(Spoilers ahead)
Each week, we comb through the guts of The Walking Dead, much like a horde of hungry walkers, to bring you the episode’s best moments, surprises, and other post-apocalyptic curiosities. This week: Daryl sleeps in box. Dwight sleeps in a cot. Negan sleeps with other people’s wives.
Season 7, Episode 3: “The Cell”
We’re Lost: Did the musical montage at the beginning remind anybody else of this?
Fan service: It only took seven seasons to get fan favorite Daryl completely naked. Yes, he was being tortured and was stuck inside a cold, dirty cell, but we have a feeling a lot of Daryl fans weren’t complaining.
A clue: It’s no coincidence that Daryl’s sweatshirt bore an orange letter “A;” the letter has shown up a lot in TWD lore. The season five finale, when Rick kills the claimers and declares that the Terminus folks were “screwing with the wrong people,” is titled “A.” Sam also stamps a red “A” on Rick and Jessie’s hands in early season six.
Longest payoff: We’ll admit we hated “Always Accountable,” the first appearance of Sherry and Dwight, because it seemed as though the writers spent an entire hour focused on characters we’d never see again and the episode felt completely out of place. But this episode finally gave that one some purpose—it only took a year.
Worst earworm: You still have “Easy Street” stuck in your head, don’t you? If you’d like to listen on a loop for yourself, you can buy the track by The Collapsable Hearts Club on iTunes.
Full playlist: The other two songs featured in this week’s episode were The Jam’s “Town Called Malice” (1982) and Roy Orbison’s “Crying” (1962).
Busiest intersection: Has anyone else noticed the sheer amount of actions that have happened at that one overpass the last two seasons?
Worst working conditions: We get that you’d want to put walkers on your walls for a variety of in-universe reasons, but maybe covering their heads with something better than a bucket during transport would be a good idea. Even if you can’t think of anything better, tie a rope to it or something to safely yank it off when the job’s done.
Dream the impossible: Dwight says about Negan, “There’s nowhere to go. Everything’s his or will be.” Honestly, right now we’re not sure how Rick and co. will be able to defeat him. We’d say it’s impossible, but we live in a world where this just happened.
Most delusional: More than anyone we’ve ever met on this show, Negan takes the cake for living in his own little (nightmarish) world. “We are totally cool,” he says of Dwight, even though Negan married his wife in exchange for Dwight’s life. That is the opposite of “totally cool.”
Brace yourselves: Next week’s episode is 90 minutes long, just like last season’s “Here’s Not Here,” aka the Morgan episode. That episode was one of our favorites, so let’s hope this one is equally memorable.
Best line: “I get why you did it, why you took it. You were thinking about someone else. That’s why I can’t.” —Daryl
Best kill/no-kill: Where Dwight’s spirit has been mercilessly crushed by Negan, Daryl’s resolve has never been stronger.
Most disturbing image: The only thing left to watch in the apocalypse is reruns of Who’s the Boss? (shudders).
Episode MVP: Daryl, for not breaking under extreme pressure and remaining loyal to his friends. Sure, he could have pretended to kneel to Negan, risen up through the ranks, and eventually killed him, but even that would require dishonoring Glenn and Abraham’s deaths, so it was a no-go.
And sadly, Rick was absent from this episode, so we can’t pinpoint him on the Rick calm/crazy scale. But as we mentioned during the season premiere, the scale blew up, and we only just now got the replacement parts from Amazon. Needless to say, he’s still emotionally compromised.
