SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2, EPISODE 5 FOLLOW!
By: Tyler Miller
Last night’s Fear The Walking Dead didn’t improve on the previous episode, but it didn’t take that big of a step back either. It was a good episode that carried over all the good of the last episode, and brought one little bad thing with it.
Things started on the boat of our villainous pirate group, with their leader Connor making a nice steak for Alicia as he tries to get to know her. The generator goes down though so he leaves to check on it, leaving her with the pregnant pirate who then leaves as well and locks Alicia in the room. Alicia manages to make it above deck though and sees that the boat is on huge and docked on land. Her pirate “boyfriend” Jack sees her and brings her back into the boat, and agrees to find out if her family made it to land after a lot of persuasion from her.
On the yacht, Daniel is cleaning Reed’s injury and it’s pretty nasty. In the room as well is Chris who watches and gets antagonized by Reed over and over. While cleaning Reed’s injuries, Daniel manages to get him to reveal how many boats and people Connor has, and the fact that Connor is his brother. This causes Daniel to realize that they have leverage to make a deal with Connor. Him and Chris leave the room when Chris asks to stay downstairs and watch over Reed. Daniel allows him to with the agreement that he won’t engage Reed, and proceeds to head up to the bridge where Madison is steering the boat and taking care of Strand. He informs her of everything he learned and they head to where Connor is. Louis comes up and questions why they’re not going to Mexico, turning to Strand for some support in them continuing to go South. Strand has a heart though and agrees to spend half a day going after Connor to get Travis and Alicia.
Back at Connor’s boat, Jack is telling Alicia what her job is: to watch the radar and choose which boats they’ll go after. While he tells her this though, she ends up being sneaky and takes his keys without him knowing. She then spots the Abigail on the radar and gets mad at Jack for not telling her the truth about what happened with the boat. Since he’s head over heels for her, he decides to help her find Travis and get to her family. Down below in the boat we see Travis locked up in a cell by himself. He starts to try and get out, but stops when he hears someone coming. Turns out that the someone he heard was Alex! And she’s pissed at him. She tells him that Jake died because she had to kill him, and she blames Travis for that happening. When Connor found her, she told him all about the Abigail and asked for Travis personally, hence why he’s there. The two of them continue to talk for a bit before Alex leaves Travis by himself.
Alicia and Jack see another boat on the radar that can distract Connor long enough to allow them to leave and get to the Abigail without being noticed. Before they leave though, they head to Travis’ cell and Alicia wants to get him out. Travis isn’t having it though, telling her to leave if she has a chance to do so and to not come back for him. Having run out of time, Jack and Alicia leave and return back up top. Meanwhile, the Abigail has finally found Connor’s ship and Reed is continuing to antagonize Chris. Nick cuts the two of them off though and empathizes with Chris to try and get him to stop blaming himself for everything that happened.
Madison makes contact with Connor and makes a deal with him to trade Reed for Travis and Alicia in an hour. Nick volunteers to go, but Madison refuses and decides to go herself because she doesn’t want to put Nick in harms way. The plan falls apart though when they hear a gunshot… Everyone heads downstairs and sees that Chris shot and killed Reed because he was going to turn. So now the plan is nonexistent and they need to figure out something else. Nick and Ofelia are cleaning up after Reed’s death when he turns into a walker because Chris failed to kill him the right way. Thankfully Daniel comes by at the right moment and pins zombie Reed to the wall, telling Nick to not kill him because they can still use him to make the deal.
Things are ramping up now, and Jack is looking for Alicia who somehow got away from him. She manages to make her way back down to Travis’ cell, but he’s not there since Connor already grabbed him for the trade. The pregnant pirate comes down and sees her, causing the two of them to get into a fight that ends with Alicia locking her up in the cell. She makes her way to the top of the boat where Jack finds her and tries to convince her to stay with him and not go back to her family. Down below on the port the trade is being made between Madison and Connor. They trade and after removing Reed’s head bag, Connor gets bitten by him in addition to another pirate. Travis and Madison fight off one other pirate and get back into their raft where they wait for Alicia who’s above them. In the end she chooses her family over Jack, sliding off the boat into the water where she climbs onto the raft with Travis and Madison as they ride back to the Abigail.
Other thoughts:
- Alex’s remark to Travis about how no one controls her or something along those lines makes me wonder if she was ever really all that loyal to Connor. With him dead now is she going to try and take command and go after the Abigail to get revenge on Travis?
- In addition to wondering what Alex is going to do, what the hell is Jack going to do now that the love of his life is gone? I can totally see him going after her and trying to take her away by force. I could do without him though because he’s really not hat interesting of a character.
- Not really related to the show, but I can’t believe I didn’t realize that Reed was played by Jesse McCartney, A.K.A Roxas/Ventus from the Kingdom Hearts series. It’s crazy how ruthless he was in his role on the show and it’s a shame that he won’t be back again. Although he was an ass, I liked his character a fair amount more than I thought I would’ve.
- Louis and Strand arguing about whether or not to continue going to Mexico makes me believe that Strand will have to end up choosing between everyone on the boat, and being able to go to Mexico without them. Him being saved by Madison makes me hope that he’ll actually feel some king of loyalty to them, but this Strand we’re talking about so who knows.
- Chris killing Reed was a pretty dumb thing to do, even without the deal happening. I get that he wanted to feel useful, but it wasn’t the best thing to do at all. I guess it worked out for them in the long run though, but at least Chris realized that he fucked up pretty bad by doing so.
- That voice Daniel heard when he was getting ready to take Reed upstairs was interesting and opens up a whole other can of worms related to his past. I wonder if the show is going to further explore that.
This week’s episode was a good episode. Nothing amazing, but it was good. Although a whole lot didn’t happen, it didn’t bore at any point either. The whole group continued to be on point and do what needed to be done to get their people back, and we got Alex back to (something I’m very happy about). Looks like we’ll be getting to the U.S./Mexico border next week, and things will obviously go badly. When do things ever go as planned in the world of The Walking Dead?
TheComfySpot 