RECAP: FEAR THE WALKING DEAD, S01E03, “The Dog”

I gotta admit it: this one’s probably gonna be a bit shorter than usual.   I am so so so so tired right now, and I probably should have gotten this done earlier in the week, because I need to be asleep for like the next forty hours.  But I am nothing if not diligent in executing my responsibilities.  A-recapping we shall go!

So there were zombies in LA some people got et all up the end goodnight.

…

Crap.

Okay, fine.

We open on a lot of peering through windows and flipping over of cars, which… guys, peering through windows has got to be in the Fear the Walking Dead drinking game, especially if you want the Fear the Walking Dead drinking game to be the kind that kills you.  At first it’s Chris, who sees this guy, who is too interested in being a Cool Dude for any brain-eating:

and then literally forty seconds later it’s Alicia, and then Nick and Maddie are arguing about whether it’s polite for Nick to crush his opiates rather than swallowing them like a civilized person.  Nick makes a token attempt to get them to leave without Travis, because he is the only character on the show with any survival skills.

Back to the barbershop, where Travis and Daniel have a brief but tense conversation that is interrupted by Chris noticing the walls are about to melt.  That’s bad!  It means things are on fire.  They flee, running through the chaos as a bunch of people riot their butts off and other people eat those people’s butts off.  No one has a butt anymore, is what I’m saying here.  I feel like more of them should be fleeing, but hey, I’ve never been in a riot, maybe they’re fun.

Opening sequence!  It’s still only like ten seconds long.

Back to the house, and a lovely game of Monopoly, as Mom does her damnedest to establish a shred of normality, a shred the kids jump at.  It sounds stupid but it’s actually pretty adorable.  Meanwhile, everybody else is still trying to escape the riot zone (note: this is not actually possible.  Here is how this works:  The cops have surrounded the riot zone and are busily arresting everyone within for “refusal to disperse,” which is impossible because the cops won’t let you past their lines.  This is the least realistic part of a show about zombies.)

Anyway, there’s a firehose, and then some scaffolding falls on Griselda, badly hurting her foot, because it’s time to put a minor character in jeopardy and they’ve already killed off all the black guys.  Miraculously, Travis’ truck is the only one in LA not flipped over, and they drive away somehow.

Nick has Boardwalk.  This scene really is cute:

Sadly, the camaraderie is quickly ruined by gunshots.  Also, Alicia asking if they really have to wait for Travis.

Meanwhile, everyone else is trying to take Griselda to a hospital, but this is happening so they decide not to go in: 

They peel away to actual fires and smoke and stuff happening.  We’re supposed to believe Rick survived all this nonsense back in Atlanta?  C’mon.  Seriously?  There’s a brief talk about finding another hotel but Daniel shoots the idea down.  Daniel and Travis are weirdly antagonistic toward each other and I’m really not sure why.  At any rate, Daniel insists on being taken to Travis’ house.  As they’re driving, the city lights start blinking off, block by block, and we get some cool shots through the car windows as the city power flickers out.

Commercials.

Back to the house, where Nick is really working this “Let’s abandon Travis and split” angle.    The lights blink out.  “It’s happening again,” Alicia says, who has been looking through windows.  Nick tells everyone to get away from the windows.   And then it becomes clear that still no one has filled Alicia in.  It’s been six hours.

There’s some scrabbling at the back door.  It’s a dog!  Nick lets him in.  He’s got blood all over him.  It doesn’t appear to be his.  The dog rushes the front door, barking his ass off, and Nick looks out the window again.  Zombie in the street!

Nick immediately remembers that the neighbors have a shotgun and resolves to steal it.  Everyone immediately goes along with it.  They leave the back door open, because stupid, and head through the neighbors’ freaking grapevine scaffolding maze to get into their house.

There’s no way that perfectly normal thing will lead to trouble, right?  Is this a thing people do in California?

Nick makes it real clear he’s broken into this house before, by the way, and I take a moment to note that he’s still limping and I’m glad they haven’t forgotten he was hit by a freaking car a couple of episodes ago.  The shotgun is located in short order, along with some shells, as Alicia sort of aimlessly wanders the house, not asking why they’re stealing weapons from their neighbors.  The dog starts barking again.  Alicia looks out the window– drink!– to see the street walker going in the back door they left open.  Is it the same one?  At any rate, the dog doesn’t seem super happy about it.

It doesn’t go well for the dog.

Perfect time for Travis to get home, right?  They all head back over to the house.  I’m not convinced the geography of all this works, by the way, but I refuse to go so far as to draw a map, which I think might be necessary.

Travis is entering the house and everyone else is running through the grapevine maze.

There’s a dude eating a dog in their living room.  Eew.

The lights blink back on.  The walker stands up.  Travis recognizes him, calling him “Peter.”  Peter attacks him.  Chris and Liza aren’t super helpful.  Nick realizes they forgot the shells, somehow, and Alicia splits back into the house.

Turns out there was somebody in there after all.  She just gets a look at feet, but she’s smart enough to run anyway.

Back to the house, where Daniel walks into the living room and immediately commandeers the shotgun and blows the zombie’s face off.  Like, no hesitation.  It’s horribly gruesome– there are tons of pictures floating around, and I decided not to use them.  It’s the first real Walking Dead moment this show has had.

Zombies don’t really need faces, though, so it just sorta turns back toward them and comes after them again.   Daniel hesitates for all of a second, puts the shotgun directly on its forehead, and this time blows its head clean off.  It’s even worse than the face-shooting.

Alicia is lost in the maze.  Neighbor lady grabs her through the wires in the scaffolding, and she escapes and manages to get most of the way over the fence.  Chris “helps” her down, mostly by providing something for her to fall on and grabbing a handful of boob along the way, and Alicia elbows him in the face hard enough to break his nose.  The neighbor, who is Susan, tries her best to get at them through the fence.

“She’s sick,” Travis says.

“She’s not sick,” Nick replies.  “She’s dead.”

Aaaaaand now Alicia gets it.

“That’s not Matt,” she says.  She freaks the hell out, immediately connecting Susan with her sick boyfriend.  Well, I guess we don’t need to fill her in anymore.

Travis fixes Nick’s nose.  It’s not broken, I guess.  Travis is still convinced this is a sickness.   I’m not sure this is realistic, really; if anything he had to be sure that Calvin, or whatever his name was, was dead.  The drug dealer dude.

Tense conversation about whether they’re staying or going.  Travis wants to stay until the morning– which, honestly, I think I’m with him on that, as their neighborhood seems relatively safe so long as they don’t leave the goddamn doors open.  Daniel says he’s called his cousin, who will pick them up in the morning, and then a few minutes later is arguing with Travis about whether he should burn Peter’s body.  Daniel finally shows about two seconds of a sympathetic side, as he realizes that Travis might not be too keen on burning the body of his friend who he just watched Daniel blow the head off of.

Travis and Eliza talk.  Eliza thinks Griselda’s gonna die if they don’t get her help.

Upstairs, in a bedroom, the Salazars are arguing about whether they’re going to stick around or not.  Their daughter points out that Dad doesn’t have a cousin, and ohhhh, they’re from El Salvador, which explains why Daniel seems a bit self-sufficient and maybe a little paranoid.  Daniel has seen what happens when The Shit Hits the Fan.  And he’s pretty sure it’s happening again.  He’s not trusting anyone who isn’t family right now.

Anyway, they argue.

Meanwhile, Eliza tries her best to offer an olive branch to Maddie.  Maddie interrupts her to tell her about the dead neighbor zombie and then to tell her to make sure to kill her if she turns out like Susan.

“Don’t make Travis do it.  It would break him,” she says.

Eliza just kind of wanders off, because where do you go from that?

Commercials.

It’s morning.  Travis is burying Peter and taking the dead dog to the curb in the trash– y’know, typical suburban stuff– and he makes tense eye contact with a neighbor who is doing the same thing.  Meanwhile, Daniel is explaining shotguns to Chris.

Travis isn’t super appreciative, because let’s argue with Daniel every chance we get about anything, seriously, why the hell do these two hate each other so much.  There’s a brief argument about guns.  Dude, I’m as liberal as the next guy, but that gun sorta saved your life last night.  Maddie orders him to finish packing.

“I’ve got one more thing to do,” she says, and next we see she’s in the backyard with a hammer, staring at Susan, who’s still trying to get through the fence.  Travis manages to talk her out of bashing their neighbor’s skull in with a tack hammer.  How many times do you have to have that conversation as a couple?

Daniel’s watching through the window.  “Weak,” he says.  Yep!

Packing, leaving.  The Salazars are staying behind in the house.  Blah blah blah Nick’s mad that Maddie gave Griselda some drugs.  The Salazars argue some more about whether they’re going with them or not.  Hilariously, at one point Daniel tells his wife that they never should have taught Ofelia to speak Spanish.  We also get the line “Good people are the first ones to die” out of Daniel.  Ooh, dark.

Alicia is totally not dressed for fleeing into the desert.

After all that, in a two-car caravan, they make it around the block before Maddie spots Susan’s husband getting home.  Dude somehow appears to know nothing about this, and we get some dialog where he’s bitching about the airport before his wife tries to give him a hug, and then luckily the military blows her head off before she eats him.

Oh, the military’s here now.

The husband– Patrick– is swiftly disappeared, because he’s got blood all over him, and the next several minutes are taken up with military questioning and a list of the people in the house, which the soldier jots down without asking for any spellings, which entertains me.  There’s some exposition between Maddie and a soldier, and Nick tries to break into another house.  For drugs.  He wants drugs.

A little girl spots him and waves at him, and he waves back in one of his most Depp-ian moments yet, and then there’s a plane overhead that looks like it ought to be crashing but doesn’t.

It’s never made clear if they’re told to stay behind, but there are soldiers everywhere spraypainting stuff on houses, and they’re definitely not trying too hard to split.

“Cavalry’s arrived,” Travis says.  “It’s gonna be okay now.”

Inside, peering out the window, Daniel gets the last words of the episode.  “It’s already too late,” he says.

Is it next Sunday yet?