【Squirting Pussy】

This recap contains spoilers for The Squirting PussyWalking Dead Season 7, episode 11, titled "Hostiles and Calamities."

If you thought the La La Landsoundtrack was full of earworms, you'd probably forgotten all about "Easy Street," huh?

Luckily, if the Oscars aren't your bag, The Walking Dead is here to offer you a pickle-eating, doctor-burning alternative to Hollywood's most glamorous night, and you can rest assured that no one's going to be winning any prizes in Negan's world any time soon.

After one solid episode and one legitimately good one, the show took two steps back with episode 711, "Hostiles and Calamities" -- although for an installment focused on the show's most consistently irritating character, I guess it's remarkable that the hour wasn't as calamitous as it could've been.

Eugene is still a grating mix of cowardly and arrogant, but his convincing foray into Savior territory does open up some interesting avenues -- is he playing a long con, trying to win Negan's trust so that he can double-cross him when opportunity strikes, or is he actually drinking the Kool-Aid, either as a survival strategy or a chance to finally enjoy a taste of power after multiple seasons of being a doormat under Abraham, Rosita and Rick?

The latter option is the most compelling -- Eugene has always been a socially awkward weasel with creeper tendencies, so going Dark Side might make him vaguely more interesting -- and he certainly has the smarts to be useful to Negan, as he's already proven. But would the show really go that route so soon after having Spencer trying to betray Rick by sucking up to Negan? (And would we care if Eugene flipped anyway?) We shall see.

Or maybe he's just enticed by the prospect of surrendering all control and independent thought, imagining that under Negan, he'll no longer have to take responsibility for any decision-making. For a guy as spineless as Eugene (and you've got to respect the fact that he makes no secret of it), there's probably something appealing about submitting to the will of a dictator -- he probably feels liberated by the lack of options.

Luckily, the inadvisable focus on Eugene and Negan was somewhat counteracted by the developments in Dwight's storyline. While Eugene was wetting his whistle with homemade explosives and video games, Dwight was out hunting for his ex-wife, Sherry, who was responsible for freeing Daryl a few episodes back.

He didn't find her, but he did come across a brutally honest note from her at their old home, in which Sherry explained that she had broken Daryl out of his cell because our favorite unwashed hero clearly reminded Dwight of the man he used to be, a man Sherry wanted to let Dwight forget, just to make surviving under Negan a little more tolerable.

Dwight seemed to take that advice to heart by framing the Sanctuary's poor doctor for Daryl's escape and Sherry's disappearance, but I suspect it had more to do with giving Negan someone to blame so that he could forget about Sherry and move on to bigger fish. It's a strategy that seemed to work quite well, given how cheerful Negan was after incinerating Dr. Carson, and how easily he moved on from the idea of his favorite "wife."

Sherry might think that Dwight can't be saved now that he's taken a life, but I suspect that Negan's daily cruelties aren't solidifying Dwight's loyalty so much as simply pushing him to mask the resentment that's eating away at him -- much like the strategy of coating a decomposing walker with liquid metal can't slow the rot that's spreading underneath. Metaphors!

That's not the only thing rotten in the state of Virginia, since Negan's remaining wives are also plotting against him, hoping to use Eugene's mad science skills to fashion a poisoned pill for the villain -- a revelation I'm looking forward to exploring further. It's clear that intimidation and bullying can only get a leader so far, and whether he wants to believe it or not, Negan probably has far more enemies surrounding him than friends at the Sanctuary, no matter how much "I am Negan" propaganda he propagates.

Overall, "Hostiles and Calamities" proved to be an unwelcome detour down an old dirt road after two episodes of plot development, but those growing seeds of dissent will undoubtedly bear some fruit as we get closer to the Season 7 finale, so I guess we're supposed to grin and bear it.

The Walking Deadairs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC

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