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Fear the Walking Dead 4.05 Review – ‘Laura’
Loading...This week on Fear the Walking Dead, we get an in-depth look at two quiet love story of this season’s new additions, John Dorie and Naomi, a.k.a. “Laura.”
The plot is fairly straightforward this time! We spend most of the night in the past. John Dorie lives alone in a cabin just off a river, protected by a small moat and some good skills. He lives comfortably if simply, given that it’s the Apocalypse and all, and one day a wounded woman washes up on his doorstep. He takes in Naomi, treats her wound, and while she heals from the stab wound in her side, he teaches her, they get to know one another, share some of their secrets, and slowly fall in love. However, “Laura”, as he calls her, is always at arm’s length at best, always planning to leave. When she’s finally on the verge of doing so, he tells her he loves her and doesn’t want her to go. They appear to spend the night together, but in the morning, she’s gone, though she leaves him a message saying she loves him, too. In the present, after John shares his story with Morgan, they decide to go after the others in the hopes of convincing them there’s more to life than killing.
This was a nice, quiet, character exploration episode. It didn’t have any big twists, really, but I very much enjoyed the focus on John and Naomi and their story. John is a remarkably kind, patient, and all around good man, troubled by the accidental killing of a would-be robber. His past as a former cop and trick-shooter explains his excellent skill with a gun, and we see over the course of the episode that he’s handy all-around, as well–practical, methodical, intelligent. And, perhaps most notably, very lonely. John’s isolation is self-imposed since before the Apocalypse hit, but while he clearly gets by, he’s just as clearly longing for human connection. He plays Scrabble with himself in a sort of faux social interaction. He visits the town regularly and hasn’t cleaned out the general store, which many people would’ve done. Why not? Sure, taking it all might have been cumbersome, but not doing so means he has to keep visiting the place, has to leave his cabin every week to go here. He knocks on the door, he signs out the movies, he leaves more than enough there for others to find what they need, and, perhaps, to notice that someone else comes here regularly. It’s not at all surprising, therefore, that he bonds with Naomi and becomes attached to her. Heck, given how lonely he is, I’m surprised at how patient and calm he is once she’s comes into his life.
Naomi, on the other hand, is as reluctant to trust and open up to John as she was to Madison and the others when they met. She wasn’t just slow to give John her name, she never gave him her real one. She is constantly keeping herself at arm’s length from him, offering information only when she has to, and constantly turning down offers of help or advice from him. She leaves the tall shows on t e porch for what is probably weeks. She tries to not accept anything from him but continue to do things on her own, even after he suggest she ask if she needs something. But in contrast to this, she seems to also be wrestling with loneliness. We learn less about where she was immediately before turning up in John’s front yard, but clearly things went badly given her condition. She tries to leave immediately, she won’t stop mentioning that she’s going to leave, and yet…she gets a little comfortable. She doesn’t like to be alone, even when John is going off to the store. She helps him patch the bridge more than once (which itself seems symbolic of their relationship), talks in ‘we’, plays Scrabble with him, joins in on movie night. Despite herself, Naomi is enjoying herself and John’s company, and her reminders about leaving seem to be for herself as much as him.
The reason at the base of this seems to be the one thing she does tell John about herself: that she lost her child. We don’t know who, how old, how it happened, or how long ago. All we know is it happened, and she blames herself. Her response to his story about unintentionally killing the robber at the gas station, after all, is, “”Doesn’t matter how many people say it’s not your fault. Only matters if you believe it.” Whatever happened, she blames herself, and this keeps her from getting close to anyone else, from letting herself stay with anyone else long enough to become attached to them. Only her injury keeps her here with John for so long, and once he’s confessed he loves her, it terrifies her. On the heels of letting herself accept that love and return it, she finally leaves.
They do both heal one another at least a little, though. John has spent years being afraid to use his guns, but he doesn’t hesitate to do so when Naomi’s life is in danger, and we know he carries the pistol and uses it freely after that point. He also, obviously, leaves his cabin to look for her, finally allowing himself to come out of his self-imposed isolation. I don’t think he considers himself a hero anymore now than he did before, but he’s found something that makes him feel alive, and he has to find it again. Naomi, we know, still struggles with letting herself become close to people–she almost leaves Madison and the Stadium once that we’ve seen and was reluctant to join them in the first place–but she does stay, and she does help them. She stays to the point of dying in their conflict (or so we’re told–until I see it onscreen, I don’t buy it, though!). She is different after being with John, and I’d like to think that if they did ever see one another again, they really would have that second chance.
That hope may yet save more lives, too. After Morgan hears the story, and John relives it through the telling, they agree that life isn’t just about fighting, killing, and dying. “We’re alive. We’re part of the world. Let’s not waste another second,” Morgan says, and they head down the road to see if they can’t convince Alicia, Luciana, and Strand that there’s more to this life as well. Morgan’s certainly seen it, but looks like he needed that reminder as well–after all, just like Naomi, he’s been very insistent that he’ll be leaving soon. And even if he isn’t exactly all-in on staying with these people long-term, he’s at least decided that he needs to do what he can to help them out of the darkness they’re mired in.
This was just a lovely little episode. The writing and acting were perfect for the story they were telling, and it being just two people carrying the entire episode, that’s no easy task. But Dillahunt and Elfman made it work and goshdarnit, I’m shipping it! I really hope Naomi’s death is something the others are assuming happened and not something they saw with their own eyes!
Other thoughts:
– Thank you to the closed captioning for including the lines in the movie John and Naomi watched together! If you didn’t catch it, a character is talking about how what’s wrong with the world is people not caring about their neighbors, while John is doing exactly that, and the overall message of the episode is right along these lines.
– I couldn’t help but chuckle at this exchange: “Soup is the blanket of food.” “What?” “Yeah, been a while since I had company.”
