This week on Fear the Walking Dead, we learned the dangers of getting what you think you want. By that I mean, last week I was bitching and moaning that we didn’t see how Maddie and Strand escaped, and “Pablo & Jessica” starts off right away by showing us. But is it a good thing? I’d argue that it isn’t. First of all, we already know that they do escape, so there’s no tension in this sequence, especially because Maddie and Strand escape the same way everyone else does: by rubbing walker blood all over themselves. Second, I don’t care about Maddie’s search for Alicia (Ofelia is mentioned then promptly forgotten), because, again, we saw this last week. We know that Maddie doesn’t find Alicia; rather, it’s the other way around. Again, no tension. So I want to start off by saying I was kinda wrong last week – it was way better that we didn’t see the escape, because in execution it’s pretty anticlimactic and doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

But “repeating things the viewer” already knows seems to be Fear‘s M.O. this season. “Pablo & Jessica” had some decent sequences, and was well-shot as this show always is, but ultimately it was a pretty rudderless episode. This show uses a very slow burn style of narration, and it’s in episodes like this that it works to the show’s detriment.

For instance: the hotel. I really like the hotel as a set, and in pitting Elena against the survivors of the wedding massacre, the show is able to play with a microcosm a larger plot – this is Woodbury or Terminus writ small, two groups warring over a few acres and a few floors. I appreciate the pivot here, too; on The Walking Dead, we’d be four episodes and a hundred interminable Morgan philosophy lectures away from a full-on war that ended up burning the hotel down. But here the two groups start to slowly trust each other, and Alicia finally proves her worth as a character by coming up with a plan to dump all the walkers into the sea. This is a good sequence too, with Maddie directing the walkers down the pier. It goes on a little too long (that’s a long pier, and I think Kim Dickens walked the entirety of it), but it plays like a video game, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Speaking of a lack of surprises, is anyone surprised by the way Nick’s time at the colonia is unfolding? I’ll admit, his plan to cut the OxyContin with powdered milk is a good one, but we don’t need the montage of him doing it to some jaunty score; this isn’t Breaking Bad, for Christ’s sake, he’s just mixing one powder with another powder. And it does lead to one of Nick’s most insufferable lines: “I have a limited but refined skill set.” Fuck your false modesty, Nick, as far as Fear the Walking Dead is concerned, you’re a superhero.

There was never any question that Nick was going to become a bigwig at the colonia. Alejandro, still one of my favorite characters, gives Nick a nice little house to live in, and Nick immediately counters with “I don’t need all this.” Get over yourself, John Wayne. Later, Luciana comes over, falls asleep on Nick’s bed while he teaches himself Spanish (sooo dreamy, am I right??), and then kisses him, which means one thing:

I was 1000% right. In my review of “Grotesque” I said she’d be in love with him in five episodes, and it only took four! Okay, here’s my next prediction: in five more episodes, Nick will be in command of the colonia. Calling it now.

A Few Thoughts

• There was a genuinely nice moment between Nick and Luciana, when she told him about her brother’s death and he spontaneously hugged her. It didn’t feel forced, and their relationship would ring truer if FTWD had done more showing and less telling.
• Speaking of force: Maddie and Alicia’s heart to heart. Since they’ve spent every single episode together, we never got to see any of Alicia “raising herself,” as she apparently did. Keep in mind, Nick said Alicia was “the golden child,” so which is it?
• Nick being very up front about his past as a junkie is one of his better qualities.

About Author

T. Dawson

Trevor Dawson is the Executive Editor of GAMbIT Magazine. He is a musician, an award-winning short story author, and a big fan of scotch. His work has appeared in Statement, Levels Below, Robbed of Sleep vols. 3 and 4, Amygdala, Mosaic, and Mangrove. Trevor lives in Denver, CO.

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