Fear Morgan’s Walking
After last week’s bizarre ending to the episode featuring a beer bottle hot air balloon, Fear The Walking Dead returns for another slice of undead shenanigans. We begin with Alicia staring at a whole swarm of walkers while out looking for Max and Andy. She decides to cut the intestinal binds and fight them off, except one which happens to have an eye hanging from its socket and looking especially grotesque. Heeding Morgan’s warnings , Charlie draws the walkers away while Strand drags the propeller blades away. Surrounded by walkers, Strand and Charlie pull up the fabric from the hot air balloon which keeps the walkers at bay for now as he and Charlie look on in hopeless despair. Morgan meanwhile asks Grace for help while she’s dressed in a radiation suit via radio. She rejects his offer, refusing to budge until she’s fixed the generator. However, she does mention houses to the East of his location that may be of use to her. Morgan does just that and heads East where he starts looking through the houses for supplies. He radios Alicia who finds herself picked up by Dylan in the woods and taken to their treetop base. She tells him she’s unable to get through to the kids before Morgan replies to her, saying they’re exactly where they should be. At this point he finds keys in one of the houses which prompts him to hurry over to where Charlie and Strand are located and save the day. He shows up just in time and stabs them all while wearing his newly acquired radiation suit. Meanwhile Althea and June stock up petrol cans before she decides to confide in her about what happened while Althea was alone. We then cut back to Alicia who promises to help the kids as they find themselves surrounded by zombies outside their gates. John and Dwight then hit a rough patch on the road which eventually leads to John showing him the letter and apologizing for lying. He leaves the truck without saying anything and walks away. John follows him of course and says his piece and for now at least, things are resolved. Morgan then catches up with Grace while Alicia battles off the zombies one at a time, allowing time for the kids to head off and escape. Unfortunately Alicia slashes wildly at a zombie and finds herself spattered in blood. Blood from an irradiated zombie. To make matters worse, it also happens to be the wonky eyed walker from earlier in the episode. As she realizes some of the blood got in her mouth, she stays back and fights off the zombies while the kids escape back to the group camp. Eventually everyone does make it back to the rendezvous site except Alicia who stays behind, convinced she’s infected. As Morgan and Alicia talk on the radio, the sirens wail at the nuclear power plant as the meltdown appears to be upon us. Fear The Walking Dead continues to stumble toward its plot resolution with another indifferent and largely formulaic episode. Beyond a few nicely implemented action sequences there really isn’t a whole lot else to sink your teeth into. John and Dwight’s potentially interesting tension is resolved almost immediately, Althea and June have little screen time together and Morgan’s questionably fast walking as he skips between various characters throws some serious question marks over the size of this world. Still, if you’ve made it this far then Fear is unlikely to change your mind now and there’s certainly enjoyable moments here, even if they’re more infrequent than they perhaps should be. The irradiated idea is a good one, although the lack of credibility given to this threat is a bit of a shame. I’m also highly doubtful they’ll kill Alicia off either given she’s one of the more interesting characters of the group. Despite a promising start, Fear meanders along with another episode that’s simply okay at best and questionably mundane at worst.
