For a full recap of the episode, visit The Walking Dead Wiki here. This article is a review of the episode in which specific details and events are discussed. SPOILERS may occur, so read at your own risk.
Last week gave us a look at one community of survivors. Time to get a look at another community of survivors! This time, we get to see what life under Negan‘s roof is like. As expected, it’s pretty decent but at the price of servitude.
And while the appeal of seeing Daryl tangle with Negan was a little exciting, this episode is really about Dwight. We learn his backstory and why he’s decided to subjugate himself to Negan. It’s all delivered in very uninteresting ways. We learn everything about Dwight from other people just telling us. One of the biggest problems with The Walking Dead is that it doesn’t know how to deliver important information in a more cinematic fashion. It’s great with montages (see the Best Moments section) but most exposition is simply told to people.
And really, “The Cell” is kind of a bore. Daryl is practically at the same place he started the episode, and although the audience has learned more about Dwight, his situation doesn’t seem to have changed. Maybe it will by the season’s end, but this episode only existed to give us his tortured origin story.
The season is still in start-up mode but man is the formula getting stale. The Walking Dead needs to get out of its comfort zone if it wants to stay engaging on a narrative level. “The Cell” is as by-the-numbers as this show can get.
Best Moments of the Episode:
- Zombie gore gag of the week: the walker whose arm falls off at the elbow.
- The intro montage. Introducing how things work in Negan’s camp and starting with a shot of Who’s the Boss? was a nice bit of self-awareness.
- Dwight’s sandwich. That looked tasty!
- Gordon returning to Negan’s camp after being turned into a walker.
