Who’s The Boss
I am so happy to know that in the event of the zombie apocalypse, classic 80’s TV shows will still be around. But, if we could have gotten beaten over the head anymore with that symbolism, I think we too would have ended up on Negan’s fence.
It’s quite clear that Dwight is the boss. Now, I know you’re going to tell me that Negan is the boss, but at Sanctuary, Negan is the dictator. He’s the Putin, the Jong-un. Him and Lucille rule with an iron wrapped bat. Dwight takes care of the smaller stuff. At first, we watch Dwight enjoying his position as boss. Taking food from people, cutting in line for bread, being a general dick. But then, as the episode goes on, we see him maybe not being as happy with being a dick as we thought he was.
Photo Courtesy of AMC
So How Is Darryl Doing?
Bad. Darryl is doing bad. Real bad. But we knew that. Clearly, he wasn’t being taken off to Negan’s home for a friendly little sleep over. Poor Darryl is being kept in a small bare closet, naked, and being fed dog food sandwiches. Oh, and let’s not mention that terrible song playing over and over.
Darryl goes to the clinic at one point and that’s where we see Sherry (Christine Evangelista). Sherry we later learn is Dwight’s “ex-wife”. Why the quotes? I’ll tell you later. The interaction between Sherry and Dwight is important here. We learn that they intimately know each other and that Sherry is very resentful about her situation.
Health wise Darryl seems OK. Mentally, not so much. After putting Darryl back in the closet, Dwight has a talk with Negan. Negan praises Dwight for all of his good work with Darryl and offers him to sleep with anyone of the women that he wants to, even “her”. Dwight declines and decides to go after an escapee from Sanctuary. I never caught his name, so I’m going to call him “Blue Shirt”. Sorry ol’ Blue Shirt leaves because he can’t handle to bullshit anymore. Dwight demands he returns and Blue Shirt refuses. He told Dwight he forgives him for having to kill him because he simply will not go back. Dwight threatens Blue Shirt with killing all his friends if he doesn’t come back. That does the trick. While Blue Shirt decides to go back, you can see the shift happening in Dwight. He kills Blue Shirt out of compassion.
This whole scene shows us that Dwight’s character has more depth than just being a burned up asshole working for Negan.
Photo Courtesy of AMC
Major shout out to Austin Amelio for doing such an amazing job of giving Dwight such depth.
While The Dwight is Away the Darryl will try to get the hell out of there
While Dwight is gone on his retrieval trip, Darryl breaks out of his closet. Well, maybe “breakout” is a bad word choice. Fat Joey “forgets” to lock the door and Darryl uses that moment to run for it. Sherry finds him in the hall and warns him to go back. She tells him that he WILL get caught and it WILL be terrible for him. Much more terrible than his situation is now. He don’t listen. Men, am I right?
Obviously, Darryl gets caught. Negan falls a little bit more under the Dixon spell and decides not to kill him because Darryl didn’t show any fear in facing Lucille. So, Negan settles for just having the crap beat out of Darryl instead. Nice guy.
Dwight vs. Darryl
Dwight comes back and tries to talk some sense into Darryl, but if that was possible Rick would have done it a long time ago, so good luck Dwight. You see and feel the anger Dwight has toward Darryl. He just wants Darryl to give in. But why? He certainly is jealous of Darryl. He wears his vest, shoots his bow, and drives (before a walker landed on it) Darryl’s bike. So, why pressure him to cave? Because Dwight himself caved. He caved and lost everything. Now his wife is his “ex-wife” and is now “married” to Negan. If Darryl doesn’t cave than what kind of man is Dwight for not only caving, but allowing his wife to become Negan’s?
The conversation that broke my heart
When we watched the conversation between Sherry and Dwight in the staircase, my heart truly broke. You could see that they were two people who truly did/do love each other. They both lied to each other to spare the other’s feelings. Sherry when she said Negan was treating her nice and Dwight when he said he was happy with his position of power.
At the end of the episode we see Blue Shirt again. He’s been put on Negan’s fence. He’s a walker. Dwight killed him out of mercy. Which says a whole lot about Dwight.
