The Walking Dead Season 5 Episode 5: Self Help
Gene Page/AMC

In Sunday night’s episode of The Walking Dead, Abraham, Rosita, Glenn, Maggie, Tara, and Eugene are on their way to Washington D.C. However, their trip doesn’t go as smoothly as planned.

The bus that the group is riding in crashes and flips over. During the crash, a small herd of walkers surround the bus, but the group fights through them and kills them all. Left without transportation, the crew settles in a book store for a night.

The next morning, they find a fire truck and manage to get it working, only for a couple of seconds, though. Abraham drives the fire truck a few feet away from the building that it was backed against, and the truck suddenly shuts down. Apparently, the fire truck was pinned against a door to keep a huge group of walkers from coming out of the building and when Abraham moves the truck, the walkers spill out of the door and begin to attack the group.

Astoundingly, Eugene is the one who saves everyone as he climbs on top of the truck and sprays the walkers with the fire hose. After downing the walkers, Abraham decides to repair the truck, so they could continue their mission.

Unfortunately for Abraham, the truck stops working again in the middle of the road. While Abraham is trying to fix the vehicle again, the group stumbles onto a massive amount of walkers that are thousands of feet away, spread all over the road and over an enormous farm field.

Glenn, Tara, Maggie, Rosita, and Eugene urge Abraham to turn back and use a different route to get to Washington D.C., but Abraham refuses to listen. He tells the group that they have to keep moving and find a way to get through the herd. He grabs Eugene from the arm and drags him along to the fire truck, as the group tries to stop him. Glenn attempts to fight off Abraham, so he would let go of Eugene, but Abraham doesn’t budge. Later, Glenn, Maggie, Tara, and Rosita all get into a small scuffle with Abraham, and that’s when Eugene tells everyone the truth.

I am not a scientist,” he says. Eugene opens up to the group about all his lies, leaving everyone, especially Abraham, in dismay. Eugene’s fabrications irritate Abraham, who gets extremely angry and starts punching Eugene in the face like a wild animal until Eugene knocks out and drops to the ground.

Eugene is out cold, but there is no indication whether he is dead or not.  

Throughout the episode, we get flashbacks that educate us more about Abraham. It turns out Abraham had a previous group and a family. However, in the flashbacks, his family dies, and we get to see how Abraham meets Eugene.

What we learn from Eugene is that this whole time, he was using Abraham and the others for protection. He does not know how to fight. Therefore, he gave himself a purpose, so people would protect him in order for him to survive.

Many people could have guessed that Eugene was lying about saving the world. It was obvious that he wanted to stall their trip to Washington D.C. because, early in the episode, he admitted to Tara that he sabotaged the bus so that it would crash.

Now, the question is where do Abraham and the rest go from here? The smartest thing to do is head back to the church and rejoin Rick and the others. There is no question that Glenn would want that now that the trip to D.C. is meaningless.

It was certainly an interesting episode, with a good amount of action and a shocking revelation towards the end. Let’s see what our survivors will be up to next. Perhaps saving Beth will be their new goal.

Episode 5 – Overall Grade: 7.8/10

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