The Walking Dead Review: Episode 5×05 “Self Help”

A bus trip detour sends The Walking Dead down memory lane where the bloodied hands of Eugene and Abraham collide and catch up to everyone.

The Walking Dead — After the parting at the church by bus, Sgt. Abraham Ford (Michael Cudlitz) continues his mission of delivering Dr. Eugene Porter (Josh McDermitt) safely to Washington D.C. in order to end the zombie apocalypse and save the world. When disaster strikes sending the bus careening out of control, the group finds themselves once again in a fight for their lives as walkers begin to surround the bus. Fighting their way to safety and seeking refuge in a nearby town, the group settles in to lick it’s wounds and decide it’s next move.

Unsure of what to do next, tensions flare as Abraham’s haunting past simply won’t let him give up on the only thing he has left to give himself purpose—saving the world. Secrets, lies and uncertainty creep in on everyone as an increasingly unstable Abraham pushes everyone into a do or die confrontation that may change the course of the entire show. With a ton of twists and truths to soak up, let’s blast our way through all the gory details that may shatter the trust of this group for the remainder of the season!

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Fear can incapacitate, push a person toward evil, drive one to do crazy things or even inspire greatness. It all depends on the person and the moment to determine what happens. As the episode begins, Eugene seems a little distant, even for him, as the group cuts up aboard the bus. When the bus flips on its side and the group must scramble to escape oncoming walkers, fear grabs hold of Eugene and though he manages to assist in one walker kill, it’s immediately apparent that he’s not at all equipped to deal with the brutality of this new world. Tara encourages him, but the fear and reality of the world are written on Eugene’s face. He knows he’s ill prepared and his survival depends completely on others.

After Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Glenn (Steven Yeun), Rosita (Christian Serratos), Abraham, Eugene and Tara (Alanna Masterson) all work to set camp in an abandoned bookstore, everyone’s fears seem to creep in as night settles over the group. Abraham can’t shake the violent memories of loosing his family. Maggie and Glenn are worried about the group that remained behind. Rosita is worried about this group pushing too hard without rest and the day’s events still have Eugene rattled. Tara seems to be the only one without something outside of their immediate survival weighing heavily on her mind.

When Tara catches Eugene spying on Rosita and Abraham having sex in the back room, Eugene, perhaps in a moment of complete embarrassment, confesses that he sabotaged the bus. He admits to Tara that he fears not being able to cure the sickness and save the world. And if he can’t do those things, there is no reason for this group to keep him, share with him or protect him. We couldn’t help but think to last week’s speech by Dawn (Christine Woods) when she implied Grady Memorial was just the type of world that Eugene fears. A world where the people who can’t survive shouldn’t become a burden to those who can. Though shocked, Tara forgives his mistake with the bus and promises to keep his secret as long as he doesn’t do anything like that again. She assures him that the group would never cast him out.

“We’re friends. We have each other’s backs. That’s it. That’s how it works. “ ~ Tara

It’s exactly this kind of juxtaposition that makes this show so juicy to follow. Not only do we get thrilling, gory and tension-filled moments, but there is so much subtext to nearly every episode. Eugene is clearly dependent on the others, but he fails to see the value he might bring outside of just saving the world (which we admit is kinda big). As he says later in the episode, he knows things. He’s an intelligent guy. Lighting the fire in the bookstore with a battery and a gum wrapper is a sharp survival tidbit. But like so many others in this world of the dead, Eugene is more fearful of being rejected by the living than anything else. Tara recognized that in him since she’d recently struggled through similar emotions. Had he confessed his sabotage to anyone else but her, his larger secrets might have been exposed much earlier, but her “understanding” kept it in the dark a little longer. Her welcome to the human race and knuckle bump was acknowledgment that fears are natural. It’s how you overcome them and what kind of person they drive you to be that matters.

No matter how hard you try, some blood can never be wiped from your hands.

When Michael Cudlitz was cast as Sgt. Abraham Ford, many who were familiar with his work knew what kind of actor and performance they could expect. Anyone who had seen Cudlitz in either Band of Brothers or Southland realized that The Walking Dead had gained a talented, award-winning actor to play this iconic and familiar character from the comic. Each week it seems Abraham delivers some of the absolute best lines on TV. This larger than life character has played a solid, but peripheral role up to now, but Cudlitz absolutely nailed the emotional highs and lows of this episode where Abraham’s story took center stage.

In a series of flashback scenes that emerge throughout the episode, we see Abraham driven to the brink of madness and murder to save his family. The consequences of that fury resulted in the loss of his family who feared this man they thought they knew. As he stands pleading in front of them, his hands bloodied and blood splattered all over him, his family pulls back and the pain of their rejection is devastating to this powerful man who only sought to protect them. They slip away in the night to escape him only to find a much worse fate at the hands of walkers. After finding the bodies of his family, Abraham looks to the sky as if to plead how such a thing could happen and leave him alone without purpose. In the present, Abraham laments this pivotal moment of losing his family to violence and outlines the rules of the world as he sees it to Glenn.

“Gotten to the point where everyone alive is strong now. We have to be. You’re either strong and they can help you so you help them, or you’re strong and they can kill ya. So you gotta kill them.“ ~ Abraham

Again, the irony isn’t lost on us that this is very much the opposite of the speech given by Dr. Edwards (Erik Jensen) to Beth (Emily Kinney) the previous week. Abraham sees a world full of the strong because the only ones left are the ones capable of surviving. Whether it be by strength or wit, everyone left has the means to be the ones that make it. Dr. Edwards felt the exact opposite. Grady Memorial would wait out rescue and only selectively help the weak they felt they could control instead of becoming a strong group that could survive in a world where the dead walk.

Abraham’s drive and push to complete his mission above all else was beautifully portrayed by Cudlitz. The idea that this incredibly strong man could throw such humorous one-liners one minute, border on fits of rage the next and find himself once again in the depths of despair was a complex task and Cudlitz brought it to life splendidly. As Rick (Andrew Lincoln) said earlier this season, everyone’s done something, and losing his family through a murderous insanity trying to save them is the burden Abraham carries. Their blood is on his hands. And it was fitting that throughout the episode he continually opened a bloody wound on his hand that reminded us that he might never be clean of their deaths. When given task of saving the world, Eugene represented his redemption, his only reason for being and a chance to finally try to wipe his hands clean. Abraham embraced that sole purpose and Cudlitz made us believe it.

Take away a man’s only reason for being and you get three strikes and out.

After heated debate, the group finally decides that they will follow Abraham’s lead and continue on to Washington D.C. to complete the mission. Rick and the others have a map showing the route and this group needs to stick to that route as much as possible to ensure that the groups can reconnect later.  Debating the need for transportation and water, Abraham points across the road to a parked fire engine that can provide both. When the truck starts, it seems that things might finally be going their way, but as usual that’s exactly when things go sideways on The Walking Dead and this was no exception.

Once moved, the fire engine unblocked a door holding back a flood of walkers. The seasoned group springs into action to take them out and a frustrated Abraham seems to have a bit of extra enthusiasm destroying the walkers as they exit. As the group begins to get overwhelmed, it’s Eugene’s ingenuity that saves them. We’ll never say we’ve seen it all, because this show continually tops itself on grotesque ways to show and kill walkers. But when Eugene unleashes the fire engine’s water supply to jet the walkers away, it was a new level of grotesque. The effects teams get props again (don’t they every week?) as the powerful jet of water blasted walkers to a pulpy, soupy mess.

When it’s all over, a proud Eugene stands atop the engine. His quick thinking saved the group and we couldn’t help but wonder if the writing team was making a subtle quip over his sexual frustration he expressed after getting caught peeping by Tara the night before. Whether intended or not, it was a brilliant nod that made us laugh aloud at the Armageddon style “just wanted to feel the power between my legs brother” flashback moment. Steve Buscemi, we and the writers of The Walking Dead, tip our hat to you.

The fire truck doesn’t get them far before it breaks down again. When the wind carries a foul smell from somewhere in the distance an increasingly irritated Abraham leads the group on foot only to find the way completely blocked by a herd of walkers that stretch as far as they eye can see in either direction. Abraham cracks. Insisting they move forward despite everyone’s protests he forcefully drags Eugene back to the fire engine to drive forward into what everyone sees as a certain death. Tempers boil over in a heated exchange, but before things come to blows, a shaking Eugene spills his big secret—he is not a scientist and has been lying this entire time to remain protected—especially by Abraham. Everyone stands in stunned silence.

“I know I needed to get to DC. Because I do believe that locale holds the strongest possibility for survival, and I wanted to survive. If I could cheat some people into taking me there, well, I just reasoned that I’d be doin’ them a solid, too, considering the perilous state of the city of Houston, the state of everything.” ~ Eugene

After everyone listens to Eugene tell his story, it becomes apparent that he realizes the gravity of his lies. We’ve all done something and Eugene has the blood of everyone they lost along the way on his own hands. When Rosita calls him on this, he rattles them all off by name. They’ve been weighing on him. As Eugene continues to ramble his emotional confession and justification, Abraham loses it completely and lands three punches in a row that leave Eugene out cold before the group drags Abraham away. When he turns to finish Eugene, Rosita stands between them with her hand on her gun and the same look of fear in her eyes that Abraham’s wife gave him after the bloody beating of her attackers. The wound is open on his hand again and the blood he’s tried so hard to erase is back. Abraham finds himself in exactly the same place again—without purpose.

As he walks away, collapses on his knees and looks to the sky, we see the final flashback of his past. At the moment he discovered his family, an emotionally beaten Abraham pulls out his pistol and puts it in his mouth—only to be stopped by the pleas of Eugene in the distance who is trying to evade three walkers behind him (albeit not very well). After Abraham dispatches of the walkers, Eugene tells him that he has a very important mission. Abraham, a man without purpose, has one once again.

The contrast of those two moments was a smart writing tool to show how one man can sink, rise and sink again. Abraham had absolutely nothing and no one the first time. Will he realize he has a new family in front of him to take care of the second time? It’s fitting that Rosita was the person that stood between he and Eugene and stopped him from repeating the beating death that drove his family away. She spent the entire episode patching and caring for the wound on his hand that kept opening and may very well be the one person that can finally help him put the proverbial blood on his hands from the past behind him too. The question is, what does one do when the very purpose of your rationalized existence is found to be a lie? Cudlitz played both the present and past of that moment with an intensity that kept us in the emotional moment. He truly has been a valuable addition to the cast and the emotional complexity of this dual moment showed exactly why.

FINAL VERDICT: Another solid, but not exceptional episode of The Walking Dead leaves us with three groups at a crossroad. We hope those roads intersect soon. This group, and this show, is stronger when they are all together.

For the third week in a row, we’ve been left with each of our three groups separated and the fate of each of those groups unknown at the end of those episodes. That’s a bold move by the writing team and though the episodes have been good, we’re starting to get the feeling that with such a large cast, monumentally huge moments that drive the show will only happen when they are all together. And just as they did last season, there seems to be simultaneous plot lines happening and some time jumping as we see each story. That too seems a bit of a risky play as it’s created just a bit of confusion over what happens when.

It’s still irksome that Maggie and Glenn would have ever agreed to leave knowing that Beth was somewhere nearby and needed to be rescued. Their lamenting this week over leaving the others behind felt a bit forced as a subtle reminder that “maybe” the others are okay and on their way too. We understand Glenn brokered a deal to keep the peace at the time, but this seems so out of character for both of them when Beth is the only family they have left.

Overall, the plot for this episode was weaker than some episodes we’ve seen and something tells us this is the calm before the storm. We don’t completely get the reasoning why the group had to split yet again. Yes, we do understand Abraham’s motivation for urgency, but it’s starting to feel like a worn plot device after so many episodes of the same in Season 4. Those episodes were powerful, character building moments and made sense in the aftermath of the prison attack. We completely understood why all those characters would have been scattered and rejoiced when they were reunited. Here it feels a bit frustrating, as if these are clearly not the decisions we would have made.

Don’t get us wrong, this was another quality episode of The Walking Dead. It’s not the caliber of some, but there are no bad episodes of this show. Writers Heather Bellson and Seth Hoffman deserve a lot of praise for some outstanding dialogue and Director Ernest Dickerson pulled out some powerful and emotional performances, especially from Michael Cudlitz. The more Abraham we get, the more we want. Cudlitz was outstanding in this episode and he’s been a treat to have on this show. The writing team must be having a blast coming up with the next off the wall saying Abraham will spout and Cudlitz appears to be soaking it up each time he delivers another quotable line.

Overall, the exposing of Eugene’s deception might finally allow this group to come back together and start to build a life for themselves, that is if we can get Carol (Melissa McBride), Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Beth (Emily Kinney) back into the fold. We don’t think it was a coincidence that Noah (Tyler James Williams) mentioned to Beth last week he was from Richmond, Virginia and was only in Georgia to find his uncle. It wouldn’t surprise us a bit if that uncle ends up someone we know and if this entire group ends up further north where “they have walls” as Noah described it. Eugene reinforced this idea when he expressed that reaching Washington offered the best chance for survival even without a cure. That journey may end up the purpose of this group once they can all manage to find each other again. But can the group forgive Eugene for leading them down the road of such an elaborate and costly lie? Will Abraham find purpose in those around him again? We have no idea. But we’re going to keep watching because we are dying to know how things play out and we want the band back together!

Questions, Comments, Concerns and My reaction on Twitter…

• How’d you guys get to DC? #ShortBus .. We’re screwed. lol
• That’s classified. Yeah right. Sounds fishy.
• “Why the hair?” ~ Glenn. “Because I like it. I ain’t Sampson. But nobody’s taking shears or clippers to this.” ~ Eugene. lol
• Abraham, that’s why they teach you to watch the road not eye the slanky girls you pass by.
• It’s time to be brave Eugene. Um..aim for the head buddy. @JoshMcDermitt @lightbrigade
• Hard shot to the sack. @Cudlitz. RIP Short Bus. Your life span lived up to your name. #MovingOn #NoMoreKeysForAbraham
• “I’m not rubbing dirt on anything. LOL! @LaurenCohan Rosita’s job?? @cserrato
• Warm fire, a good book, coat hangers .. Smores? Nope. Boiling toilet water. #ThingsYouDoInTheApocalypse
• This seems like exactly the opposite of Dawn’s speech last week Abraham.
• “Get some rest.” ~ Glenn. “But I gotta get some ass first.” ~ Abraham. #ThingsAbrahamSays
• He’s watching from the self-help section. Okay, that was fricken brilliant. #JustSayin
• Um, did Eugene spend some time at Grady’s? Not everyone is like that. “Welcome to the human race asshole.” ~ Tara.
• Walker soup. That was another level of ick .. kudos @WalkingDead_AMC
• “I’ve been to 8 county fairs and one goat rodeo and I ain’t never seen anything like that.” #ThingsAbrahamSays
• I gotta say, if they get it running. #FireTruck > #ShortBus
• “You got a sh*t storm behind door A and a storm of sh*t behind door B.” #ThingsAbrahamSays
• Well that stopped them all cold Eugene. Abe was gonna crack before .. what’s he gonna do now?? @JoshMcDermitt @Cudlitz
• And why did you lie to everyone Eugene? That’s classified. @JoshMcDermitt
• Abraham. The blood on your hands—you can’t wipe it off. It never goes away. No matter what you do.
• What happens to your life when your sole purpose is gone? @JoshMcDermitt @Cudlitz