The Walking Dead Season 11 Episode 12 Review: Eugene’s Sweet, Sweet Tears

In last week’s episode of The Walking Dead, Eugene discovered that the woman he thought was Stephanie wasn’t actually Stephanie.

Then, at the end of the episode, he learns that another woman, who also isn’t Stephanie, was the actual woman who called herself Stephanie over the radio.

He believes her, although he clearly shouldn’t after all this deception. At one point she angrily asks him how he could have possibly believed that other fake Stephanie was actually Stephanie, and all I could think was, lady why didn’t you tell him yourself instead of waiting this long? It’s been weeks.

Okay, that’s not all I could think. Mostly I was thinking please oh please someone kill me now and put me out of my misery because, dearest readers, this show is a steaming pile of garbage that bears almost zero resemblance to its former self. It’s not merely much, much worse now (as it was in Season 7 and 8) but simply not the same show in any way, shape or form.

We have now spent two episodes focused on Eugene’s love interests (Eugene!?). He’s cried more than we ever needed to see him cry again. And this new Stephanie—her name is actually Max and she’s the assistant to Commonwealth boss Pamela and brother to Commonwealth general Mercer, which is totally the kind of person Eugene should blindly trust!—is a never-ending font of cheese.

The episode opens to her romantic reminiscence of her and Eugene’s radio conversations (there seem to have been many more of them than we originally thought).

“It was just dumb luck honestly,” Max says, both as narrator over a flashback, but also to Eugene as the kind of story people only tell on TV shows, never in real life. It’s all so rehearsed and fake. She found radio parts left out as junk and took them. “Someone clearly thought it was trash,” she says, “but it wasn’t trash. It just needed some love.” Oh my god kill me now, kill me now.

Kill. Me. Now.

They also talk about ice cream in these flashbacks. Because apparently all anybody ever does in the Commonwealth is eat gobs and gobs of the stuff. I haven’t seen this much ice cream since The Good Place and that was actually frozen yogurt (for rather diabolical reasons).

Seriously, we should play a drinking game where every time someone eats, walks around with or discusses ice cream we take a shot. We’d all be hammered.

“That’s how we started talking,” fake Stephanie #2 tells Eugene, as if he hadn’t been there himself, “And we talked about everything and . . . nothing,” she says, wistfully, as though it hasn’t taken her two months to come and find him for some reason.

It’s hilarious to watch this scene again. The majority of it is all flashbacks. But then it cuts to Max and Eugene in person and he has the most ridiculous cry-face, like he’s stuck blubbering, soundlessly, while she talks. He runs off in a huff when he learns the truth.

Later, he goes to find her again and she has the audacity to be mad at him . . . for leaving when he discovers that he’s been lied to and deceived by everyone? She tries to shut the door on him which, hey man come on, that’s a pretty big red flag. If she cared at all about you she’d have a little patience. He brings her ice cream and apologizes to her and she says “you were pretty damn rude” and I’m trying to understand who writes this crap because it’s just so terrible.

When Max finds out he’s writing a novel she manages to guess that there’s a “sepulcher in it” and that it takes place in the Carpathian mountains. This, I suppose, is meant to establish just how close and specific a rapport they had over the radios but, again, it just comes off as wildly, wildly stupid.

Did Eugene, at some point during those talks, tell Stephanie “Someday I’d like to write a spy novel set in the Carpathian mountains that features at least one, but perhaps several, sepulchers”? Because unless that specific thing was said, this entire exchange makes no sense and was written by someone who clearly doesn’t understand how normal people talk to one another. (One might argue that Eugene as a character defies normal people logic, but I’m okay with him in small doses—just not as a convincing love interest for Max.)

The System Is Broken

Other stuff happened in this sad, sad excuse for a Walking Dead episode. Pamela heads to Alexandria, Oceanside and Hilltop with Hornsby and tries to make some kind of cooperation treaty with each community. Only Alexandria joins up. Oceanside is deeply committed to Maggie, despite Maggie having gone away for years and years without a word. So they hinge their agreement on whatever she says, because clearly the woman who abandoned everyone is the model leader who everyone should follow.

Maggie, of course, is deeply distrustful of these potential new allies. And she should be, of course, since there’s definitely a sinister side to the Commonwealth, but her boring stubbornness is just so predictable. Why not utilize their help? This is the end of the world. People are starving. These people are offering resources, food, workers, a mutually beneficial relationship. They don’t have to. They have the ability to just squash you like a bug. Take advantage of the help!

Two thoughts:

First, the Stormtrooper armor is so dumb I can barely handle it. But honestly, how did they even make it? The logistics of creating this type of armor, the manufacturing of it, I just don’t see how it’s possible even in the Commonwealth. Then again, I’m curious where they get all the raw ingredients needed for ice cream and ice cream cones.

Second, it occurs to me that the true story of TWD and FTWD is this: Our heroes go from one community to the next and destroy them. The bad guys have built something, however imperfect, to withstand the end of the world. The Saviors have a functioning society. So does the Commonwealth. So did Woodbury. None of these places are perfect, but they’re reasonably decent places of safety in a world gone mad. And our heroes come and destroy each and every one of them. Clearly the Commonwealth is doomed and Negan was right. He should have killed them all when he had the chance.

The final subplot is about how Carol got Ezekiel the surgery he needed and Ezekiel is mad because other people also need help and Carol says “Just because the system is broken doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get help” and I almost died. The system is “broken” Carol? You live in a zombie apocalypse and have found a place where they perform surgeries with a real doctor! You’ve spent a decade living in fear and desperation and you call the Commonwealth’s healthcare system broken? The writers are clearly commenting on our healthcare system but in the most ham-fisted way imaginable.

It took me three tries to get through this episode. Sorry this review is late. My life is in a bit of a strange place right now and my motivation to actually watch and then write about a show that has betrayed its fans so atrociously is at a minimum. What a joke The Walking Dead has become. The first episode of this Season 11 Part 2 was actually pretty good, but it’s been laughably bad ever since. For shame.

Over and out.

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