Fear The Illogical
After last week’s surprisingly decent pilot episode, Fear The Walking Dead gets up to its old tricks, with an episode that falls into the trap of abandoning character logic. Thankfully a returning Daniel, an interesting twist on the old zombie formula and a consistently evolving mystery do well to pepper over these moments to make an enjoyable, but also flawed, second episode to Fear The Walking Dead’s fifth season. We begin with Victor saying his goodbyes on camera before heading off to confront Daniel and try to make amends. With a gun pointed at his face, they discuss past events, including Daniel being shot in the face, but Victor pleads with him to offer up a plane to escape. As they head inside to discuss matters further, Morgan and Alicia head off to find Althea while the rest of the group hold up at the truck stop. Meanwhile, Morgan goes it alone in a bid to kill walkers. After questionably stabbing one in the stomach, he falls down but is saved by a scientist called Grace who tells him to strip. However, Alicia saves him and they get answers around what’s going on. The zombies are irradiated thanks to a nuclear meltdown nearby and Morgan may well be infected. After forcing Morgan to give up his stick, ring and clothes, a fight breaks out as he gets dressed into alternate gear but Alicia and Grace work together to stop the threat as more zombies show up, one of which irradiated. Realizing the problem may be widespread, Alicia warns John and June on the radio who wind up walking into a Summer Camp and stumble across a bunch of walkers inside the cabins. Advising them not to touch anything, Alicia and the others race over to help while Dan and Victor talk about Mexico and the past, reminiscing about their time at the dam. Midway through their conversation, Victor manages to get through to Luciana on the radio and informs her about the plane. She heads outside and shouts to John that the long range antenna has been knocked down, prompting walkers to head to her location. She fires the gun blindly, alerting even more, before heading back inside and locking the door. However, when she wakes up the walkers are gone, with their heads decapitated and hanging from a sign. Someone knows where they are. However, as the group join up again, they have hope that Victor will pull through with the plane and get them out danger. Unfortunately, Daniel has no intention to give Victor the plane. He tells Victor that every person he tries to help, he makes things worse and it’s better this way. He’s then kicked out the facility and forced to return with the bad news. Although Fear The Walking Dead manages to inject another interesting mystery into the fold, the way these characters randomly abandon logic is something that’s haunted both this and The Walking Dead for as long as I can remember. Given Morgan’s aptitude for killing zombies, seeing him stab a walker in the stomach and falling to the ground or witnessing Luciana shouting outside a building she should be hiding in, are reminders of the barriers holding this series back from greatness. Thankfully, Alicia’s new character arc this year is reasonably interesting and despite Morgan’s tired persona, his chemistry with Alicia is enough to keep things interesting and engaging through the slower segments. Despite the great work done last week, the cracks are already starting to appear here in an episode that feels less like Fear’s Season 3 and more like last year’s questionable episodes. Still, the irradiation, the strange group that keep leaving the undead heads everywhere and quite whose taken Althea should be enough to see you through to next week.
