Oh, yes. And his rage when he figures out that his "best friend" is in fact the very same KGB illegal who committed the murder of his actual friend that he murdered some poor, mostly-innocent sap to avenge. . . will be epic.

They're definitely both at fault, but Elizabeth deserves more blame than Philip. He did everything short of defecting to keep Paige from being recruited (including confronting a Soviet legal from the embassy -in broad daylight- to demand that they cease and desist). Elizabeth is the one who insisted on complying.

I know the Centre doesn't always keep Phil and Liz in the loop, but how many eyes do they need to have on Stan? And if the goal is to compromise or subvert him, shouldn't Phil have been informed?

I think you're right. Also, Gabriel seemed to be floating the theory that the American research on the Lassa Fever Virus might be somehow connected to the grain shipments as well. . . which is even crazier.

Beeman killed the kid, but he did it because he thought (mistakenly) that he was getting vengeance for one of his friends. I don't think Stan is squeamish, so much as he's loyal to his friends, and I think that's how he came to see Oleg.

So what was actually going on with those greenhouse flies, and what horrible American plot does this portend? We've seen some inkling of the depths of superhuman malice and cunning that the US version of The Centre will sink to (using CAD to design submarine components that would catastrophically fail and leaving them…

True enough. So far, from Alexandria's point of view, Rick has been the worst of both worlds: a strongman just strong enough to tick off the truly strong, but too weak to offer any real protection from them.

True. And to some extent, the choice of democratic vs. authoritarian government is just a reflection of the individual choice that the show is constantly presenting us with: survival vs. principles.

Interesting. It makes me wonder how Rick intends to govern once Negan is unseated. Can he really do better? There will probably be a council of victorious allies at first, but issues are guaranteed to arise. . . and since all of the communities except for Hilltop seem determined to subsist by scavenging the dwindling…

That's an interesting, and (to me, at least) highly original point of view. It seems to me that you're arguing that the Saviors really are the Saviors, in the sense that they're restoring order to the post-apocalyptic world, and that they only pose a threat to people who resist the legitimacy of their governance.

Yeah. The arrogance of the Savior leader will be his undoing. He clearly can't even conceive of a world in which Ezekiel just shoots him in the face, instead of capitulating. In the world of the show, that's exactly the kind of attitude that sets in right before somebody shoots you in the face.

I don't think Eugene himself even cares if he's gone full Negan or not. It truly doesn't matter. He's useful enough that whoever wins the coming war is going to need him, and he knows it.

I'd imagine that there's probably some kind of anti-weevil pesticide that would do the trick as well. Eugene would probably know exactly which pesticide and where to look for it (or possibly even how to make some), but he's no longer available.

What Ezekiel should have thought of is the Kingdom's reaction if the Saviors took him alive. That's the one situation that he needs to avoid no matter what.

The psychology at work here is that Ezekiel made the mistake of giving in to the Savior leader's demand for one person's gun the last time around, which made him believe (correctly) that he could press Ezekiel for even further concessions at their next meeting.

Daryl is made of different stuff. I think he's operating under the impression that if he gives in to coercion even once, he'll collapse and be broken forever.

True. And also, he needs Eugene to actually like him, and not just fear him, since Eugene (perhaps alone among Negan's inner circle) will be doing a lot of things that Negan doesn't fully understand, and the opportunities for Eugene to sabotage Neganville (or whatever it's called) will be almost limitless.

If Ezekiel is always this accommodating to the Saviors, it's hard to believe he was able to negotiate a treaty with them at all. At some point, presumably, he must have done something to make the Saviors treat his Kingdom differently than they've been treating Hilltop or Alexandria, and that almost certainly would…

If the Neegan wives had been testing Eugene, he'd have gotten in trouble for not turning them in to Neegan. As it is, he's sitting on knowledge of an assassination plot and doing nothing about it, which does make one question whether he's really as "stone cold Neegan" as he claims.

Yes, although the nurses from the previous season finale weren't taking anything remotely close to the proper precautions for dealing with BSL-4. At best, their gear was on the line between very low-end BSL-3 and solid BSL-2. In real life, one or both of the two nurses we saw would have gotten the virus.