There were only a few ways the season finale of this show was gonna go, right? There was gonna be action. Daniel was gonna let those zombies out of the arena and all hell was gonna break loose. Somebody was gonna die. And they were gonna end up breaking everybody in the main cast out of Troublemaker Jail. The only real questions were who was gonna die and whether they were going to kill off the black guy they introduced last episode.
Let’s cut to the chase:
Eliza;
No.
Because let’s definitely kill the most level-headed, non-dick character on the show. Why not? And it looks like Faustus is gonna end up lasting another couple of episodes even though we didn’t really ever get a reason why he was locked up with Nick.
Here’s the gist:
Remember the conversation between Eliza and the doctor about who was going to be able to go with them that I talked about last week? I must have seen a promo or something, because that conversation happens this episode. The military’s bugging out, and they’ve got few enough people around that a Chinook helicopter ought to be able to get everyone out. Eliza negotiates Chris and Travis onto the helicopter. Left unsaid: just how the hell they’re going to get there.
Daniel and Travis have an argument about what to do with Soldier Andy, who convinces Travis that there’s no way Daniel’s going to let him live. Travis has a problem with killing Soldier Andy. Left unsaid: how anything Soldier Andy says is going to help them actually find the people they’re looking for. Does he know the layout of the base? Maybe. Probably not, since he seems to spend most of his time in the safe zone. Is he gonna lie about it? Sure!
Daniel shows up at the base:
The soldiers are all, “Raah graah! Old man! Approach and die!” Daniel’s all, “‘Kay. But, uh, THIS!:”
So, just a few minutes in, and we’re kind of already at earth-shattering this was your goddamn plan? levels of stupid. Travis, who didn’t want to kill one guy, is apparently fine with the dozens of deaths unleashing thousands of zombies was going to lead to. And Daniel apparently has brass balls of steel (yes, brass balls of steel) because he just… what, wandered a few meters in front of the mob long enough to pull the entire thing to the soldiers, forgive me for the MMO language?
Apparently.
But wait! We aren’t done. Everyone else is in an SUV and they find a parking garage… somehow. And then they leave Chris and Alicia in the truck, because obviously you leave the healthy teenagers who can totally keep up with the group in the truck. Splitting your group is something you definitely want to do in situations of total chaos.
Nick and Faustus break out. Turns out Nick’s a skilled pickpocket, somehow; he has the key. They don’t let anyone else out of Troublemaker Jail. Everyone else is like raah graah let us out of Troublemaker Jail! and they’re like nah.
Zombies zombies zombies. A soldier has the death of the season when he gets bit and, knowing what he’s in for, kills himself by charging directly into a spinning helicopter rotor, which less decapitates him than vaporizes his head. In other “gross!” news, Faustus discovers the guy who took his cufflinks last episode. The guy is alive, but being eaten while he is alive. Faustus takes his cufflinks back but declines to kill the guy, because reasons.
He and Nick get trapped in a hallway, but it’s okay because right then is when everyone finds them. Their “plan” was apparently just to wander the hell around. Incidentally, Travis let the rest of Troublemaker Jail out. Unfortunately, those people are all going to die, because you let thousands of zombies loose, you fucking idiot.
There’s a fight.
Daniel finally gets around to asking Eliza where Griselda might be. Not sure, maybe somewhere in here:
Yes, those are giant piles of cremains. It’s… a pretty bleak moment.
MEANWHILE! The SUV gets stolen by soldiers who are sensibly cutting out, and Chris gets punched in the face, and Alicia turns down an offer of temporary safety in return for nightly gangrape. They somehow do not get eaten, and the rest of the crew somehow find them again, despite this being a stupid, stupid, stupid plan, and they eventually just find another car somehow, apparently.
In what is supposed to be a tense moment, Soldier Andy finds them, and holds Daniel at gunpoint for a minute, then instead shoots Ofelia, but only wings her, and Travis, who doesn’t like violence, beats the tar out of a younger, stronger, better-trained soldier, because FAMILY!!!, only he didn’t really like Daniel or Ofelia anyway and what did you think he would do if you let him loose? He doesn’t kill him, though, but he does beat him severely enough that he was probably a zombie snack a few minutes after he’s offscreen. So, thanks for that, I guess? Those few minutes of extra life were great for him, I imagine.
Dr. Faustus has a mansion on the ocean, which has not only not been looted it apparently hasn’t even been noticed, and a yacht, and it’s fairly strongly implied that next season will start on the yacht at least, and I’m already having PTSD flashbacks of the Farm, except more boring. Oh, also, Eliza got… well, it looks like she got scratched, because her wounds are in a really weird place for a bite, and do scratches actually make you turn? Do we have canon for that?
Travis shoots her anyway, and we’re all sad, and that’s the end of the season, and I spent five episodes defending the show but this really was an Idiot Episode, where no one made any decisions that made any sense and then they killed a sympathetic character because they felt like they had to because it was a season finale and not because the arc earned it.
HONESTY TIME: If you pay attention you might have noticed that it’s not currently Saturday. That’s because I forgot to post my recap on Saturday. It’s Sunday right now– or at least it’s Sunday if you’re reading this on the day it posted. You have a 1/7 chance of it being Sunday otherwise, I suppose.
How did I forget to post my recap on Saturday? Drugs! I’m on them. This is actually the second time I’ve had to write a recap while on mind-bending (disappointingly, legal) drugs. The first time, it was Vicodin. This time, it’s a little thing called Lexapro, proscribed as an anti-anxiety drug. Basically all it does is make me sleepy and really, really unlikely to, like, do stuff. There’s really no way I’d have just forgotten something like this otherwise. But, yeah: Luther’s doing another drug recap, guys! (Hilariously, the previous episode was called “Forget.”)
Oh, right, also: There’s been, like, all kinds of family stuff going on today and I haven’t had time to rewatch the episode like I usually do. It’s possible that this will be at least partially made up. And it’s totally gonna be completely out of order. Consider this less a recap and more of a disjointed set of recollections, much like the entire last week of my life.
Let’s start with the hospital people, it’s easier. Griselda? Dead, because they had to cut her foot off but she went septic anyway, which doesn’t really surprise anyone. Turns out that Doctor Whatshername is already fully aware of the rules of the game, those being: 1) Everybody turns, 2) headshots, 3) Bites are gonna ruin your day. We see one soldier being triaged into the cow-hammer line and Eliza actually puts a… bullet? Slug? Cow-killing pneumatic thing into Griselda’s brain after she dies, which makes a smaller hole than you might think it would. Eliza also finds out that everybody’s bugging out in the near future, and makes a deal to bring Chris and Travis with her. Chris and Travis aren’t there at the time, though, and we all know how these deals go.
(My wife insists that this conversation did not happen during this episode. She was there with me while I was watching. Entirely possible that I made the whole damn thing up. I dunno.)
Meanwhile, there’s this guy:
I don’t remember his name, so I’ll call him… hmm… Faustus seems appropriate. He’s in Troublemaker Jail with Nick and the really sad guy from last episode who we all assumed was dead but it turns out he isn’t. When we first see him, he’s ruining Sad Guy’s day by assuring him that his wife will be just fine after he dies, because she’s hot and she’ll surely glom onto some dude who will protect her so that he can use her body. For, one presumes, sex. So he’s saying she’ll be Lori, basically. Sad Guy bursts into tears and the guards haul him off somewhere. Then he bribes them not to take Nick away (why are they taking people away? Where are they going? How does Troublemaker Jail work?) for some reason and explains to Nick that he’ll need him for his particular skills as a heroin addict. Which include lying, stealing, and basically doing whatever one can for heroin. Also probably being hard to fight. Faustus is kinda cool but I can’t figure out what the hell he’s doing there and he’s black so they’ll probably kill him next week anyway. Also unclear: whether Troublemaker Jail is connected to the hospital or not.
Alicia and Chris break into a house, trash it, and spend the episode playing dress-up. Yeah, that really happens. They’re all disaffected and teenagery. There’s a couple of moments of weird sexual tension, like, eew, your parents boink and you don’t get to, but it goes away. They are rather definitively Not in the House, but no one notices. Seriously, no one ever pays attention to Alicia.
Travis tries to get taken to the hospital, gets crammed into a Humvee with about a half-dozen soldiers, doesn’t shoot this zombie in the head because he doesn’t wanna, and then the soldiers rush off into a building to get into a fight and it’s really heavily implied that they frag Captain Butthead from last episode. Anyway, the survivors pile back into the Humvee, tell Travis they ain’t taking him nowhere, and drop him off. He shows up in the next few scenes I’m going to tell you about but hell if I can remember what he did. Probably something wimpy.
Everybody else gets the cool part. Remember Ofelia’s boyfriend from last episode? She starts by throwing a bunch of bottles at the soldiers and screaming about her mother, which leads him to tell them that he’ll take her home. Next thing we know her boyfriend is duct-taped to a chair in a neighbor’s house (I ask again: how many neighbors do these people have?) and Daniel’s taking his shirt off. This isn’t gonna go well.
I can’t quite figure Ofelia out, guys. She’s basically all oh, so long as you don’t hurt him, Daddy, and Mercedes Mason is 23 but the character sometimes looks like she’s 40 and I really can’t figure out either how old she’s supposed to be or how naive she’s supposed to be. But… dude, you were okay with the taped-to-the-chair part? How did he get taped to the chair? Did Daniel knock him out or something? We don’t see that part and I have no idea how it happened and I’m really not sure how much Ofelia is supposed to know.
I do know that when she comes back later and Daniel has basically skinned part of soldier boy’s arm, she’s not super happy and kinda runs away screaming:
That looks a lot like a bite, by the way. Good luck convincing anyone it isn’t.
Daniel gets a lot of speechifying this episode, but here’s the gist: All of his stories about El Salvador were true, only he wasn’t entirely honest on which side he was on, and it turns out– oops!– he’s a war criminal. I’m trying really hard not to use the word badass to describe him at any point during this piece, because, again, war criminal. War criminal is bad. But yeah: Daniel’s a torturer. Griselda makes it real clear that she knew before she dies, and I still can’t quite put together what Ofelia knows.
Maddie shows up partway through too. She’s cool with it.
Basically he wants to know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: the soldiers are leaving. It’s called Operation Cobalt. Everyone at the hospital and in Troublemaker Jail is gonna be “humanely terminated.” Oh, and apparently they abandoned a couple thousand people in an arena nearby and just sorta locked the doors and left.
And guess where Daniel’s standing in the morning?
Yeah.
Is it next Sunday yet? Wait, no, that’s next week. Is it Sunday yet? Yes, it is. Go watch the finale tonight, is what I’m saying.
Weird thing about this show: maybe it’s just the difference in the number of seasons, but I have a heck of a time finding more than a handful of images from any given new episode that has aired for this show so far. This hasn’t been a problem with my Walking Dead recaps– I can frequently find a screencap somewhere, if not an actual .gif file, of any scene I might want to actually show in a review. That’s been very difficult so far with Fear. So I decided for this episode I would can the idea of using images specifically from this episode and instead go with a theme. See if you can guess what it is.
Maddie, looking through a window.
The episode begins with Lou Reed’s Perfect Day, because of course it does, and really every episode of every show should begin with Perfect Day. Nick floats lazily in the pool, which is full of mildew and other gross, like seriously people, maybe you have trouble getting chlorine right now, but toss a net in that damn thing before you go swimming. Travis jogs. Daniel… uh… looks out a window. Chris voice-overs. It’s day nine, and apparently Donald Trump is president because the military’s built a wall around the neighborhood. Chris’ voice-over is needlessly portentous even though he is actually describing the end of the world. Then he sees someone outside the safe zone flashing a light at him, and credits.
Maddie looks out a window
Maddie yammers at Alicia about repainting. Left out of this conversation is the part where there are bloodstains all over the wall that they probably want to get rid of. Travis comes back from his leisurely jog and Maddie gripes at him about how stressful life is, managing to toss in that she doesn’t know where Eliza goes during the day. I think you probably do, Maddie. Alicia shuts everyone up, because bickering is boring and shut up, grownups. Meanwhile, Chris is on the roof trying to get his buddy to flash lights back at him. He succeeds.
Travis looks out a window
Travis climbs up on the roof, and Chris tries to catch his interest in the light. “There’s someone out there! They said there wasn’t anyone alive out there!” he says. Travis is needlessly dickish. He does that a lot.
Maddie, meanwhile, is yammering at Nick and trying to get him to take his Oxy. She’s apparently found a pill just sitting on a counter. Nick counters that he’s clean, and his mother tries really hard to get him to take more of the drugs that he says he doesn’t have to take any more. ‘K.
Outside, a soldier is reading an announcement at a crowd that even given the circumstances seems weirdly defensive and hostile, like, they’re giving me teacher flashbacks as they’re hollering irrelevant questions at him. I’m sure he’s around at some other times than right now while he’s trying to disseminate information. Maybe wait until the end of the speech? Or something? Eventually he loses his temper and stops. They’re in one of twelve safe zones, apparently, and they’re supposedly “infect-free” for six miles around the perimeter.
“Be nice, before I have to shoot you,” he says at the end of his speech.
Nick looks out a window
The soldier goes looking for Travis, who is apparently some sort of liaison now or something like that? Somebody’s refusing to submit to a health screening, and Travis needs to talk him off the ledge. Travis tries to decline at first until the guy basically tells him that he’s going to shoot Doug if Travis doesn’t go fix him. This proves convincing, and Travis heads off to try and talk sense into the guy.
Alicia brings back a toy wagon full of… I dunno, food or something. Maddie paints.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Travis tells Doug, and tells him that that’s what he has to tell his kids. “Will they know that I’m lying?” Doug asks. Note that Travis doesn’t know he’s lying, so his answer to this is kinda obvious. Doug’s teary-eyed and not dealing with this well. No surprise there.
Little kids look out a window
Elsewhere, Alicia breaks back into the neighbor’s house, and wanders around, and we see that jar of pills on the table again. She pulls a framed picture off the wall; apparently Susan used to babysit them? And held onto a thank-you note for an inappropriately long period of time? She finds a note from Susan, presumably to her husband, and sobs as she reads it, rubbing the faded Sharpie mark on her arm as she does.
Elsewhere (I feel like I’m going to run out of transition words quickly today) Eliza is checking on an old man in a hospital bed. He’s got an IV in him and she reassures him that he’s got plenty of morphine (uh-oh) and he’ll be fine. The patient’s wife does her best to give Eliza food. Nick, nearby, hops out of the pool. Wait, is that even their pool? How many neighbors do these people have? He looks through the fence at the neighbor as she leaves.
Chris is now arguing with Alicia about his lights. Why doesn’t anyone pay attention to Chris? No wonder he’s so sullen.
Cut back to the old man, who is clearly struggling to breathe, possibly because Nick is hiding under his hospital bed with the morphine drip jammed between his toes. Jesus, Nick.
Chris peers through a window
We come back after commercials to the weirdest scene of the episode, as Ofelia makes out with some random soldier in his Humvee. He tries to take off her bra and she stops him. Is he seriously supposed to be on patrol alone right now? She asks him about medicine, so maybe she’s playing him for medicine for Mom, and he finally answers his radio call and says he’s heading back.
Nighttime, and Travis and Maddie are screwing in their car. “Is that make-up sex?” Travis asks? Dude, you don’t know? I feel like you should be certain. Maddie hops out of the car, denying her husband post-coital snuggles. Travis hounds her about what’s wrong with her, like, again, you don’t know? Dude there is seriously no reason at all to be confused about anyone acting stressed out right now, stop being dumb. She tells him to be nicer to Chris. He gripes about the light again. That is obviously a person flashing a light. It’s right there. Stop being dumb, Travis. You’re the dumbest dummy on this show. The two of them argue about the benevolence of the soldiers for a few minutes, only interrupted by Doug’s wife, who has lost Doug. He’s missing. Travis is sure he’s clearing his head. Sure he is.
Travis and Maddie stare out a window
Morning, and Maddie is flashing a flashlight at the building in the distance, and Travis has found Doug’s car. Somebody flashes a light back at Maddie. Commercials.
Captain Anger Management is playing golf, much like… well, somebody, and he and Travis argue about Doug, who the Captain claims they’ve picked up and taken off to get him some help so that he doesn’t go crazy inside the safe zone. Travis tells him about the lights. The Captain claims there aren’t any lights. What the hell is wrong with you people?
I know how this man feels. No window, though.
We note that someone has taken the time to put the words “REV 21:4” into the fence using Styrofoam cups. I do not approve wasting of Styrofoam cups in this fashion during the zombie apocalypse. Incidentally, the text of Revelation 21:4 is as follows:
“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
This is obviously nonsense, as there’s going to be a lot more of all of those things. Sidenote: it’s called Revelation, people, as in The Revelation of St. John. Stop calling it Revelations. It makes the eyes of people with degrees in Biblical studies all twitchy, and that’s not nice.
Later, there’s an actual doctor, and the old man is missing, and it turns out that Eliza’s not a nurse after all (is she training to be one? Yes, right?) and the doc is totally on to her but wants her to keep faking it anyway. Meanwhile, Maddie’s sneaking out of the safe zone because I already called Travis a dummy in this recap and she’s jealous.
Ofelia peers out a window
She walks past a wall covered with missing signs– dudes, the best place to find someone in a zombie movie is clearly right next to these walls, because everyone in LA has a picture up there. Meanwhile, there’s a piece of cardboard on a fence nearby with a Bible verse on it. It’s… Revelation 21:4! Because there is only one Bible verse in Los Angeles.
There are bodies in the street all over the place. Shot dead bodies, with head wounds, and then there are soldiers, and Maddie dives underneath a car to wait for the commercial break. They somehow do not notice her despite it being their entire job to notice things while they’re walking around.
The doctor’s checking out Griselda, and suggests they head off to a nearby medical facility. Daniel, naturally, is somewhat untrusting. He says he’s going with her for the surgery she needs; the doctor doesn’t argue. A moment later, she’s checking on Nick, who may need Methadone, but says he’s fine.
“When’s the last time you used?” she asks.
“Uh… I dunno, when did the world end? A couple days before that,” he says. Which is awesome.
Nick isn’t looking through a window, but he totally just was.
Nick’s heart rate is elevated. “You’re a very attractive woman,” he deadpans.
Next door– how long has she been over there? Alicia is trying to tattoo the symbol onto her arm. Bye, Alicia, that’s all the screen time you get this episode. Maddie gets home and Daniel knows immediately she went outside the fence. She also admits it immediately, like it’s normal, and tells him about the bodies, which surprises him not at all. His reaction is worth actually embedding:
Daniel’s becoming my favorite character, behind Nick but closing in. Note also that this is the second “it happens quickly” moment in the series. And it’s clear that he really doesn’t think he’s ever coming back from this hospital.
“Look after your son,” he says.
I feel like this would be a good time for hell to start breaking loose. Maddie magically locates Nick in the neighbors’ house, rooting around for drugs, and proceeds to slap the crap out of him, then turns around and stomps back out of the house. Nobody ever locks their doors in this neighborhood.
Nighttime, and Nick is trying to keep Alicia out of the bathroom, because he doesn’t want her to see the bruises. Oh, okay, I guess she does get another scene in this episode. She’s being Caring Sister for the moment and gives him a hug and tells him it’s going to be all right. Maddie’s downstairs in the Sex Car drinking what may or may not be booze out of a mug.
Soldiers outside. They take Griselda away, but won’t let Daniel go with them. “We only have two names,” they say. “Griselda Salazar and Nicholas Clark.”
Uh.
“Run,” Alicia says to Nick.
He doesn’t get very far.
Maddie looks through another window
There’s lots of yelling and fighting, but the soldiers end up winning, which isn’t terribly surprising, and Nick is hauled off in handcuffs. Meanwhile, the doctor is somehow convincing Eliza to go with them and help at the hospital. We see her mouthing “I love you” to Chris, who is– you guessed it!– watching through the blinds, and they take her away.
Maddie gets manhandled by the soldiers until everyone else is gone, then comes back and blames everything on Eliza. Sure.
“Eliza. She did this,” she says, and it’s the last spoken line of the episode. Maddie reads Susan’s letter again in voiceover as Travis climbs to the roof. Susan clearly thought the world was ending, and appears to have killed herself after all.
Travis, on the roof, sees a light off in the distance. Then a few more, only these aren’t so much signal lights as muzzle flashes. The signaler, whoever he or she was, is dead.
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.
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