The Trial Of Eugene Porter

The trial of Eugene Porter taking place in Season 11 of The Walking Dead is a farce in more ways than one. It’s a public trial but it’s rigged from the outset. It was almost naïve of Yumiko to think that she had any chance of representing her client in a system where justice is so clearly merely the whims of one woman: Pamela Milton, the Commonwealth’s ruthless leader.

But even that was a sham. It’s one thing to rig a trial, but if you don’t control the guns you don’t have power. When Eugene is condemned to death—following a pretty good heartfelt speech about one man’s ability to make meaningful change—it seems like the end for our blubbering coward. But he’s cheated death before and he may just cheat it again. When he’s taken to the prison cells, Commonwealth general, Mercer, is there waiting for him. His troops take the bag off of his head, the cuffs off his wrists.

“Time to eff shit up,” Mercer says grimly. Eugene seems stunned. After all, Mercer didn’t lift a finger during the mock trial. Perhaps the stoic warrior was simply plotting things without anyone knowing. Keeping his cards close to his chest.

This wasn’t the only betrayal in tonight’s episode, Faith. Or the only about-face. At Outpost 22—aka, Alexandria—Negan and Ezekiel come close to exchanging blows when Negan gets in trouble for fighting with the guards and they lose a map they’ve made when he’s searched.

Ezekiel reminds Negan that they’ll never be friends, and that not only does Negan deserve to die, he doesn’t deserve to be a father, telling him that he has no idea what he took from him. “I can tell by your face you have no idea what I’m talking about,” he says, and Negan has no idea.

I admit, I was with Negan on this one. Ezekiel is talking about Benjamin here, and I had to go look him up to remember what exactly befell Henry’s older brother. It was during one of the routine supply drop shakedowns. The Savior Jared shot Benjamin in the thigh after a small scuffle, severing his femoral artery. Benjamin eventually bled out and died. While this was certainly the result of having to pay the Saviors and Negan protection money (basically) Negan wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. He didn’t have anything to do with it, other than his very destructive leadership style that’s almost impossible to reconcile with his current character.

And so we come to the first about-face. When Negan is dragged out into the yard to be made an example of by way of firing squad, his wife Annie begs and pleads with them to free him. The head honcho Commonwealth guy decides that making an example out of both of them is a better idea (though killing a pregnant woman to set an example is pretty extreme, and has unintended consequences).

Moved by Negan’s pleas to only kill him and spare his wife, Ezekiel walks between the pair of them and the firing squad and raises his hands. “What are you doing?” Negan asks. “I don’t know,” Ezekiel replies and then turns his attention on the Stormtroopers. “You don’t have to do this he says.”

At this point, more and more of the prisoners have rushed up and stood between the firing squad and Negan and Annie. Kelly, Magna, Princess, plenty of extras. “I admire your bravery,” the Commonwealth boss says. “Shoot them all.”

But the guard who originally beat up Negan has a change of heart. And so we come to our second betrayal.

Being ordered to shoot one man you don’t like is one thing. Maybe him and his wife. But shooting a couple dozen innocent people to death? All of whom were part of his own community at one point? That’s a bridge too far.

He lowers his gun, and all but one of the other soldiers lower theirs. Then he turns it on the commander. The one loyal guard is shot and the commander grabs Kelly and puts a pistol to her head, backing away with his hostage—right into Daryl Dixon.

Rosita stops Negan from killing the commander and questions him, using the threat of a zombie to try to extract the information she needs: The location of her daughter. He only smiles and says “Everything will be taken from you” (I’m paraphrasing) which is an odd thing to say when you’re literally about to lose everything. Some people are just born smug.

Of the missing children, only Hershel is found. The rest remain missing.

Elsewhere, Aaron, Jerry, Elijah and Lydia are making their way to Oceanside when they come across some old familiar faces. I’d been wondering what happened to Luke and (searches Google) his new boo, Jules. They just sort of disappeared at one point.

Well, their travels took them to Oceanside apparently, where they found it under the control of the Commonwealth (aka dudes in white). Jerry wanted to fight them, apparently, but Oceanside’s Rachel would not allow it. Now Stormtroopers are after them for some reason (too much time on their hand, I guess). This is all news to Aaron, who left the Commonwealth thinking everything was hunky-dory and assumes all their friends are safe and sound.

When they’re nearly discovered, Lydia uses the whole ‘put zombie guts and blood on our clothes’ trick to blend in with a passing hoard and evade detection. I don’t like this trick anymore. It was cool when they had to smear the blood and guts on their faces, too. Or when the Whisperers did it by blending in with zombie-face masks. Now they can just put a little on their shoulders and voila! they’re basically invisible to zombies. Somebody should have told Rick and Glenn that back in Season 1, or Nick in Fear The Walking Dead, who practically lived in zombie offal during Season 2.

The most interesting bit in this subplot is when Lydia drops her knife and a zombie who just then trips to the ground reaches out and grabs it. The smart Season 1 zombies continue to pop up, and while I’m intrigued and think it’s cool, I also feel like it’s weird to introduce this so late in the game. We’re building to something big—but we only have two episodes left.

That’s pretty wild when you think about it. Two episodes and this show is over for good—though the zombie drama’s spinoffs mean that some things never truly die. For instance, we knew the whole time that Negan wasn’t about to get killed. He has a spinoff with Maggie coming up! Thanks for spoiling the moment, AMC. And sure, Annie could have gotten killed here (perhaps creating some new sympathy for Negan, or some reason for him and Maggie to team up for the spinoff) but as I noted in my last review, the lack of any kind of effort that’s gone into making Annie anything other than a wife-prop for Negan makes it hard for us to care about her. Since they skipped over all the relationship stuff with these two, it’s hard to find meaning in their relationship beyond Negan just telling us that he loves her and wants to protect her and their unborn child. This isn’t how you create a compelling drama where you care deeply about the characters.

That being said, I did like that scene overall. I thought Ezekiel coming around and saving Negan was a powerful moment (even if his Benjamin grudge felt a bit silly given that we’ve already had Negan and Maggie come to a kind of resolution and her beef with Negan is much deeper).

Speaking of missed opportunities, I think this show has really bungled its bad guys this season. I’ve mentioned before how uninspiring Pamela is as the Big Bad. I’m still not sure why they didn’t have Hornsby become the true villain of the season, or even just have him be the villain all along and just lose Pamela altogether. We didn’t really need them both, and then they got rid of the wrong one.

This also applies to the smaller villains in Season 11. Remember the guy who Hornsby enlisted to help with the community that Negan and Annie were living in? He tossed people off the roof. He was a charming, scary psychopath and they killed him off almost instantly. But why not combine his character with the guy Rosita feeds to a zombie in tonight’s episode? Have him live for a longer amount of time so we can really start hating his guts more. Instead, we get two different bad guys both quickly dispatched who we never get to know well enough to really hate.

Overall, another pretty solid episode. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just too little, too late. We spent so much time getting nowhere fast in the Commonwealth this season, and with the Reapers (Reavers?) and with Eugene’s terrible romances. It’s not the kind of season you’d be eager to watch a second time, and all feels overshadowed by the much more compelling Whisperer arc (although that dragged on much too long also).

We’re nearing the end of The Walking Dead, but this doesn’t feel like the end. There’s none of that wild momentum that you get in a really good show that’s racing toward the finish line. Think Breaking Bad, a show that didn’t just build up in terms of action and tension (though it certainly did that, with some major character deaths and things going terribly, horribly wrong) but also in terms of its characters reaching their breaking points. There was a lot to resolve between Walt and all the people in his life, many of whose lives he’d ruined.

In The Walking Dead, the best they can come up with is a reference to a bit character who died four seasons ago?

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