Item: The Walking Dead
Rating: 7
Author: Cody Hamman

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Season 8, Episode 15: Worth

PLOT: Negan has some house cleaning to do before the Saviors’ final assault on the remaining people of Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom.

REVIEW: The Saviors, the group of zombie apocalypse survivors led by the baseball bat-wielding Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), have been a thorn in the sides of the lead characters on AMC’s The Walking Dead for a long time now. The show’s eighth season has focused on an “all-out war” being waged against the Saviors by the other survivor communities in the area – the people from the Alexandria Safe Zone, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom (with a failed attempt at assisting from the Scavengers). With only one episode remaining of this season, I’m optimistic that the days of the Saviors being the antagonists on this show are coming to an end… and the thought that this two and a half season ordeal is almost over was my only solace as I sat through one more episode of “all-out war” storyline tonight. It’s not that Worth was a bad episode, but I’m exhausted of tuning in to The Walking Dead every week just to see more of our heroes plotting against the Saviors, the Saviors plotting against our heroes, Saviors plotting against Saviors, and on and on. I’m ready to get past all this so the show can finally focus on something else. I’m not excited to see the conclusion of this storyline, there’s just a sense of relief as I watch the clock run down to the final minutes.

The relief brought by the thought that this is all going to end after only one more episode allows me to hold back from going off on another hateful rant about the character Eugene (Josh McDermitt), once an Alexandria resident, now making bullets for the Saviors and a devoted follower of Negan. I’ve expressed a lot of rage over Eugene in the past, as he is one of the most despicable, traitorous cowards I have ever seen. With nearly every moment of screen time he has, he can usually be counted on to disgust and frustrate me, to make me very angry, and he achieved that once again in Worth, where he is taken away from the Saviors’ home base by Alexandria’s Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Rosita (Christian Serratos), former companions of his… and rather than seek forgiveness for what he has done while he has been with the Saviors, he instead chooses to literally projectile vomit all over any chance of redemption and scuttle back to the villains. Oh, this made me very mad. But there’s only one more episode of this story. Things are going to get shaken up for the Saviors, I believe Negan is going to be taking a hard fall, and Eugene will soon see that he has been hiding behind the wrong person. Just one more episode.

Negan isn’t taking his fall just yet, in fact he seems to be in a pretty good place this episode, after spending a couple episodes in the dumps. (He was even held captive in an actual dump for a while.) An attempted coup by his former right hand man Simon (Steven Ogg) has been thwarted. And wow, did Simon make a very bad move by trying to take this recent opportunity to become the new leader of the Saviors. It was an ill-fated decision from the start, never expected to go well at all, but when you step back and realize that Simon’s lunge for the throne and his downfall in this episode all unspooled within just a couple days it really drives home just how pathetic his power play was.

Simon does get one moment of glory in Worth before it all comes crashing down on him. That comes early on, before Simon knows Negan is back at the Sanctuary after being left for dead, in a scene where former Hilltop leader Gregory (Xander Berkeley) – another weaselly, cowardly character, but one who somehow still isn’t as unlikeable as Eugene – is trying to get back in Simon’s good graces. For once, Gregory displays some bravery while claiming to have been “reborn as a certified shit-kicker”, and Simon brings this display to a hilarious end by slamming Gregory face-first into the floor with a very simple move.

After that, well… at least Simon got to go down fighting.

While Negan is cleaning house at the Sanctuary and Eugene is puking on people, there’s also a minor side story with Aaron (Ross Marquand) running himself down while living in the wilderness outside the Oceanside community, trying to get them to join the fight against the Saviors. I don’t care about Aaron or the Oceanside people, so I didn’t expect to get much out of any scenes involving them, but I was surprised when Aaron actually got the best action scene in the episode, taking on a bunch of zombies in the muddy forest.

Worth also contains scenes in which characters finally get around to reading notes the late Carl Grimes left behind for them, or have the notes read to them. Notes in which Carl shared his hopes for the future beyond his death, his wish for the Saviors and the other communities to find peace with each other. Chandler Riggs, who played Carl, got to do a vocal cameo reading what was written to his father Rick (Andrew Lincoln), which was a nice touch. It’s good to see them doing whatever they can to try to make Carl’s death make any sense at all, and it’s even better when those attempts give Riggs some extra work.

This was a decent, entertaining (except for the Eugene scenes) episode overall. Now I hold on to the hope that every storyline in it is going to get some kind of satisfying resolution in the next episode. Just one more episode to go this season. I’m ready to see Negan get knocked from his throne for good, and I’m really hope Eugene will get his comeuppance.

BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: Hanging out in the wilderness in the pouring rain, Aaron single-handedly takes on multiple zombies, flailing on the muddy ground with the infectious walking corpses.

GORY GLORY: I didn’t find that there was anything too special in the gore department here, just the usual zombie head wounds. It was gross when Eugene hid in the ashes of torched bodies, but that wasn’t as gross as when he puked on Rosita.

FAVORITE SCENE: Gregory stands up to Simon and ends up facedown on the floor.

FINAL VERDICT: