Synopsis of 7×11: Doctor Eugene Porter has made it to easy street! Unfortunately, Dwight and another doctor don’t have it quite so easy after Daryl’s escape.
Once he stopped cowering and Laura, the woman who escorted him to his new – and Daryl’s old potential – room, Eugene started to realize the Saviors’ complex may not be such a bad place to be. He timidly admitted that he would like pickles, if they were on offer, and jammed out to that terrible earworm ‘Easy Street.’
At the same time, Dwight is being beaten for Daryl’s escape, after he realized that Sherry was the one to let him go. With her also gone, it’s not hard to figure out why and Dr. Carson tells Dwight that he doesn’t think she’ll survive long out there on her own as he’s patching Dwight up.
Eugene is given a giant jar of pickles on his tour through the Saviors’ complex and a crash course in how everything works – he takes what he wants and writes his number down, everyone else works for them since he’s been invited to the inner circle. He also runs into Negan himself, who asks Eugene how to better fortify their walkers along the fenceline and, when pressed, Eugene gave him the solution – as well as falling back into his old lie of being Doctor Eugene Porter with the human genome project.
He so suitably impressed Negan that Eugene was host to three of his wives for the night. Mostly, this consisted of Eugene playing an 80s video game while two of them watched and one got super smashed and sad. But when they found out he was smart enough to pull off some party tricks, he made them medical glove balloons to blow up and something that shot liquid high into the air. They were suitably impressed.
Dwight left after Sherry and ended up in their old home, where they’d planned to meet up if they ever got separated. There, he found a note from her alongside her wedding rings. Unfortunately, she writes to him about how he’s changed and not for the better. It’s a heart-wrenching wake-up call for Dwight, but I still don’t feel bad for him. He’s a dick.
After learning that he’s a science whiz, Negan’s wives ask Eugene to make them poison for suicide purposes. He initially doesn’t want to, but they convince him and it leads to a great scene of Eugene cutting the line for medicine. He takes it all, as well as a stuffed sloth he happens to see and likes, and the power trip is hilarious.
Dr. Carson ends up framed for Sherry’s disappearance, as well as Daryl’s escape, by Dwight, who put the note from his wife in Dr. Carson’s things. When Negan finds it, he accuses Dr. Carson of the plot and forces him to confess or face the iron. He confesses immediately, but is only momentarily saved before Negan tosses him bodily into the furnace to burn to death. It’s a horrific scene that Eugene and the rest of the Saviors witness.
Negan goes on to confront Eugene once again, where he asserts he’s Negan, he’s always been Negan, and he will forever be Negan. He understands how the game is played, but I’m not convinced he’s playing as much as he’s surviving.
Looking back on Eugene’s life with Abraham and Rosita, they only really tolerated him – and that was when they thought he had the cure and a purpose. When he admitted that he’d lied to them, Abraham went ballistic and refused to speak to him for a long time. When Abraham was killed, they had only just barely started to repair their relationship.
Rosita had always been intolerant of Eugene, thinking him to be weak and commenting on it to his face more often than not. She also forced him into making that bullet for her, despite his objections and saying many cruel things in the process. The Alexandrians wanted him mainly for bullets and hardly took his efforts into consideration when he was contributing to the Saviors’ offering the best way he could.
Honestly, this is not a bad gig for Eugene, where he can get a nice bed, whatever food he wants, and maybe a little bit of respect for his knowledge. Whether he’s playing Negan and the Saviors or ready to commit himself to the latest group to offer him survival remains to be seen.
English