The Walking Dead season 5, episode 5 offered viewers new looks at Eugene and Abraham, who are both struggling to feel important in this zombie apocalypse.

Today’s episode also brought a surprise announcement from Eugene.

Things are happy on the bus for a few minutes until Abraham takes his eyes off the road – like any good television character regularly does – and accidentally plows their short bus into a bunch of broken down cars.

He snaps out of it and everyone slowly comes to their senses. They have to evacuate the bus quickly because it’s on fire, and they start taking on a crop of zombies. Eugene is handed a knife and is terrified at the thought of killing these creatures himself. It makes you wonder if his supposed cure in D.C. is really just a way for him to be protected by Abraham, because he clearly can’t fend for himself (we wrote this when the scene took place. As we learn later, this idea is on the right track).

Despite the bump in the road, they decide to head north on foot until they can find a new mode of transportation. They come across a book store that they zombie-proof so it can become a shelter.

Later that night, Abraham is looking to burn off some steam. He and Rosita have sex, and it’s probably some of the most explicit we’ve seen on The Walking Dead so far. Eugene, always the creep, watches from behind a book shelf. To make things even weirder, Abraham and Rosita know he’s watching but they continue on.

When Tara asks Eugene why he’s watching, he admits he just enjoys the “female form.” And then he reveals something surprising: Eugene put some broken glass in the bus engine to purposely make it break down. He’s afraid of getting to D.C., he tells Tara, because if he can’t save the world, he’s useless to everyone.

The next morning they find a new vehicle right outside for their usage: A fire engine! Abraham gets it to work for a brief moment and advances it a few feet forward. When he does, a door the truck was holding shut opens. And yep, you can guess what’s about to happen: Zombies start stumbling out. Eugene gets the award for most-clever-zombie kill this episode: He uses the fire hose on top to send water through ’em all, shredding them to pieces.

Abraham gets the bus working again, but only briefly. When they’re stopped for a second time, a fowl wind leads them towards a herd of zombies, which they see from a distance. Abraham insists they drive through the herd, but everyone else in the group disagrees. When they start getting into a physical brawl, Eugene drops a verbal bomb.

“I am not a scientist!” he yells, which obviously makes everyone stop in their tracks. “I lied.”

Everyone is shocked by the announcement, and Eugene tries to explain himself. He says the nation’s capitol has the strongest shot of survival – but how could he know? He doesn’t have any good reasoning really, and when Eugene idiotically tells Abraham that he’s smarter than the soldier, he receives a few punches – possibly fatal – to the face.

Viewers will be left wondering if Eugene lived or died for a couple weeks.

Abraham’s family

During the episode we’re treated to very brief flashbacks from Abraham’s life with his wife, a Barbie-doll-looking character named Ellen, and their two red-headed children. Though it’s not completely clear what happened, we see they somehow ended up in a food store with lots of people who died at the hand of Abraham. The family are clearly very scared of the patriarch and decide to run away.

At the end of the episode, after Abraham punched Eugene in the present day storyline, we see Abraham and Eugene’s first time meeting one another, when the latter reveals he “knows” how to stop the infection. Their encounter came moments after Abraham found his family dead. In these final few minutes of the episode we saw the start and end of their friendship. It was a beautiful ending.

What did you think of ‘The Walking Dead’ season 5, episode 5?

Side note: There was some light talk about haircuts at the start of the episode. Finally, someone is talking about haircuts. Daryl and Rick’s heads are in desperate need of a clean up too. Can this happen soon?

Previews for next week’s episode show that the storyline will focus on Daryl and Carol – yes!