Movies & TV / Reviews

Fear the Walking Dead 4.02 Review – ‘Another Day in the Diamond’

April 22, 2018 | Posted by Katie Hallahan
Fear the Walking Dead
8
The 411 Rating
Community Grade
12345678910
Your Grade
Loading...
Fear the Walking Dead 4.02 Review – ‘Another Day in the Diamond’  

This week on Fear the Walking Dead, we got a look at how good the Clarks and company have had it up until recently and a little about how they got there.

The plot: The majority of the episode takes place “Before”, in a yellow-tinted, colorful, and inviting past period of time in the baseball stadium the Clarks and company called home for a time. Full of 47 people, with a garden, livestock, electricity, bedrooms of a sort, coffee. They’ve got a pretty sweet set-up, and have been living here for a year now. The latest addition is a young tween girl named Charlie who’s reluctant to talk about what happened to her family before they found her. But she is keen to ask how long they could survive on their stored food. Madison, Alicia, Victor, and Luciana (she’s back!) head out to see if they can find her family, and find a burnt out camp and a sole survivor, a skittish woman named Naomi. After Naomi falls into a oil basin that’s full of walkers, naturally, but Madison jumps in and risks herself to save the woman. Naomi finally agrees to come with them, though she doesn’t know what happened at the camp since she isn’t from here. They do spot a banner with the number 457, however, just like the one Althea, Morgan, and John found last week. Back at the stadium, it turns out their crops have been ravaged by weevils, and just when Nick is about to go out looking for his family, they return, closely followed by a group called the Vultures. They round up the walkers outside the stadium and paint the number 12 on a new banner, and basically say the group can hand over their stuff or they’ll just wait for them all to die. Charlie was a mole and has told them everything she learned, though she doesn’t look thrilled to be rejoining the Vultures. Madison is adamant that they will get nothing from them, but when we get back to “Now”, where we left everyone at the end of last week, things are blue-tinted, washed out, and not looking good. They find the banner Althea took and load the group back into the SWAT van to find out where the banner came from.

I’ll say it upfront: this is one of the better FTWD episodes we’ve had. I enjoyed last week’s journey with Morgan, and meeting John and Althea, though at the end I was afraid the Tyrant Madison we saw for most of Season 3 had been turning into an outright villain and was now picking off random passers-by. I’m glad to see I was wrong about that, though. In fact, Madison is the most pleasant she’s ever been. She’s kind, compassionate, patient, non-violent. She’s even risking her life to save a total stranger! The Madison we knew last season would never have jumped into that tank for Naomi. Hell, she wouldn’t have even driven out to find Charlie’s family, especially on such a longshot hunch. I like this Madison. It’s a shame she’s already fallen back on harder times, but I hope this glimpse of her better self means she won’t be back to her old ways. After all, as Madison herself points out, her actions back in the day nearly lost her her children. It’s nice to see that her lessons from the end of last season stuck with her for a few years. (It’s never precisely clear how long it’s been on either of these shows, but for this show to have caught up to TWD, at least two years have to have passed since Season 3 ended.) It was also nice to see her using the old school counselor skills again, but for good this time, and not to create weird sexual tension with a sociopath.

The dynamics all around have shifted, but aside from Madison the most notably different was Nick. We last saw him blowing up a dam he was standing on, clearly expecting to die in exchange for saving his family’s lives. Somehow, he survived, but it’s clear he is not unscathed. No matter how long it’s been, Nick, the fearless young man who once felt more at ease walking among the dead than the living, who would go outside and smear himself with guts at the drop of a hat, has become agoraphobic. He doesn’t venture outside the stadium at all, it seems, and contents himself with gardening. The one time he does go out, merely driving slowly through some walkers gives him a panic attack so bad that he crashes the car into a lightpost inside of five minutes. This is such a vastly different Nick I’m not sure what to make of him yet. He seems pretty solid overall and like he has his shit together, but the one glimpse of his trauma makes it clear there’s a lot he’s sitting on and not dealing with. He’s still willing to take risks, clearly, but he no longer has the pure nerve he once did. How will this rear its head now that we know he’s back to not being safe behind secure walls in the ‘Now’ of the show?

Speaking of everything they’re going to lose, let’s talk about the Vultures. This group has clearly cut swath through the area, since Althea has seen more than a few of their banners, and their leader, Mel, speaks with confidence about having done this a number of times by now. The implication is quite clear that at the oil tower camp, the Vultures engaged in some sort of sabotage, although his casual actions and speech and the group’s name indicate they just wait for folks to die and then pick at the leavings. Just how active are they in making sure those people die? My guess is moreso than they’re letting on so far. Charlie was their first mole, do they have others? Are they already inside the stadium as well? And what do those numbered flags mean, anyways? I’m currently guessing it’s how many dead they round up in each location. They must be sneaky to be so successful and so feared by the Clarks in the ‘Now’. After all, they have so far made no overtures of violence, they’ve let the gates open and people come out twice, albeit those people didn’t try to get past their little blockade when they did. Basically, I’m curious to see how they operate, because I’ve seen nothing so far that leaves me to believe the Clarks couldn’t handle this group, much less the Clarks plus their new friends Morgan, Althea, John, and the SWAT truck.

We’ve got a smattering of new faces here, but it’s hard to know yet who to be interested in and who will survive. Other than Naomi, since she’s played by Jenna Elfman and all. Cole, the new potential love interest for Victor, is fun so far. Viv and her husband (did he get a name?) seem nice but bland. I’m glad Luciana is back, and I’m fine never bothering to hear how they reconnected, too. It was nice of her to give that book to Charlie despite ow she betrayed them. Speaking of whom, Charlie was a good kid character until she turned traitor. Well, that doesn’t stop her from being a good kid character, actually, and it looks like she’ll continue to be important to some degree. Will the kinder gentler Clarks win over in the end? Or will she keep siding with the devil she knows?

One more note: I really enjoyed how this stadium group was clearly a community. The message over the loud speakers, the things they’ve built inside these walls, the comforts they’ve achieved. Even if Madison is their leader, they have honest and calm discussions about things that affect them all. In the end, they all come together to build a new room for their newest member, in spite of the blockade and threats just outside their door. In that moment, there was such gumption and hope and a coming together, it was lovely. It was the kind of place that fulfills the theme of recreating civilization, a future, that has been prevalent on both this show and on The Walking Dead in the last few seasons. Naturally, that moment is when they changed the lighting and the mood and jumped into a more depressing future, of course.

Between the look at happier times, the much improved Madison, the time jump forward, and the fresh faces seen last week and tonight, I enjoy this episode and dare I say I’m feeling optimistic about the season so far. I’m also curious how much jumping forward and back we’ll be doing after this. Will we see more of what happened at the stadium, or will we just hear about it from the characters filling other people in? It feels like seeing the details could be important, and TWD has done some parallel storytelling like that well in the past, so it could be done well here, too.

8.0
The final score: review Very Good
The 411
This was one of the better episodes of this show, in my opinion. The time jump was a good move--they've moved this group into some new and interesting places without having to go through the motions in real-time. Not that I mind watching those things play out, but I think they had dug themselves into a bit of a hole with some characters being a certain way, and big changed are easier to swallow when there's a time jump. Madison is the most likeable she's ever been, and the changes in Nick are an interesting change for him. The new villains are also a good change from the usual, since they seem almost passive in their approach, but surely there must be something more to them than that. And, though it's doomed to fall, I liked seeing the community that the group had built inside this stadium. All safe places are fleeting on this show, of course, but it's nice to see that kind of thing is still possible. Also, that fight in the oil tank was really cool.
legend