Previously on Fear the Walking Dead: Stuck in the middle of a riot, Travis takes shelter in a barber shop with his ex-wife and son. Meanwhile, Madison has her hands full with Nick detoxing at the worst time possible and Alicia in a constant state of worry about her boyfriend.
I’d like to take a moment to talk about my favorite character so far in Fear the Walking Dead and that is Daniel Salazar. Daniel reminds me a lot of where we found Morgan in the first episode of The Walking Dead. He’s doing his best to keep his cool and keep his family together, but that tends to get a little complicated when walkers are running around creating mass mayhem. With this fantastic character, Fear the Walking Dead is doing a great job of not only emulating the previously successful format of The Walking Dead, but it’s also allowing viewers the opportunity to be surprised by Daniel. How great was it to see Daniel decide to shoot Paul directly in the head? So far, Daniel has been completely closed off to all other characters, except his family. I look forward to seeing this group dynamic change as Daniel realizes that he is able to trust Travis and Madison’s family much more than he originally thought.
The Walking Dead is famous for its season premieres and finales that can feature hundreds of walkers being killed in any number of creative ways. With Fear the Walking Dead, we have to keep in mind that this virus is just starting. Because there are so many people still alive, we aren’t really seeing large hordes of walkers. For the most part, we are seeing one to two walkers at a time that put our main characters in awful situations. This happened a number of times in this episode and every time it turned out perfectly. For the last two episodes we’ve been waiting for Travis and Madison to reunite and, of course, they were happily reunited in this episode, but not before I became convinced that Travis wouldn’t make it out alive. I really enjoyed the mechanics of Travis and Madison’s reunion because of the way the scene was setup. With Madison and Alicia racing home to stop him and Nick realizing that he didn’t bring the extra ammo, I was questioning all of the characters longevity. In the end when Patrick returned home to find his wife already turned, it was a great moment for Madison. Not only did we see her regret her decision to not end Susan’s suffering, but she also made the decision to be the hero that this show will need in the future.
My favorite parts of this episode were the great scenes involving Madison’s neighbor, Susan. Already turned, Susan, represents Fear the Walking Dead’s first foray into the morals of “killing” defenseless walkers. This is a fantastically designed introduction into the new world in that audience members are ready to run full sped ahead into the apocalypse, while our main characters are probably not quite as eager about it. Continuing to put trash cans out on the street (Does he really think the garbage man is still coming?) and attempting to move forward with a somewhat normal life, Travis is still stuck in the past and in denial about the world. Having already seen Nick run over Calvin and Daniel shoot Peter, a number of the group members are coming to the conclusion that the walkers are beyond saving. While Daniel, Nick, and Madison have already made this decision, Travis is having a more difficult time grappling with such a depressing fact of life. This weakness was observed not only by the audience, but also by Daniel and Madison. I particularly enjoyed Madison’s discussion with Elizabeth about what should happen if one of the group members turned. While I find it incredibly unlikely that Madison will be turning anytime soon (Kim Dickens is the star of the show after all), it was an interesting talk that could effect how Madison reacts to any other characters that are turned.
Fortunately for Travis, it doesn’t seem like he’s going to have to do much walker killing while the military is around. I was very surprised by the military takeover at the end of this episode. Unfortunately for Travis, given what we saw with the military in The Walking Dead’s pilot, I have a feeling that their efforts here will be anything but helpful to our characters. It will be fun to watch military leaders start to learn how to combat the walkers and the new factions that start building up in the aftermath of the outbreak. Because we know so much more about the mechanics of the apocalypse than Fear the Walking Dead’s characters do, it was cool to see them nervous about walker blood and lying about burying their dog.
If I had one complaint about the show so far it would be the amount of time that our characters have spent at home. I loved the mounting tension that the neighbors caused in this episode, but I have to point out that we did indeed watch three of our main characters play Monopoly. While I have to praise the writer’s ability to create situations where we can further explore family dynamics, I much prefer tense morally questionable situations like killing/saving the neighbor. However bloodthirsty that sounds, scenes like that show us glimpses of who our characters will become in the future when society has completely fallen and that is definitely more entertaining than Monopoly.
Going into next week I’m very interested in finding out what’s going to happen to Griselda. Obviously, at this point, things are not looking too bright for her. With doctors and pharmaceuticals at a premium, what would once have been considered a minor inconvenience is a life threatening injury in the walker apocalypse. Additionally, Nick is clearly going to compete with her (and as a result, Daniel) for the remaining painkillers which could become an interesting moral dilemma for Madison.
Rating: 9.5/10 - Much better than last week’s total snoozefest, “The Dog” offered plenty of tension and a couple of absolutely fantastic sequences (Madison runs home when she sees Travis, Madison rushes to save Patrick from Susan only for Susan to be blown away by incoming military). I’m really looking forward to next week! Be sure to let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments below!
Favorite Lines:
"Cavalry’s arrived… It’s going to get better now." - Travis
"Weak…” - Daniel
"Trans have a gun… a shotgun… I tried to steal it once.” - Nick
