11x12 The Lucky Ones

[7.1/10] This one’s pretty slow as TWD episodes go, and I have to admit, I’m almost as tired of Maggie as I was of Rick before he was spirited away. But there’s a strong central idea here, which is basically whether you’ll go along with something that seems wrong or which you can’t trust because it’s for the greater good. How much any of them will go along to get along is a big question, and Maggie, Ezekiel, and Eugene are all presented with choices to where they wonder if it’s worth swallowing their pride and their principles and just “going with the flow.”

Maggie’s is the biggest decision. You can see why she’d be compelled to enter some kind of pact with the Commonwealth. Hilltop has fallen on hard times, even for the zombie apocalypse. Daryl, who’s always been something of a lone wolf, sees the merit in joining up with them, even if he doesn’t fully trust them yet. And Pamela Milton makes a good case that a place like the Commonwealth having your back isn’t that different than a mutual defense agreement with Alexandria and Oceanside, especially when the added resources seem not only welcome, but sorely necessary.

And yet, Maggie’s reluctant to get into bed with the wrong people, not just because of Pamela’s semi-chilling “natural order of things” speech and the lack of equality in the Commonwealth, but because she’s worried about what the costs will be down the line. It’s nice to have more food in a day than they’ve had in a week, and soldiers who can slaughter a swarm of walkers in a half-second that it would take an hour for the Hiltoppers to slay with their melee weapons. Still, Maggie knows that these favors come with a cost and doesn’t want to agree to pay it without knowing what it might be.

It’s an interesting decision point. Candidly, i don’t know if I’d do the same, but considering how many communities the TWD survivors have come across that turn out to be secretly evil, maybe it’s not a bad idea to be hesitant to put in with yet another. You can see the logic on both sides of the argument, which is the sign of a good dilemma and good big picture writing.

I also appreciate the glimpse we get of a little more internal politics within the Commonwealth. You can practically smell how much Hornsby needs this, how he’s pushing every button and pulling every lever to make it work. His dream of not only restoring the regional and maybe even national community to what it was is intriguing, with the caveat that he seems to want his own fiefdom to govern in the process. His anger beneath his empty smiling visage is compelling, including some well-shot business as he blows off steam with a walker shooting gallery.

This is also the most we’ve seen of Pamela so far, and she’s an interesting character. You can see the difference between who she is in public and who she is in private. She’s onto Lance’s ploy -- game recognize game, even in politics -- and she’s pretty good at working Maggie even if she comes up short. The reveal that she knew the woman who founded Alexandria (whom, frankly, I’d kind of forgotten about) is a nice detail, and I appreciate that they’re giving her more shading than just the “corrupt leader archetype” we’ve seen so many times before.

I think my favorite of the stories here though is Ezekiel, who’s smart enough to figure out that Carol mucked about behind the scenes to get him to the front of the line for surgery. Here too, there’s reasonable justifications on both sides. I’m inclined to side with Ezekiel, who feels guilty for getting special treatment when there are so many others suffering whose need is no less than his own. He feels the unfairness of this and isn’t sure if he can live with it. But Carol has a few compelling rejoinders, basically that the system is fucked anyway, that Governor Milton would put her asshole son to the front of the line, and that lesser men than Ezekiel have gotten much more in terms of unjust benefits.

It speaks to Carol’s almost mercenary pragmatism and desire to protect her own, in the same way Ezekiel’s reaction speaks to his nobility and steadfastness. There’s meat to the conflict, even as Ezekiel eventually acquiesces, and god help me, it’s just nice to see the two of them together again.

But arguably the most interesting dilemma is Eugene’s. He’s been freighted with a terrible truth about everything he thought he knew and trusted coming to the Commonwealth. At the same time, we learn a little bit more about the real Stephanie, how she was off the books when she made contact with him, and how letting Hornsby commandeer her connection (though a little bit of wheel-greasing from her brother, Mercer) was the only way she could stay out of trouble.

Their scenes check a few important boxes for the storyline. For one thing, Eugene himself addresses the fact that he’s not the best person to throw stones here, given how he lied his way into Abraham and Rosita’s crew, something which Rosita gives him absolution for. For another, Stephanie’s right to point out that after all the time they spent talking on the radio, Eugene should have known the fake wasn’t the real her. Eugene’s response is plausible and a little heartbreaking -- that he’d been rejected so many times, and that he’s neurotypical in a way that makes him miss certain cues -- to where he basically believed what he wanted to believe: that someone had actually accepted him.

You can understand the heartache on both sides, Eugene from having what he thought was love ripped away from him, and Stephanie watching what she thought was love torn from her and repackaged with someone else with her supposed soulmate not being able to tell the difference. It’s a tough road for both of them from there, but the wisps of hope we get over shared ideation over Eugene’s Tom Clancy homage are encouraging. Eugene seems torn up over whether to stay quiet and not rock the boat after everything he knows, but finding the person who he made a genuine connection with is a reason to preserve what they have in the here and now.

Overall, this is still a lesser light for season 11b, but there’s also some strong practical, ethical, and personal questions at the heart of the episode that I find very interesting.