Predictability can be the death knell of any show, and one whose foundations are precariously built upon shocks and suspense is doubly susceptible.
Sometimes you can foresee a narrative because you’re sufficiently invested in the characters to have a fair idea of what they’d do in a given situation. Or because, over time, you’ve tuned sympatico into the same wavelength as the writers. Both of these are fine. They give you a warm, fuzzy, familiar feeling inside, like what I imagine joy must feel like. Sometimes, predictability can arise because of cliched, ham-fisted writing. This is bad. Worst, though, are instances in which you’re able to call something way before it happens because of boring and mechanical writing. There was plenty to enjoy in The Key, but its centrepiece was wholly micturated upon by the latter. It’s frustrating when a show capable of so much commits self-owns of such rigid simplicity.
I’ll explain. Did you ever, even for one fleeting nanosecond, believe either Rick or Negan would meet their doom in that zombie basement (zombasement)? No. Why? Because it’s not the end of the season. And things like that only happen in premieres or finales. So as entertaining as the (surprisingly chatty) pair’s scuffle was, it contained as much tension as the elastic in my lucky Chewbacca underpants, which is to say distressingly little. Negan was obviously going to live to fight another day, and then he did, because the season finale isn’t for another four episodes.
I said this the last time these two came to blows, and the encounter felt similarly impotent this time round: all bluster and noise without anything of note actually happening. The show had a chance to throw us a much-needed curveball, to buck a trend of its own laborious making. Instead it fell into familiar, rote patterns of Event TV – patterns, as The Walking Dead sheds viewers in their shambling hordes, it desperately needs to break free from.
I don’t want to make out that this ruined the whole episode, and we’ll come back to Negan and Rick later on, but it did leave a nasty aftertaste. All the more frustrating because, elsewhere, The Key offered up quite a bit. I enjoyed Dwight’s alone-time with Simon, and the gradual reveal of Simon’s plan to stage the most fortuitous and passive-aggressive coup in history. Dwight’s grown on me hugely over the past season, and the precarious situation he’s now in often whips up decent amounts of hand-wringing anxiety. Initially, there was a delicate dance between the two – Dwight a turncoat, Simon seeking a co-conspirator – as they sized each other up. Dwight soon came to suspect that Simon, like some idiot savant, might have blindly stumbled upon a peaceful resolution to the cycle of violence: “Moving on”. Simon, on the other hand, had an altogether more stabby-shooty-deathy-zombie definition of what “moving on” means.
Simon did have designs on taking control of the Saviors when he slaughtered the Trash Pandas against Negan’s wishes. Only it was Rick, with a spectacularly timed sideswipe on Negan’s car, who afforded him the opportunity to do so without anyone but Dwight knowing about it. There was something vaguely Shakespearean about Negan’s abandonment by his lieutenants, the powerful man left to die alone, as I’m sure was the intention, though I can’t be certain because I don’t actually know anything about Shakespeare. Now Negan’s aware of Simon’s mutiny, and with Trevor Phillips in control of the Saviors come the episode’s end, I’m intrigued to see how Dwight handles the inevitable crossing of their metaphorical swords (penises).
Further intrigue came from the Hilltop, traditionally the place intrigue goes to die. A tantalising offer of a “key to your future” saw the introduction of a new group: the peripatetic Georgie, Hilda and some little berk called Midge. While the arc of this particular strand of the episode was hackneyed: meet strangers, mean to strangers, someone remembers morals exist, nice to strangers – it offered a comely glimpse of life after the Saviors. A life I for one am ready for. You have to presume there’s more to this travelling trio than meets the eye, because this isn’t a show in which anyone’s living happily ever after, whiling away their balmy summer evenings wondering whether to call their golden retriever puppy Wiffle or Snout Machine. Everyone’s doomed at some point, and sooner rather than later. Could these newcomers be related to the helicopter Rick saw earlier in the season? Are they yet more cannibals? Will I hate up hating Midge and wishing she was dead? The answer to all of these is: quite possibly.
The “knowledge” Georgie bestowed upon the Hilltop was insultingly useless, though. Maggie’s pleasure in receiving Georgie’s dossier of blueprints was bizarre. I’m fairly sure most people who’ve survived an outbreak of the undead for seven-and-a-half years could cobble together an adequate windmill after a few tries. Or – and here’s an idea – why not salvage one from a nearby farm, and use all that time you’ve saved to maybe work out how to produce penicillin or deodorant or something. Georgie might as well have handed Maggie a book full of crude phallic drawings she’d done. Nevertheless, whether Georgie and co turn out to be friend or foe, I’m interested. Let’s just get rid of the Saviors now and get on with it.
Which brings us to Rick v Negan 2: The Sequel – Basement Smaxx. If you ignore the fact that both of these characters had plot armour coming out the wazoo, and therefore were, at no point, in any real danger, it was pulpy, knockabout fun. Rick’s T-boning of Negan’s whip, the car chase, the foot chase, Rick conveniently forgetting how to aim, his knee-slide as Negan swung Lucille over his head, the zombies in the basement – all of it was very watchable indeed. Lucille being set alight was also bound to happen at some point too, and it didn’t disappoint one bit. I think I made a noise like “haw haw”, and presume this means I enjoyed it.
The whole thing just lacked any real stakes. I am looking forward to the season finale when we can presumably have these two square off and not be so sure of the outcome. Though the flash-forward a couple of episodes ago showed Rick nursing a nasty wound to the tum-tum, so we can assume Negan doesn’t go down without getting a few cheeky digs in. We’ll have to wait and see what part Jadis taking Negan hostage has to play in the events to come. I predict the Trash Pandas will soon become extinct once and for all.
We’re now halfway through this latter half of the season, so hopefully the pace will quicken to a gallop as we lurch towards the final furlong. With any luck, it’ll see a patchy – yet by no means atrocious – season off in style. More likely we’re in for two episodes of total pap, followed by two big ones, but hey-ho. Let’s stay optimistic, eh?
