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The Walking Dead 11.12 Review – ‘The Lucky Ones’
Image Credit: Josh Stringer/AMC
Loading...Tonight on The Walking Dead, Pamela Milton tours Alexandria, Hilltop, and Oceanside and show them what the Commonwealth has to offer, but Maggie’s still taking a hard pass. Eugene processes everything he’s learned and tries to make things with Max, the actual voice behind Stephanie, and Ezekiel finds out why he’s getting his surgery after all.
The plot: Lance Hornsby, Pamela Milton, and Mercer show up to tour Alexandria and its neighbors, lead by Aaron, who’s very interested in accepting their help. Daryl is also along for this, and out of armor for appearances. However, despite all of them needing help right now, Oceanside says they will follow Hilltop’s decision. Hilltop is also in bad shape, the people there are tired and struggling, but Maggie just can’t see the cost of accepting Commonwealth’s help as being worth it. And that sure enough costs her–Diane and some others leave as a result. There’s a clear difference between how Maggie leads, and thinks leaders should act, and how she sees Milton acting and leading. When the deal goes south, Milton calls Hornsby out on being primarily interested in this for his own ambition, and no doubt looking to be put in charge of these communities. He tries to deflect, she says he can keep working the angles, but his work at home better not suffer. Hornsby, taking his frustrations out with some very accurate headshots on some walkers, assures Aaron that they are going to remake the world. Meanwhile, Ezekiel learns his surgery is now days away and his debt wiped out. Baffled as to how, he figures out that Carol did something when she comes to visit, and he’s frustrated that others who are suffering will still suffer while he gets moved up. She asks why should he suffer when the system is what’s broken, and she’s there with Jerry to see him wheeled off to surgery. Finally, Eugene hears Max’s side of what happened–she put a radio together herself, happened to come across his channel, but then her brother Mercer found it after learning about a comms leak (probably when the Alexandrians arrived). They threw a fake Stephanie at Eugene and she kept quiet so she and Mercer wouldn’t get in trouble. Eugene storms off, and later talks with Rosita, recalling how he lied to her and Abraham when they first met, but doesn’t tell her about the ‘real’ Stephanie. He does go to see Max to apologize and ask how to make it up to her, and while she’s reluctant and hurt he didn’t realize the other woman was a fake, they do end up bonding as they talk about his novel.
Two themes felt very prevalent in tonight’s episode–the idea that luck is nothing more than opportunity, and that everything has a cost. Put into words by Maggie and Pamela Milton, they nonetheless apply to just about everyone tonight. Ezekiel, for example, is a perfect example as he gets bumped up in the waiting list for surgery to remove the cancerous tumor. Even in the real world, this sort of thing is when we say someone is lucky, getting the exact life saving medical treatment they need despite all signs pointing to it never happening for them. But luck, thy name is Carol doing what she does: whatever she can to protect the people she loves. In other words, creating an opportunity with the express purpose of getting him the medical treatment he needs. And is it fair? No! Of course not! But like she says, should he die because the system is broken? When lesser men have so much more, and he is far from a lesser man? No! Of course not! At the same time, Ezekiel is right that it’s not fair. It’s not fair that others are and will continue to suffer, that even though they’ve waited longer, he’s being bumped up in line for nothing more than a favor owed to someone in power. Nothing about it is fair, but that’s the truth of the Commonwealth that is becoming more and more clear: this place isn’t fair. It was never fair, and it was never built to be fair. Even if Milton isn’t a bad person, per se, she shows no signs of having ever had an interest in fairness for all. In her world, in her own words, everything costs something.
It’s notable that we’re reminded in this episode of how Milton and Maggie were raised. Milton was raised by a former president, grew up around politicians, claims to not have been interested in politics herself and yet here she is, sitting comfortably at the top and praising the world that was. She has manicured toes and goes bird hunting in a freaking pith helmet, for crying out loud! And she makes a point of saying that she believes a leader should sit above their people. She has more worries, more responsibilities, so hasn’t she earned getting to enjoy some more comforts? She claims that worrying about the 50,000 people in the Commonwealth keeps her up at night, and maybe it does. Maybe she has earned that, maybe that’s okay. But has she taken it too far, is she to out of touch with how some of her people are living, how they feel about the way things are run? Maybe. On the flipside, there’s Maggie, born and raised on a farm. Her lucky charm wasn’t a fake gold coin, it was a rabbit foot from a rabbit her dog killed and brought to her. She learned from her father, from Rick, from Deanna, from Georgie–leaders who were of the people, who worked with the ones they lead, who didn’t put themselves above anyone and who certainly weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.
I think Maggie and Milton end up having more respect for one another than they expected to, in the end–while Milton isn’t Maggie’s kind of leader, she isn’t an idiot or cruel or useless, either, and Milton can clearly see that Maggie is likewise capable and has earned the respect and loyalty of many people around here, and has lead them through more than one rough patch. But that all doesn’t change Maggie’s answer. Maggie doesn’t expand on her reasons, but I would wager she doesn’t trust Hornsby and that mistrust may thus extend to Milton. The fact that his lucky charm is a coin who’s gold veneer is fake is no accident. On top of that, she sees Daryl playing soldier, and she sees just how deadly their soldiers can be. Given past problems, I imagine Maggie is foreseeing that being part of the Commonwealth will lead to some friction, and if that friction were to turn into something worse, Hilltop can’t possibly hold its own against them in a fight. Better to part of neutral terms and hope that’s the end of it. On the other hand…Diane’s not wrong when she leaves. Hilltop is in a bad place and they could very much use help. Is Maggie being too stubborn? Or is she rightly wary of what the price would be for their help, and if that would be worth it down the line?
I was glad to see Milton call out Hornsby on his ambition and his interest in these communities, so far from their home, being for his own purposes over the Commonwealth’s. For one thing, it helped to reinforce that she’s not an idiot or blinded by his usefulness to her, and on top of that, it reinforced that while Milton may have her flaws and her vices, her primary interest really is in protecting and doing what’s best for the Commonwealth. (Assuming, that is, that she isn’t bullshitting Maggie and us when she talks about losing sleep over her responsibilities to the Commonwealth.) She doesn’t see Alexandria and the others as being worth much to the Commonwealth, but she didn’t write them off either. She came out, she checked them out, she was willing to bring them into the fold. She’s not going to keep pushing it, but she also isn’t saying never if they change their minds, either. Hornsby, on the other hand, then goes out to practice some headshots on walkers and talk about remaking the world with a damn menacing grin! Someone better keep an eye on that dude, he is bad news.
And last but not least, Eugene and Max. I’m glad that in the end, it looks like these two are going to be okay. But I’m also glad we went through the steps to get there and didn’t just jump to that. Max being clear about her feelings–both her hope for something else when she talked to Eugene, and how hurt she was when he believed that someone else was the person he’d talked to. And also that we came to clearly understand her position and why she couldn’t speak up earlier. Learning any of this before now, before seeing how shady Hornsby really is, before seeing the inequality in the Commonwealth, before seeing how far someone can be made to fall for screwing up, it would’ve been harder, I think, for Eugene and for us to believe her or be sympathetic to her. Eugene, though, once he sees past his heartbreak over this whole messed up situation, is in a unique position to feel empathy for her given how he lied to people he came to be close to. The reminder of that with Rosita was needed, as it’s been quite a while, but for him and not just us. He needed to know, I think, that forgiveness of such a thing was okay, and was also something he’d been given. Now how will these two move forward? What will it mean for both their people, and for whatever Hornsby’s plans are?
Also, on that theme of luck, it’s notable that Max first calls finding the radio parts a lucky thing. Because for anyone else, there would’ve been no opportunity there, no ability to make broken parts work again. If anyone else could, as she herself says, the parts wouldn’t have been out where anyone could find them due to the security risk. Which once again points to how insular the Commonwealth is and can be–they wouldn’t have even wanted her contacting someone outside the walls. The Commonwealth must always come first indeed…which harkens back to the questions posed about demoted trooper Tyler. Why did he sour on Milton’s rule so intensely? Maybe there is some cruelty or harshness to her we’ve yet to see after all.
Another moment of note is Mercer learning more about Daryl’s position within the communities here, and what the communities were like. We’re reminded more than once that Mercer is aware he plays and fulfills a role, and he knows that role isn’t necessarily secure if he doesn’t do his part as expected. This, too, will factor into how the future plays out when things inevitably come to a head–where will Mercer’s loyalties lie? And if he turns on the Commonwealth, will the troopers follow him?
Is there such a thing as luck? Is it possible for a truly fair community to thrive? Is Pamela Milton hiding some deeper, darker truth about how she runs things in the Commonwealth, or is it all on the increasingly shady Hornsby? And what’s his plan going to be in his quest to ‘remake the world’? Sound off in the comments and see you next week!
