7x11 Hostiles and Calamities

[8.9/10] One of the questions The Walking Dead has been interrogating from the beginning of its run is whether the end of the world changes people, or just reveals what we truly are. Most notably with Shane, the show has played around with the idea that the end of civilization, the lack of rules and orders to keep people in line, forces some to be different, turning them into changed people. But for others, it just gives license for them to be who they were the whole time.

The centrality of that question to “Hostiles and Calamities” is part of the subtle way in which The Walking Dead pays tribute to its network-mate Breaking Bad in the episode. Fans of Vince Gilligan’s seminal drama know the significance of a character hanging onto a cigarette with a loved one’s lipstick on it. We’re quite familiar with the notion of a former science teacher finding himself enjoying the spoils and status of his talents when recognized, producing poisons, puffing himself up, and taking to his new role a little too easily. Most of all, Breaking Bad watchers know the exploration of whether changed circumstances change a person or simply let the beast out of the cage.

But despite those similarities, Eugene is not Walter White, and Dwight is not Jesse Pinkman. The key epiphany for Eugene in “Hostiles and Calamities” is that he is a follower, a coward, someone who knows what will keep him safe, and accepts the path of least resistance in that regard despite the people who will be misled, hurt, or even killed in the process. If there were only a handful of qualities that defined Walter White, it was his need for control, his need for recognition, and his blithe self-denial about his own motivations. By contrast, Eugene knows exactly who he is and the reasons, however shameful, that he does what he does -- kowtow to whoever has the courage and boldness to be in control.

So when he finds himself enmeshed in Negan’s machine, he is both afraid and in awe. The episode plays on the expectation that Eugene will be broken the same way that Daryl was, starved and isolated into compliance. But The Saviors are smarter than that, and quickly see that someone as weak-willed as Eugene is more likely to be moved by carrot than by stick. He exults when he sees a refrigerator of food just for him. He is taken aback by the living space he realizes is to be his own. When he hears “Easy Street,” it’s not the sign of his torturers arriving, but the symbol of the creature comforts he will get to enjoy for the first time since the world fell.

And, like Walt, he changes. Initially Eugene is tentative and tries to be moral. He is reluctant to take anything made by Negan’s workers rather than scavenged. When Negan rewards him for a walker-smelting idea with a visit from a few of his “wives,” Eugene treats them with respect, resisting their attempts at physical interaction because he knows they’re not there of their own volition. While his motives may be a bit mixed, he’s only willing to make a poison pill for humanitarian reasons.

But slowly but surely he settles into his new surroundings. Rather than waiting in line for the tools he need, he turns on that Savior entitlement, dressing down the point-keeper and taking what he wants (including a stuffed animal that, true to form, he gives a silly name). He begins to enjoy those creature comforts, indulge the attentions of those “wives” and give in to the privileged position in which he’s been placed. He is familiar, but seems different than the Eugene we’ve gotten to know over the past few years.

Dwight is the inverse of Eugene here. While we’ve known Eugene as a kind-hearted, if misguided individual, slowly being tempted by what The Saviors have to offer, we’ve known Dwight as a bad guy, one who seems to buy into the cruelty of his position, only now getting wisps of the idea that he wasn’t always this way, and that he’s having his doubts and reservations.

In that way, maybe that lipstick-ringed cigarette is a hint that there is some of Jesse Pinkman in him. Perhaps Dwight had, and has, a moral compass, one that gives him pause about the deaths that have come at his hands. He too may be under the thumb of a tyrant, one who manipulates him, uses the woman he loves against him, and makes him a party to things he wants no part of, but eventually make stains on his soul that aren’t so easy to wash off.

The thrust of his storyline suggests that he was not always this way, and he is starting to remember that. The chief reminder is his wife, Sherry, who it turns out was the one who freed Daryl. It’s an obvious device, and a bit overly sentimental, but her letter to him, read in voiceover, underscores that this life is something Dwight didn’t want, that it was a last resort he and Sherry paid dearly for. The glimpse we had of him in his first interactions with Daryl don’t paint a pretty picture, but there’s the notion that under different circumstances, Dwight might have been a decent person, and with Sherry’s memory burning within him, he might be one again.

But Daryl also awakened something in him. When Dwight goes out in search of Sherry, he’s wearing Daryl’s vest, carrying Daryl’s crossbow, riding a motorcycle. As the shot where he’s reflected in a pool of Fat Joey’s blood suggests, he is a dark mirror of Daryl here. Dwight may have been a burnout going nowhere like Daryl was, one with the misfortune of ending up attached to someone more like Merle than like Rick in the end.

Daryl represents something for him -- the idea that it doesn’t have to be this way. So much of Negan’s philosophy, his method of molding people to his will, is by convincing them that there are only two choices: you either submit or you die. That’s the lesson of the (frankly kind of ridiculous) moment where he throws the doctor into the furnace. But Dwight threw that doctor to the wolves, ostensibly not just to cast suspicion away from himself, but because of the doctor’s embrace of that philosophy, of his statement that Sherry was too “tender-hearted” to last. Dwight is beginning to have doubts about who he is, about who he’s become, in the embrace of The Saviors, and once more, he seems on the precipice of resisting and standing up as Daryl did.

Eugene, however, has the opposite reaction to these events. Witnessing the doctor being so brutally (if ridiculously) disposed of is not a moment of pause for him to contemplate what he’s become and what he’s a part of; it’s a confirmation that he fears that result, that he, unlike Daryl, can be cowed. He sniffs out the assassination plot of the wives who told him those poison pills were for assisted suicide and shuts them down, acknowledging that he is too afraid, too comfortable, too meant for this to do anything but accept his face and the rule of the man who dictates it. Despite Eugene’s typical florid and boastful proclamations that he was self-sufficient to Abraham, he has always been someone incapable of looking after himself, lying and doing what was necessary to attach himself to those who could protect him, whether it’s Abraham, Rick, or Negan.

Dwight seems to be in a state of uncertainty, but Eugene is clear-eyed. He tells his captor without hectoring or pressure that he is Negan, that he was Negan before he even met the acid-tongued head of this operation, and deep down he knew it. He has no illusions when he puts on that black jacket, surveys the enactment of his plans, and bites down on the gherkin that represents his acceptance of the take what you want ethos of The Saviors. Dwight, like Jesse, is in limbo, unsure whether he can go on with all he’s done or whether it requires something more of him to restore the balance. But Eugene, like Walt, is discovering that his new circumstances have not forced him to become someone else, but instead exposed him for what he truly is, however unpleasant, self-serving, and lacking in moral will that person that may be.