Season 7 Episode 10
"New Best Friends"
Tensions are rising between the Kingdom and the Saviors, or at least, between Richard and the Saviors. Truth be told, the skinny asshole that decked him a few episodes ago antagonized him again, as Saviors are wont to do, so the standoff was somewhat justified. But when being an asshole is sort of your M.O., correcting undiplomatic behavior isn’t high on the priority list. This time around, both Morgan and Benjamin get involved, so things get hairy very quickly. Ezekiel’s grand voice commanding them to stand down sounds a bit weaker now that we know he doesn’t want to fight.
Richard tries to recruit Daryl into a very fucking backwards plan to drag the Kingdom into a fight, which involves assaulting one of their convoys, leading them back to a weapons cache, and sacrificing Carol. Ezekiel probably won’t fight until something horrible happens to one of his people, but to just let the Saviors have a trailer full of guns and homemade explosives, and to sacrifice easily one of the best fighters the show has ever had, is stupid. Daryl thinks so too and puts the kibosh on Richard’s plan in true Daryl fashion, with punching and gravelly mumbling.
Meanwhile Rick and the rest are taken into some Mad Max-esque junkyard city by Gabriel’s new best friends (ha ha ha) who are taking this post-apocalyptic society thing a bit too far. Each of them dresses like a homeless Kylo Ren and their leader, Jadis, speaks in an impossibly annoying regressive future speak. There are a lot of them, but they won’t join Rick’s cause until they’re given guns, food from the boat, and a promise that they keep a portion of the spoils of war. But first, Rick must become a garbage gladiator and defeat an admittedly cool looking armored walker. They go in peace after Rick proves himself, but not before Rosita pops off some bullshit tough guy wisdom which I can see is going to get annoying.
Daryl and Carol have another reunion, and he gets her up to speed on things since she decided on a life of self-imposed, romance novel reading exile. That is, he lies to her. Instead of pulling her back into the fight by telling her about Abraham and Glenn, he tells her that everything is good and they’ve struck as amicable of a deal as one can with the Saviors. Indeed, Carol being afraid of losing her humanity is a powerful thing and while the war effort is lesser without her, she deserves to live in peace. Whether the truth comes out eventually remains to be seen.
At the end of the episode, Daryl leaves the Kingdom. He and Morgan make a small peace, even though Morgan still refuses to use his favor with Ezekiel to influence him to fight. And yet, after hearing of Carol’s approval and meeting Shiva, Daryl decides the king is still an okay dude. My only beef here is that Shiva is supposedly only loyal to Ezekiel but nah, the nice kitty can’t resist a man who hates haircuts and sleeves. Oh well, on to next week.
Season 7 Episode 11
"Hostiles and Calamities"
We find ourselves back at the Sanctuary, in the aftermath of Daryl’s escape and Fat Joey’s untimely but perhaps deserved death. Dwight puts the pieces together himself first, and a grim realization dawns on him, that his former wife turned Negan concubine helped Daryl escape. Not only does he know he’s in for a royal ass kicking for losing a prisoner and pet project, but it’s painfully obvious that he’s the one that is going to have to find Sherri. Negan is nothing if not sadistic. Despite his place in Savior hierarchy, Dwight is tortured almost daily.
Eugene on the other hand, believed he was in for a world of pain but finds Negan and the Sanctuary oddly hospitable. He was gifted pickles and granted immediate access to all Savior privileges and benefits. Even if he’s able to cast bullets, Negan sniffs out Eugene’s bullshit. This is where things may get tough for him because he resorts to his song and dance that roped Abraham and Rosita in to keeping him alive. They seem to buy it but now he must keep up the appearance of being of superior and indispensable intellect, even resorting to grade school science tricks to impress Negan’s drunk wives, who were sent over to his room as a “signing bonus.”
Meanwhile, Dwight goes to the one place he thinks Sherri might be. As he paces around their charming, but now destroyed house, her words clang in his mind. He finds a letter from her explaining her actions. Here is the core of Dwight’s pain: the life they had haunts him anew every day and the horror of their separate lives now only makes those memories harder to endure. Ironically, we learn that he supposedly has a bad memory, and might forget little details of promises they made to each other. Come to find out, poor Dwight remembers everything. Daryl represented the person Dwight was; emotional, passionate, angry, and a fierce defender of his loved ones. He stirred things in Dwight that were long dead, forced beneath the water for Dwight to make some kind of life in the Sanctuary. Sherri helped Daryl escape so Dwight might slip back into Negan’s Good Boy mode, and left herself because she didn’t want to endure life as Negan’s “Good Wife” any longer. It was a sacrifice she made to keep him alive, and yet the consequences of that sacrifice may indeed be worse than death. Conflicted by his duty and his love, something as small as her lipstick on a cigarette harries Dwight’s mind and heart. This scene’s emotional weight is much needed and appreciated.
Back at Sanctuary, Eugene hits his first snag when two of Negan’s wives approach him to help a third, Amber, commit suicide. This falls within his abilities but perhaps he’s suspicious of them using their feminine wiles to seduce him into helping. Sure, they appeal to his sense of humanity and basic goodness, explaining what a hell hole life is for Amber, because while the other girls may have a stomach for being a concubine, she’s more or less being raped so that her sick mother can get medication. Eugene agrees but seems to turn a corner. He has rightfully been characterized as a coward from the get go, and a liar who is not nearly as competent as he says he is, but not malicious and useful enough to keep around. Thus he’s been picked on by several characters throughout the show, and just when he gets a bit of approval from someone, they get their head beat in. The shoe being on the other foot in Sanctuary, Eugene is finally the boss of something now. If the power wasn’t enough to sway him, seeing Negan toss the previous doctor into a forge certainly did it. Better to stay on the man’s good side, even if your value was greatly overstated. The suicide pills he cooked up for Amber, he surmises, are actually for Negan. Rather than help the girls topple the dictator, he warns them not to cross him and sinks into his comfortable, cowardly chair. Him being the new doctor may prove to be a problem however. Regardless, at the end of the episode he declares his allegiance to Negan in truly spineless fashion.
Dwight sold the old doctor out to cover his, and Sherri’s tracks. Rather than track her down and bring her back to be horribly punished or try to reunite with her, he lets her go. Knowing Negan would stop at nothing until she was back, doubly so if they both ran off, so he returns to Sanctuary and plays two very strong cards. He plants evidence on the doc and uses his unflinching loyalty to implicate the doctor in Daryl and Sherri’s escape. Why it was the doctor is anyone’s guess, but don’t tell someone with a big heart that there’s no room for those anymore.
How long can both Dwight and Eugene keep up their bluffs? While one’s resentment for Negan has reached critical mass, the other’s alliance with him is just beginning. Or are they both on the same side? Their little exchange in the final scene makes one wonder if they aren’t both double agents working to expose a weakness in the Saviors...
Written by A Play On Nerds contributor, Jerry Herrera - Lover of horror, sci fi, and fantasy in that order. Semi-permanent Disneyland resident. I'm at least one of the droids you're looking for. Twitter: @FrankenJerry - Instagram: @GeraldoPedro