Wow this was terrible.
So the episode opens with Morgan waking up on the railroad tracks surrounded by dead walkers after having killed them all with his axe. Madison had to knock him out because while he was killing the walkers he swung his axe at her. The next scene is in the train car while Madison and Morgan (I'll call the pair M&M from here on out) chat a bit about what's going on with Morgan. Apparently he's losing his mind again because of the traumatic events he's been through with his wife and son (Jenny and Duane) - and now again with Grace and Mo - and that's why he's writing crazy things on the wall with Grace's blood and why he swung his axe at Madison, because "all he sees is red" now. Or something like that.
Now, I'm just going to ignore how they're playing it fast and loose with the depiction of PTSD here and instead just recap the episode in all its absurd glory.
1. How did Morgan get out of the train car? He was literally locked inside last we saw him (and the episode recap made a point of replaying the scene where Shrike says "make sure he can't get out" - so... how did he get out exactly? This isn't the first time this season has just jumped forward in order to completely gloss over something like this because they're not sure how to write it. I'm sure it'll be the last time it ever happens though - it certainly won't happen again in this episode anyway. That would just be silly.
2. Morgan was supposedly slaughtering walkers left and right as well as writing crazy scribbles on the train car walls with Grace's blood and yet... he hasn't got a single drop of blood on him. Not his clothes, his face, his beard, nothing - well... almost nothing - at the end of the scene he holds up his hand and he's got some blood on his palm - but that's it. The complete lack of attention to detail is astonishing.
3. They're positioning Morgan to be a badass walker killer who can single-handedly take out a horde of walkers without even remembering it - and they established Madison as an absolute beast with her hammer a couple episodes ago. This is all clearly leading up to the inevitable scene where M&M take on wave after wave of walkers all by themselves in order to rescue Mo. I can't wait.
4. They arrive at the PADRE shipping containers and Morgan loses his mind again. Why Daniel hasn't offered him any of his dementia curing Yerba maté yet is beyond my comprehension. Maybe Daniel just thinks the whole thing is funny and has decided to keep all that sweet, sweet Yerba maté to himself.
5. They find out Mo is heading to the houseboat from the first episode of the season - you remember, it's the one in the swamp that almost sunk and killed them all. Mo is clearly a super smart leader to go back there. Not as smart as the writers though - that's for sure.
6. Anyway, they head out to try to find Mo, stopping along the way to argue with each other about who is going and who isn't (they all decide to go together - which is what they were doing in the first place, so it really makes you wonder what the point of that entire conversation was but whatever). Then they head out - directly into a horde of literally thousands of walkers. We've previously seen groups 2-3x this size get overrun by smaller groups of walkers - yet these lunatics are just walking right into them? What? How does this make sense? What is going on? Oooh boy! I can't wait to see how they get past that massive horde! This should be wild!
7. Never mind. They just cut back and forth between Mo, Shrike, and M&M, showing M&Ms group kill about half a dozen walkers, then Morgan flips out and it jump cuts ahead - conveniently after they *somehow* managed to get past the horde of literally thousands of walkers that were *RIGHT THERE* just a few moments ago. These freakout flash forward moments Morgan is having are doing a lot of favors for the hack writers on this show. I'm sure it won't happen again though. That would just be silly.
8. After a handful more freakout episodes Morgan finds himself at the houseboat (wow that was easy - he should keep having freakouts like this - it serves him well). He almost kills Mo because he's freaking out and thinks she's a walker. She stabs him to snap him out of it and then he passes out because he lost too much blood. It jump cuts again - surely it won't do so again, that would just be silly - and somehow we're supposed to believe that teeny tiny Mo, all by her little self, somehow dragged Morgan through the swamp and into the houseboat (where she zip tied his arm to the wall) all while avoiding the walkers on the way.
9. Also, Morgan isn't bleeding anymore from where Mo stabbed him. I just don't understand how that's possible unless Mo is a seasoned field medic and administered medical aid while dragging him through the swamp to the house boat - I suppose that's entirely reasonable to assume though, so never mind, forget I even mentioned it.
10. Morgan finds Madison's old oxygen tank from earlier in the season (speaking of which - why hasn't Madison needed that oxygen tank anymore? Hmm... Maybe Daniel has been sharing his Yerba maté with her) and gives it to Mo so she can swim out of the houseboat away from the walkers. It takes a lot of convincing - 5 minutes worth of dialog - but the walkers politely stand by doing nothing the whole time just to give the incredible drama time to play out.
11. Just as Morgan is about to be overrun by walkers and/or drown inside the houseboat he freaks out again and the scene jump cuts to Madison pulling him out of the swamp. This freakout jump cut power is something that Morgan really should have been utilizing since day one because it's doing wonders to get him out of tough scrapes. Maybe this is why Daniel isn't sharing his Yerba maté, because he doesn't want Morgan to lose this amazing super power. Anyway, I'm sure they won't do any more jump cuts in this episode. That would just be silly.
12. Shrike shows up and points a gun at Morgan. Morgan has another freakout but this time instead of a time jump, the freakout apparently conjures Shrike's father because he suddenly appears and starts crawling out of the swamp toward Shrike. Shrike can't bring herself to shoot him and so he munches on her a little bit. I wonder if Shrike tastes like chicken.
13. Somehow Daniel's entire group of disgruntled parents has been taken hostage by their own children. It's unclear how this happened, but it did. I'm not going to call this a jump cut because I said they wouldn't do another one of those in this episode. That would just be silly.
14. M&M convince the kids not to kill their parents and Mo decides she's going to leave PADRE and go with Morgan. June dragged Shrike back to the train car (there's been an awful lot of people dragged implausibly long distances in a short amount of time in this episode) and is about to kill her when Shrike's brother busts in (what's his name again? Chicken Little? No... that's not it). June leaves him to give his tearful goodbyes to Shrike while she exits the train car.
15. M&M are at the shoreline with Mo about to board a boat. Morgan says he has to leave the show to go find all his buddies from the original show who are now spinning off into their own shows, mini-series, and movies. He says that his time here on Fear was fun and all but the writing was too terrible for him to want to stick around for these last 5 or so episodes. Madison is just happy to finally have her show back, even if it's terrible now.
16. Dwight and Sherry bury Finch (oh, he's dead now - did I forget to mention that? Consider it mentioned). Sherry really needs some emotional support right now after burying her only son. Dwight's immediately breaks up with her because it's literally been 30 seconds and she's still upset about their dead son - women, amirite? Anyway Dwight's got his own thing going on and Sherry needs to come to terms with that. Secretly though, he's breaking up with her because he got a deal to appear in one of the spin-offs/movies and she didn't and he doesn't want things to get awkward.
17. The episode ends with a mysterious figure (their face is never revealed but it appears to be a woman) loading things into a duffel bag while listening to Madison on the radio saying they've overthrown PADRE and are looking to reunite parents with children. The last thing this person puts in the bag is Alicia's zombie arm. Common sense would dictate that this person can't actually be Alicia though because they had two arms. However, this is Fear the Walking Dead and somebody spontaneously growing back an arm wouldn't even crack into the top 10 dumbest things ever in this show.
Anyway, this episode is trash. This show is trash. We're almost done folks.
85 out of 105 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink