimes you don't need a super-intricate antagonist either. Neither Shane nor the Governor could be called perfect villains, not by any means (the Governor, as much as I liked how he brought a neat focus to seasons three through four, kind of frayed a little near the end where he's reduced to a common maniac) but they do bring a much-needed sense of purpose, someone our heroes can work to defeat, beyond just hordes and hordes of the faceless dead and hordes and hordes of faceless, incompetent Saviour mooks. Negan gave us a pretty good show, being a charismatic psychopath throughout the season seven premiere, but how long can that last?

Well, here we get to see the inner workings of the Governor's base, which is definitely welcome. Last season promised "your whole world is about to get a whole lotta bigger"... except it absolutely failed to deliver in that promise. Beyond a brief episode that took place at the Hilltop, not much really felt bigger. But here, with exotic locales like Ezekiel's Kingdom or the Governor's Sanctuary, with their own strange individual rules and cultures, if you may, actually does make the world of the Walking Dead seem bigger than it is.

Here we focus on three characters, mainly -- Daryl, Negan, and Dwight. Daryl is Negan's new pet prisoner, and he spends most of his days being tortured by dog food sandwiches, verbal abuse from his handler Dwight, dehumanizing clothes, and that awful, awful insanely cheery music that keeps getting repeated over and over and over in his cell. Dwight gets a huge boost in screentime, which is impressive considering how shit he was in his debut. Granted, as Negan mockingly points out in this episode, he's still missing his dick (jury's out it's actually still functional) courtesy of Eugene, but he definitely has his ruthlessness.

Dwight has climbed onto the top of Negan's food chain, but as much as he is in Negan's good graces -- he gets a fully-stocked sandwich while other people have to grapple for food, he gets to cut lines for laundry, he gets to bully Daryl while other people have to struggle in that weird zombie fenced arena... it's a nice insight into Negan's weird little empire, and just how he runs it. Of course, easy comparisons can be made to the Governor, but whereas the Governor initially pretended his town to be idyllic and nice and all, Negan makes no such gestures. He is goddamned Negan, and everyone will bow to him -- regardless if they've climbed up the ranks like Dwight.

Daryl himself doesn't get to do much, mostly having the fight beaten out of him in-between music torture and the threat of what Negan will do to his other friends, as well as the reminder, thanks to that dick Dwight, that his outburst was what caused Glenn's head to be bashed the fuck in. It's harsher to see Daryl get so systematically broken down (though at the end of the episode he still has a decent amount of fire it doesn't seem to be that much fight left in him) compared to Rick, because Rick is a far, far more unstable character than Daryl -- Daryl gets angry sometimes, yes, but he's always struck me as a more level-headed and secure in his own badassery. Seeing all that broken down, from jackass psychological torture like Fat Joey pretending to leave the door unlocked, giving him a 'chance' to escape only for Negan's boys to beat him down while the man laughs and whistles...

Meanwhile, as much as Dwight tells himself that this is all his own choice to rise up the ranks, he's apparently became estranged from his wife Sherry. He's forced to execute that one dude that ran away, who tries to beg Dwight to see the difference, to rise up against Negan... but both losing his wife and having his face burnt tells a different story, of someone who probably a couple months ago found himself in the same defiant position that Daryl now finds himself in.

Oh, and Sherry's apparently been turned into one of Negan's wives, and he goes on a speech about how originally it was Sherry's hot diabetic sister (who was a fucking kid, you creep!) that he wanted to marry, but Dwight stole all the insulin and escaped. And after paying the price -- the also-hot Sherry taking the place of her dead sister, and Dwight's face being marked -- apparently that's how Negan deals with businesses. In his twisted logic, he's forgiving when he needs to be. 

Negan himself actually doesn't do much here despite his scene-stealing first episode, relying more on his pants-shitting scared minions that do his every whim, and is more content to just chew the scenery and waving that bat around without actually hurting anyone while talking like a teenager about how Dwight's dick went all pfcchhfttttt. It's not telling us much of the whole picture, but at the same time what few parts of the picture we do get of Negan's central operation does paint this insane iron-gripped dictator who acts like a cloudcuckoolander most of the time. It's not the most entertaining 40 minutes of television, perhaps, but it's still a far more solid episode than anything we've gotten in the last season.