The Walking Dead: Hostiles and Calamities (7x11)

I wasn't expecting to get much out of this episode at all, since it focuses on Eugene, Dwight, and Negan instead of characters I care about a whole lot more. However, I was pleasantly surprised!

Cons:

It does still kind of annoy me that this season is so obsessed with small-focus episodes. We've had so few chances this year to hang out with the whole group, and I worry that it's making the ramp-up to the finale a little weak. I was surprisingly okay with spending an hour with Eugene and Dwight, but in the back of my mind I still want to know what's going on with Daryl, Carol, Rick, Michonne, et. al. You know?

Dwight's story was really great, but it did have one sort of logical fallacy. Negan sends Dwight out to look for Sherry, who ran off after freeing Daryl. He finds a note she has written, and discovers that she has left for good, unwilling to wait for Dwight as she wasn't sure whether he'd go with her, or bring her back to Negan. At this point, I have no idea why Dwight decides to go back to Negan. It's not blind loyalty, obviously, since Dwight is able to lie to Negan and tell him that Sherry is dead. He frames the doctor, and Negan kills him. I struggle to understand Dwight's motivation for doing this. He was free. He could have gone after Sherry to try and find her.

Pros:

The truth is, though, I don't really mind not understanding Dwight's motivations. His story in this episode was really sad, and it really worked. His and Sherry's romance is one of those tragedies that eats away at you. The show never gave it a ton of screen time, but I think we all understand the situation and feel a terrible sympathy for Dwight and Sherry both. Sherry leaves Dwight a letter, explaining that she let Daryl go because Daryl reminded her of what Dwight used to be like, before Negan twisted him into something unrecognizable. She's sorry for her part into twisting him into a monster. It's a tragic letter, and we see that Dwight was planning on running off with her, if he found her. He brought the pretzels and beer that Sherry referenced in her letter. So sad!

Eugene's plot thread was really interesting. When I came into this episode, I was worried I'd be forced to watch another rehash of the torture hour we got with Daryl. All the dour, depressing, long and drawn out scenes of how evil Negan is... let's just say they got old practically before they even started. But instead, we see that Negan has decided to give Eugene all the comforts of high status. He gets his own room, video games to play, whatever food he wants, and he even gets a night with some of Negan's wives, although he's told he's not allowed to have sex with them. Instead, Eugene entertains the girls with a home-made explosion.

Later, two of the girls come to him and ask him if he could make a pill that would kill somebody in their sleep. They say it's for their friend, a girl who just wants to die quietly and end her torment as one of Negan's wives. Eugene makes the pills, but he also makes a decision: he is not going to hand the pills over. He knows that these women are planning on murdering Negan, not their fellow wife. He's too much of a coward to go through with it. When Negan comes by to see Eugene, Eugene answers the famous question "who are you?" with an emphatic and repetitive: "I am Negan."

See, this is just so much more interesting than watching another character being tortured. I have all sorts of questions - is Eugene really committed to this new life? He's always been a coward, and here's a situation where he's being offered the comforts of life he's so badly missed, and the security of having somebody's orders to follow without question. But Eugene's character arc of late has been centered on finding the hero within. Is he diving headfirst into Negan's organization in order to gain his trust and overthrow the regime from within? Or is he throwing in his lot with the group he sees as the strongest, per his all-too-logical worldview?

I liked all of the stuff with Negan's wives. They were clearly being nice to Eugene to soften him up for their plan to kill Negan, but I think there was more to the story here. These women all had lives before Negan, and the chance to talk with somebody who isn't trying to have sex with them, or own them in any way, must be appealing. I love that they were attempting to take their lives back by murdering Negan - I kind of wonder why one of them hasn't just stabbed Negan in his sleep before now. Does he sleep with guards in his room? Mystery of mysteries.

I won't go on any longer. This is the type of episode that's really not designed for me. It doesn't have any of my favorite characters, and in many ways it's retreading old ground and wasting time until we get to the final showdown. That being said, I was really pleased with this closer look at Eugene's character, and I liked the deeper exploration of Dwight as well. Are they Negan? Are they really? I can't wait to find out!

8/10