Catching Up With The Walking Dead: S7 E11, Hostiles And Calamities

Sigh. I know. I promised we could do this: Catch up on The Walking Dead before the February 25th midseason premiere in which a Very Important Character is supposed to die. But honestly, when I went to confirm where I left off when I just gave up on LAST season, my reaction was, “Oh wow! I got a lot further than I thought I did! Only 6 episodes to watch in season 7! Maybe this won’t be so bad after all!” And that’s kind of a terrible mindset to go into this with, isn’t it?

But hey. At least it’s not, like, an Olympics contest for all the gold, or an actual job. It’s just a few hours of sitting on my couch, eating snacks, snickering loudly at things no one should snicker at.

Anyway. Let’s get to it!

We open in Negan Land or whatever it’s called — I’m never going to remember that. His peeps are finding the body of that one chubby dude that Daryl had to take out to escape.

That dude. He was kind of cute. I still feel bad. But he was too nice for these people.

So we’ve gone back in time a smidge. Whatsisname — Dwight — is panicking because the Negan trucks are returning from Alexandria and he knows he’s going to get in trouble for Daryl being gone.

Also, they’ve brought Eugene back with them on those trucks! He’s wigging out. But then the lady with the vaguely strawberry blonde hair takes him to a decent room that has books. And then she asks him if he’s hungry, and he looks confused, like he doesn’t understand why she’s being nice to him, which she’s really not — I mean, it’s not the like the time Molly Ringwald was nice to Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. She’s just doing her job. So she asks him again if he’s hungry and tells him she can get him whatever he wants to eat. He asks for lobster. She says they don’t have lobster, what the hell does he think this is? So then he asks for canned spaghetti and she says, “Orangey or red sauce?” He says orange and we all nod, like, “Orange IS the best.”

Then he says he likes pickles and I’m like, “Wow! Eugene is most of us!” She dashes his hopes and dreams and tells him they’re out of pickles but asks if he likes potato chips. He says he does. He is clearly imagining a bag of Ruffles. She says they make them fresh. “They got a kettle.” And Eugene is like, “UGH NO.”

Same, Eugene. Same. I want my potato chips highly processed and uniform in size and flavor.

Anyway, he’s gleaning info about their operations from this seemingly inane conversation. Which is fun to watch him do since he’s so hapless.

Also his room has a stereo and he switches it on and it plays that same annoying song they used earlier in the season to torture Our Precious Daryl.

Dwight is in his room trying to puzzle out who helped Daryl escape (he has the note that says “GO NOW”), and then a bunch of Negan’s thugs bust in and beat the shit out of him while Negan stands outside. We’re supposed to find that menacing and scary. I just find it as annoying as I’ve found Negan for about 9,027 episodes now. The opening credits roll.

I have to watch this on Netflix so I don’t even get to enjoy any terrible ads. This might exhaust me.

Especially if Negan keeps talking, which he is doing right now, outside the cell where he has put Dwight. One of his wives is also missing. It’s the one that used to be Dwight’s wife. Negan’s like, “Go bring her back or I’ll kill you.” Dwight’s like, “Okee dokee, pokee.” (That took 6 minutes in show time, twelve seconds in Shannis time.) Then we see Dwight being treated by the doctor, who talks at him about how he shouldn’t let Negan treat him this way or some shit. It doesn’t even make any sense. And then Dwight rides off on his motorcycle. It might still be Daryl’s motorcycle. I don’t know. Is it important? No. But he’s going to find Sherry, the missing wife.

The strawberry blonde lady is showing Eugene around and tells him how to get food: you take it and sign out what you took. He sees some creepy red headed person taking food without signing for it. He’s so confused. Should he tattle? Should he not tattle? He should not, and he does not.

He gets some pickles and then she takes him outside to the yard, where Negan is waiting. Negan calls him asshole like five times and then asks his name and threatens him with Lucille and asks him if he’s a “smarty pants”. Eugene sputters out his resume and embellishes it quite a bit. The zombie on the fence loses its innards. Negan wants to know how to keep the zombies on their feet to guard the perimeter. Eugene points out that they have a smelter and they can weld the zombies to the fence and cover their heads to protect them from hostiles and calamities. Negan’s like, thanks! I’m going to send you some of my wives tonight! No sex, but you can have dinner and drinks!

Eugene smirks as he’s walking away. I’m not sure what that means. Is he playing them? Not playing them? Realizing he might do okay here? Whatever. We’ll know soon enough.

Then we cut to him in his room playing video games with three of the Negan wives. The wives are bored. Because no chick wants to watch some dude play video games, ever. One of the women convinces him to have an intelligent conversation instead. Somehow they end up talking about how to make a simple explosive. There is a drunk woman called Amber. She is probably a problem of some sort. We’ll see how.

Cut to them all walking outside, Eugene carrying a crate filled with some stuff. He’s fashioned a small helium bomb. Two of the women are super impressed. Amber keeps drinking, straight from the bottle. Foamy stuff comes out of the bomb when Eugene lights it.

Foamy stuff. I don’t make this shit up, y’all.

Back to Dwight. He’s in a house, looking for Sherry. It’s probably their house. She’s left him a letter. She tells him she let Daryl go because he reminds her of what Dwight used to be, and she didn’t want him to forget. It’s actually kind of nice, and the first time I actually remotely care about Dwight and what he might wind up doing. She tells him she’s sorry that in trying to save his life by giving herself – and him — to Negan, she turned him into what he is. He leaves some beer and pretzels in case she returns and then leaves.

Back to Eugene. Two of the wives come back to see him. They feed him a cockamamie tale about how Amber the drunk wants to “end it all” and can’t he help them help her kill herself. This is either nonsense or not nonsense. Eugene is falling for it though. Next scene he is in a line for medicine. He cuts the line by telling the lady he’s been appointed Chief Engineer of this facility and reports directly to Negan, and she better just give him what he needs. So she does. He takes a bunch of cold medicine and stuff, and a yarn doll, and then we see him back in his room doing chemistry shit.

Dwight is back and visiting with the doctor again. He lies and says he found Sherry and killed her but she ran right into a pile up of walkers as he shot her so he didn’t bring her back.

In the next scene, we’re at the furnace and it’s the doctor’s turn to be threatened. Negan thinks the doctor was sexing with Sherry. I think. I’m not entirely clear. Because this is stupid and I really don’t care about how Negan keeps his people in line. Then the doctor apologizes and admits his wrongdoing and Negan puts the iron down, and for two seconds everyone thinks he’s been given a reprieve. Then Negan makes firm eye contact with Eugene, and then he throws the doctor into the furnace.

Eugene is back in his room and the two Negan wives return, looking for the suicide pills. Eugene is like, “I’m not stupid, and you can’t have them, because I know they’re not for Amber, you’re going to try to kill Negan and I’m not going to let that happen.” They threaten to tell on him and he’s like, “Go ahead” and tells them why that would be a tactical error. They call him a coward and he says, “That is a correct assessment.”

Later, Eugene is enjoying a pickle from his large jar when Negan shows up at his door. Eugene is all scared of Lucille and shit because he doesn’t watch this show and realize how annoying Negan is. Negan tells him he doesn’t have to be afraid anymore and starts to ask him who he is. Eugene says “I am Negan” before Negan even finishes asking.

And to wrap up this episode, we have a final scene where Eugene is standing outside overlooking the yard, watching his plan to weld the guardian Walkers into place, and Dwight comes out there too and Eugene tells Dwight, “I’m just like you.” Or something to that effect. Honestly I’ve been too long without characters I care about it and tuned out to find this photo of the two actors clowning around between takes:

Maybe for episode 12, we’ll get to see some characters we’re actually interested in! Like Daryl and Carol. Remember when this happened? That was a good time, and so, so very long ago.

Stay tuned!