There Are Spoilers In Our The Walking Dead Time For After Review – Discussion
Time For After is the 7th episode for this year’s The Walking Dead and is one which focuses primarily on the character of Eugene and how he is coping with the crisis unfolding from within Negan’s group, but also externally due to the attack from Rick and his group. We also get to see what’s going on with Rick and his visit to Jadis’ group where he went to get help.
The start of the episode sees us witness what’s going on with Rick and it follows on from the events of the last episode. It seems he’s got barely any clothes now and is being kept as a prisoner by Jadis. We see her take a few pictures of him in this condition. When Rick asks what might happen, Jadis just says he’ll find out later. It’s unknown for much of the episode what might happen to Rick. We see some scenes with Daryl and the others, but it’s not really clear at all that they’re coming to rescue Rick like he says they would, Daryl and the rest are preoccupied with Negan and their positioning for their attack.
Rick is in a lot of trouble and is later brought out of his holding area and is thrown the the ground. Jadis seems to be trying to kill him and a guy comes forward towards Rick holding a live walker on a stick. It looks like they’re going to get it to bite Rick or something or maybe kill him? Rick though is no amateur, he is able to fight his way out of this and manages to get Jadis on the ground. She yields and agrees to help Rick with his request. Interestingly at the end of the episode we see Rick go to Negan’s compound, but no one is there! What could have happened and where they went, I don’t know, we’ll have to wait until next week to find out, but it was a great cliffhanger.
Rick does actually make up a small part of this episode, although his movements were very important. In this episode it’s all about Eugene. Eugene is a character we hadn’t got a chance to see much of this season and only saw him a couple of times for some minor scenes. With Negan’s group trapped, Negan has given Eugene the task of finding a way out of the mess of it all and it’s a massive responsibility. Especially considering he must balance all the minor political factions and schemes currently occuring in Negan’s camp.
What I liked most about this episode was that it did add some character development onto Eugene and we learn about his motivations for why he does the things that he does do in the show. Why does he so easily seemingly betray his old ‘travelling companions’ and why does he work so loyally for Negan? The reason for this is that Eugene considers himself a survivor. He does what he can and says what he says so that he can survive. He is very intelligent and calculates all of his moves quite well, in some ways I guess he might be considered almost manipulative in certain moments as well. Will he actually betray Negan down the line though? I actually don’t think so, unless it meant his survival, but for now Negan can keep him safe and I think Eugene is content with that.
What I like about Time For After, is that it brings the theme of survival back to the show. For so long and for so many of the starting seasons, this was a major theme for the show. At its essence, The Walking Dead was a show with a heavy theme all the way through it of survival. But somewhere along the way in the last I guess 2 seasons as our characters settled into towns, it became more focused on leadership, war and power themes as well as a few others and that’s great, but I always felt that the show was the best when it’s focused on the survival theme. Eugene is a character that’s hard to do for this as he’s not really a physical character like Rick or Daryl, his way of surviving in the world is very different and it was interesting to watch.
Eugene eventually comes up with a plan to use the iPod he gave to Sasha before she died, he plans to attach a speaker to it and fly it over the walkers with the hope to lure them away with the sound. Unfortunately he is stopped by Dwight who is a Negan traitor, although it didn’t matter I guess because Daryl and the rest assured there’d be no saving because of their truck attack on the compound which let all the walkers in. Interestingly Eugene doesn’t tell Negan that Dwight is the traitor at all, what could be Eugene’s play here I wonder? It seemed like he was about to do it, but then when Dwight walked in he couldn’t. What went through Eugene’s mind in that moment? At the end of the episode we see Rick travel there and everyone is gone. How did Eugene do it I wonder?
Overall this was a great episode of the show and a really big one for all the fans of Eugene out there. For the first big Eugene episode of the season, Josh McDermitt did exceptionally well with his performance in this episode. I liked the character development for Eugene and also the survival theme in this episode. The complication at the end when Rick arrived at Negan’s compound was interesting, I can’t wait to see what happens next week in The Walking Dead.
The Walking Dead airs at 1:30pm and 7:30pm on the FX channel on Foxtel every Monday
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