Man…

I don’t even know.

I can tell you that I watched the Oscars with my wife, looking for my future wife.

^{I will die on these hills.}

The whole fuck-up at the end was my reward for sticking it through until the end, which was some time after 9:00 Best Coast time.

Then I tuned in to “The Walking Dead”, so see what I had missed. Turns out, not a lot.

Oh sure, the two plots worked well together – Eugene figuring out life in the Saviors Compound; Dwight covering his ass for Daryl’s escape – into a nice little moment at the end, but it just seemed like another “Meanwhile, back at the Legion of Doom” episode.

The episode starts off (again) in the recent past. Dwight discovers Daryl is missing. That buys him an ass kicking. Then his ex-not-ex-wife Sherry has fled, giving Negan a chance to prove Dwight’s true loyalties by having him go find his old old-lady and return her to her new husband, Negan.

He tracked her tracks but couldn’t find her, but found a post-apocalyptic “Dear John” letter with a hint of “you’ve changed, man!” at their old home. She outlines the reasons she left – it’s not worth it anymore – and hopes he’ll one day find the good man he used to be inside of him.

He then heads back to camp, with a concocted story about her death, and some blame-shifting for how she had gotten away.

As for the other plot point, it’s essentially a collaborationist plot along Vichy lines. If you remember, after Rosita tried to shoot Negan, Negan kidnapped Eugene as both hostage & bounty, since Eugene admitted he knew how to make bullets, a valuable skill in their world now. Afraid for his life, he agrees to whatever Negan asks upon arrival at the compound, calls himself a doctor, resolves an issue regarding the gate zombies (essentially, weld them to the fence) and is promptly rewarded, earning both a nickname (“Dr. Smartypants”) and a sex-free evening with some of Negan’s wives.

Both of these plots come to a head when Dwight drops his clues that it was the doctor who helped Daryl escape. With “Dr.” Eugene watching from above, Negan proceeds to burn the doctor alive in the furnace, eliminating him due to his supposed betrayal because they’ve “got a new guy”.

Eugene decides he likes the good life, turning his back on a plot to kill Negan the wives have concocted and instead pledging his allegiance.

“I am utterly completely stone-cold Negan.”

The episode ends with Dwight & Eugene on an outlook overlooking the gate, where the Saviors are following Eugene’s advice to pour molten metal on the walkers to keep them affixed to the fence. Eugene sums it up quite succinctly:

“I’m Eugene. You’re Dwight. We are Negan.”

This seemed to be a filler episode. The show didn’t want to acknowledge the Oscars by skipping a week, but they ran an episode that you could skip without losing the plot of the show. Sure, filling in a bit more backstory about how Daryl’s escape impacted the Saviors helps, and showing us how Eugene devolved into his old inflated-resume self in order to survive helps later if he rejoins the Alexandrians. But in terms of “must-see Zombie TV”, it wasn’t. Only one walker died, and that was due to atrophy.

There are now 5 episodes left in the season. Next week is a Rick & Michonne road trip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q_KoUJh5sQ

Which means either more filler, or they actually find something related to the war that everyone keeps saying is coming but isn’t actually happening until next season.

I’m not holding out hope.