Tonight we move on from The Kingdom and follow Daryl back to Negan's compound, also known as The Sanctuary. Our hero isn't doing so great though and I think we can all imagine why. If dude hadn't lost his cool and attacked Negan in the semi-circle of torture, Glenn would still have a head, Maggie Would still have a husband, and the rest of us would still have a kind soul to cling to on this show. What happens to Daryl once he is living among the Saviors? Here's where we are after "The Cell."
We Got A Front Row Seat
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| "Hungry?" |
At the start of the episode we find out that Dwight spends his non-douchebag time watching episodes of Who's the Boss, playing an array of board games, picking vegetables, and carving wooden figures. I'm with him on the first two for sure. That Tony Danza... he's amazing. When he's not making delicious looking sandwiches for himself, Dwight smears dog food on bread and feeds it to Daryl. It sucks to be Daryl. He sits in a cell, naked, dirty and hungry...counting on Dwight to feed him and waiting on Negan to do his worst. My first thought is: Daryl is naked. My second thought is: I needed this before Season 7.
Daryl's torture is not just a dark small space with disgusting food - he constantly hears the peppy song "Easy Street" blasting in his cell. The song is annoying AF. Eventually Dwight brings him sweatpants and a sweatshirt bearing a big red "A" and ushers him down the hall to meet the doctor. Sherry, the woman Dwight stole Daryl's bike with, is there and she greets Daryl by name. Dwight yells at her. Awkward. Even more awkward is the negative pregnancy test she just took that is sitting on the table. Dwight sarcastically says "better luck next time."
The doctor gives Daryl a clean bill of health and Dwight takes him back to his cell. Dwight tells Daryl he can make it easy on himself but Daryl isn't breaking just yet...though we do see him slam against the door several times as "Easy Street" starts to play again. Negan sits outside the cell with Dwight , laughing and listening to Daryl losing it, and he wants to reward Dwight for all of his hard work. He tells him he can have his way with "you know who" or any other woman "as long as she says yes." Dwight isn't interested though and makes some excuses about sticking to his work. Who is "you know who?"
A Life That Can't Be Beat
Dwight takes Daryl's bike out on a mission and the Savior who has taken over Daryl feeding duty does not lock the door to the cell after he drops off the dog food. Is this on purpose? Is this a test? Daryl slips out the door and sneaks through the hallway, waiting for the perfect moment to make his escape. Sherry pops up behind him and encourages him to just go back to the cell. "Whatever he's done to you, there's more. There's always more." Daryl doesn't listen though and gets caught just outside the door by a group of Negan's guys and then Negan himself.
Negan has that amazing smile on his face as he taunts Daryl. "Who are you?" he asks one of his guys. Dude says "Negan." He asks the next guy, and the next guy and they all say the same thing. Oh that's right. We're all Negan, Negan is everywhere, here a Negan, there a Negan, everywhere a Negan, Negan. Something like that anyway. Negan tells Daryl he has three choices: 1) Wind up on a spike outside the fence and work as a dead man. 2) Get out of the cell and work for points, but wish he was a dead man. 3) Work for Negan voluntarily and live like a king. There is no door number 4. Daryl says nothing and doesn't flinch when Negan raises his bat. He admires Daryl's badassery and leaves his guys to beat the crap out of Daryl and return him to the cell.
Back in his dark and dirty little space, Daryl hears Sherry's voice outside. She's crying. Sherry tells him that when she and Dwight met him that first time in the woods, they were trying to flee the Saviors for good. "Back in the woods, after I lost Tina, when we took your stuff and decided to go back...I told you I was sorry. You said 'you're gonna be.' And I am." Sherry then walks away. That's nice of her to say and all but it really means nothing given everyone's current situation.
The World Is But A Treat
Dwight's mission is to find a defected Savior and bring him back to The Sanctuary for Negan's judgement. He catches up to the guy down the road and saves him from a Walker attack. The defector looks at Dwight and asks how he can still be so loyal to Negan after what he did to Dwight and his wife. His wife? This poor dude gives a speech about Negan's mandates and how he can't live with the way things are anymore...and he drops to his knees and asks Dwight for a mercy killing. Dwight is a douchebag and threatens to dig up this guy's dead wife and feed her to the crows if he doesn't get up and go back to The Sanctuary. As the defector stands and begins to walk back he says "Okay D, you win. But you know there's nothing left." Dwight shoots him in the back and goes home.
Sherry is the first person Dwight sees upon his return and we can assume she was his wife at some point. Now she belongs to Negan. "We did the right thing," he tells her. "It's a hell of a lot better than being dead." She pauses and says "yeah," but she has no conviction in her voice whatsoever.
Dwight then goes to Daryl's cell and tells him Negan has taken a shine to him and he should consider himself lucky. Daryl still isn't interested. When Dwight leaves the cell the song changes from "Easy Street" to Roy Orbison's "Crying," which pretty much sums up the first part of this season. Daryl looks at the Polaroid picture of Glenn's body that Dwight had thrown in the cell and starts to sob. Thinking Daryl has finally broken down, Dwight brings him to Negan who is happy to receive him. Negan tells Daryl that things weren't always so great with him and Dwight...Dwight and his "super hot wife and her super hot sister" used to work for points before their attempted escape and Tina fell behind on points to pay for medication. Negan asked her to marry him as a fair trade and they fled. We know Tina died after Daryl found them and tried to help them, and when Dwight and Sherry decided to steal Daryl's shit and come back to ask for forgiveness, Sherry became Negan's wife in order to keep Dwight alive. And now Dwight is one of his top guys and he wants Daryl to also be one of his top guys. "All you gotta do is answer one simple question. Who are you?" Daryl pauses for a long time...and then says "Daryl." Dwight throws Daryl back in the cell and goes outside, exasperated. He sees the Walker version of the dude he shot earlier approach the fence and turns his back on him.
The episode ends there and it seems we will have to wait a long time to see Daryl back where he belongs. I'll be honest and say I totally would have jumped on the Negan train by now if I were him so kudos to him for having balls (and a stomach) of steel. It was nice to get a little bit of a background on Dwight and Sherry, and I can't imagine what goes through Dwight's mind each time he looks at Negan or has any interaction with his hot wife. Will Dwight and Daryl become friends? Will Daryl convince Dwight and others to revolt? Or will Daryl eventually give in and become one of the Saviors? Time will tell, but in the meantime, here's hoping we get one or two "Daryl gets a naked hose down in his cell" scenes.
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