‘The Walking Dead,’ Season 7, Episode 11: “Hostiles And Calamities”

[Image via Gene Page/AMC]

So, get ready for the subtle hints at the fact Eugene is in a pickle in Episode 11 of The Walking Dead 😉

CF:  “In a pickle.”  I see what you did there–just as much as all AMC showed us with this episode. If the symbolism was any goddamn thicker they could have beaten us over the head with the freakin’ pickle.

RT: Maybe Eugene can wrap the pickle in some barbed wire and beat Negan to death?

Here’s what went down in Episode 11 (entitled “Hostiles and Calamities”) of Season 7 of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

Now, Episode 11 of The Walking Dead deals entirely with Negan’s group. Which is good because it’s just too soon to be making eye contact with Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and that ridiculous Mad Max group we were introduced to in Episode 10. it also reminds us of a character we haven’t seen in a while: Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt). Remember him? Here, let me refresh your memory:

[Image via AMC/Everett]

Eugene has been missing since, well it feels like forever but it’s actually only been since the mid-season finale. AMC give no real idea where the fuck Eugene has been since then, but he arrives at the Sanctuary and is given a jar of pickles. Right away Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) starts talking up the fake scientist’s skills and giving Eugene a fat head. He is also back to pretending he is a scientist.

And so the games begin.

CF:  And these are not very good games.  It was fairly obvious that Eugene was talking completely out of his ass, and yet Negan was just eaten it right up.  I don’t know: TV Negan is start the play shit a lot dumber than comic book Negan.  I don’t like where this is headed.

RT: I really think they have fucked up TV Negan beyond repair.

In the mean time, Dwight (Austin Amelio) is involved in another game. This one is called, “Where the fuck is Sherry,” after it is discovered his ex has gone missing. So, not only does Dwight get the shit kicked out of him on account of Daryl escaping, but he has to find Sherry (Christine Evangelista) before Negan loses all faith in him.

[Image via AMC]

Dwight, being a yes-man is totally up for the challenge and thinks he knows where Sherry is. So, he returns to the house he and Sherry once shared and that is where we discover Dwight’s memory is shit.

After no instance of this ever being suspected before in The Walking Dead.

CF:  But Dwight had no problem remembering any of the other happy assholes from Alexandria when he’d run into them–so why was it his memory was shit when he was around his wife?  Why did he have a bad memory?  Did he have some Momento style accident happened to them and he is just fucked in the head?  Why don’t we get his back story?  Oh wait: probably because Dwight is an asshole and his story doesn’t get interesting until after they go to war with Alexandria.

But, let’s cast that aside and get involved in a little Dwight and Sherry backstory. Oh, look, a cute picture of them together. And, what’s this? A letter from Sherry. This is where she explains she was the one who set Daryl free and that is why she had to escape. She totally tells Dwight the one thing that is blatantly obvious to anyone outside of Negan’s group, “It’s better to be dead than a Savior.”

Dwight, who has been suspected as a turncoat on and off throughout this season, returns to the Sanctuary and lies his arse off to the doctor about how he found Sherry but killed her quickly rather than bring her back to Negan. The doctor talks some smack and the plan is laid for Dwight to be a right cunt later on.

[Image via Gene Page/AMC]

But, back to Eugene. He is also learning quickly the ways of how to be a spineless cunt and is doing everything possible to remain alive. Or, maybe he is just playing a very good game of pretend. Really, with Eugene, it could go either way. This includes helping Negan with his dissolving walker problem. He also thinks the walkers should have protective head gear. Now, where have I seen this shit before? Oh yeah, in that stupid episode from last week…

CF:  Given some other clues that were in this episode, I think Eugene came up with the metalhead zombie shit because of something he saw on HBO.  I’ll get to all this later…

[Image via Gene Page/AMC]

While Eugene is eating pickles and playing video games in an effort to avoid the wily ways of Negan’s wives, they are trying to get him to make poison pills for their sister wife, Amber (Autumn Dial) who is a tad bit suicidal. While I am yelling “Trap!” at the TV, Eugene is totally falling for it until Negan pulls a meeting in the furnace room and the good doctor is incinerated (like, literally, not figuratively) for his earlier smack talk. Afterwards, he tells the girls the deal is off even though he has made the pills because he likes his life too much. Plus, he has totally worked out the sister wives probably only wanted to use the pills on Negan anyway. Which, if he is playing the game, is information he can store away for later no doubt.

What did you think of Episode 11 of AMC’s The Walking Dead Season 7? Let us know by commenting below!

CF:  Josh McDermitt got to play Eugene to the hilt and I have to admit, he did a great job showing everything that Eugene would go through to stay alive.  But he also did a few things that showed Eugene isn’t a complete idiot.  When he wanted to cold tablets and the person handing them out shined him on, you could see the wheels turning behind his eyes that said, “I’ve got this bitch; I know exactly what to do.”  He couldn’t get away with that at Alexandria, but here he learns the lay of the land fast and knows exactly how to play the Saviors.

Eugene also got to show off his geekiness.  When he told the wives that he was not Chaotic, Neutral, or Lawful, he was quoting alignments used for characters in Dungeons & Dragons.  I think he got the idea for pouring molten metal over the zombies from a rather famous scene found in Game of Thrones, because if there’s ever one place on television were going to learn about what happens when you coded and molten metal, it’s that fucker.

RT: Oh, of course! Although, since The Walking Dead likely occurred before HBO’s Game of Thrones, it seems Eugene would have picked this trick up from the books.

CF:  It’s possible he read about it.  The TV show would have never aired in WD Land.

CF: But the one part that got me laughing so much was right at the end when they were coating the zombies in metal.  It was then that Eugene said something that has been paraphrased in a million memes on the Internet over the last seven years, and probably can be better expressed in said meme itself:

Yes, Eugene went and quoted Sterling Archer–really, Malory Archer, but Sterling looks better–with one of the most famous paraphrased quotes from the Archer TV show.  And yes, he could have, because I did my research.  The actual quote, “Do you want to get ants?  Because that’s how you get ants!” was spoken in the very first episode, Mole Hunt, which aired on FX 14 January, 2010.  And since Fear the Walking Dead has shown us that the zombie apocalypse started in late 2010, this means that Eugene was probably sitting in front of the TV one night watching the FX channel when Archer came on, and probably fell in love with this exact quote.

RT: Hahaha! That is priceless 😀 See, Eugene is so underutilized in regard to geeky Easter eggs. AMC need to rectify this immediately.

CF: And this means that when the writers staff at The Walking Dead begins quoting Archer, there’s probably a zombie shark somewhere off in the distance waiting to be jumped…

Episode 12, (entitled “Say Yes”) of Season 7 of AMC’s The Walking Dead returns on Sunday, March 5 at 9 PM ET. The official synopsis for Episode 12 is below.

“Alexandrians scavenge for supplies.”

[Featured image via Gene Page/AMC]