To Anyone Who Can Hear My Voice
This episode is mostly concerned with getting us up to date with the flashforward we saw in the pilot episode with a little bit of reconciliation along the way for Cam and Luke. It's kind of sad to see McDermott reaching out for Cam when everyone else is pulling Cam away but I think there's an interesting reunion on the cards for the finale.
The group of Luke, Cam, Lauren, Jai and Paula run into Sarah and after a brief fight in an ale house, the group sans Sarah is picked up by Cleargenix and Cam notices that a dead body comes to life after being doused by a water hose. This strikes me as another new sort of twist to the zombie genre. It's just a shame that the show just feels too lifeless and inconsistent for these twists to make much of an impact.
Back in Paymart, the survivors are experiencing a moral dilemma concerning letting in any more survivors after the zombies start getting closer, delivering Bobby, the sniper guy, an ultimately fatal bite. This is another blow to Jai, inspiring him to go on the rescue mission to get Cam and Luke in order to feel like he can still save people and get a win over the apocalypse.
Other survivors come knocking after the lockdown comes into effect, leaving the group divided. Amy and Captain Pike are on the side of letting them in but Paula's political rival, Pops, is adamant that if they open the doors, it will effectively kill them all. Pike holds him at gunpoint but can't pull the trigger and they're forced to listen as the men outside get torn apart. This leads to Pike having an emotional breakdown in probably the best performance of the episode.
Death Comes to Paymart
So the best character in the whole show gets killed off. That sucks. But Jai did go out a hero, effectively sacrificing himself to kick open the vent and release the exhaust fumes. I hoped there was some way for him to survive but no such luck. Fortunately a couple of the other characters like Amy and Lauren are becoming more and more dynamic and interesting. Not interesting enough to fill the void left by Jai, but it'll have to suffice for the final episode.
Speaking of Amy, she is having the worst day out of everyone. She's lost her best friend, her mother, her father and her newlywed husband all in the space of a few hours and she doesn't even know that last one's dead yet. They have just piled the trauma on this girl, but she seems to be getting stronger because of it. She's not the same person she was when we first saw her during wedding preparations.
Captain Pike continues her guilt fueled breakdown by trying to force herself to kill a girl with the loosest possible connection to the deaths of Pops and Herb. She wants to feel like she's done something to protect the survivors in the face of letting two men die in the previous episode. She ultimately doesn't go through with it, but her line, "All this death. What's one more life?" gave me chills with the broken, hopeless way it was delivered.
Meanwhile before getting locked in a room and almost gassed to death, Cam, Lauren and Jai realise that the zombies have all been coming back to life after coming into contact with water. There were sprinklers on at the graveyard, there was a man watering the grounds at the golf club and Lauren washed down the dead body in the morgue.
But the water problem is going to have to wait until they've saved the other survivors from Cleargenix who are on their way to Paymart to continue to cover up their crimes. I am a little confused as to Cleargenix's role in this mini-apocalypse. Perhaps I missed something in an earlier episode but did they release the virus on accident or was it their purpose and intention all along? Perhaps we'll find out in the finale.
The Hitlist - Amy's asshole dad bites the bucket twice, once by dying of his wound sustained in an earlier episode and then again from being impaled on a bit of metal. I like how cathartic it was for Amy to beat up her zombified father, she really needed that.
Pops also dies in a bit of a non-event which is fine because the only character who was more annoying than him was Shaun. Now all that's left is for Rhodes to die and the hitlist will be complete (Paula was also on the hitlist but the show seems determined to redeem her so she's probably not going to die).
What did you think of these episodes? Gutted Jai's dead? What do you think is in store for the final episode? Sound off in the comments below!
