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Fear the Walking Dead 4.06 Review – ‘Just in Case’
Loading...Tonight on Fear the Walking Dead, Naomi shows us her true colors. Or does she?
The plot: In the Now, John and Morgan find and confront a Vulture to get his map to the meeting point, which concludes with one blown off finger, some answers, and John handing over his guns to Morgan so he doesn’t get carried away again. Morgan tells the Vulture to warn away his buddies before they get on their way. In the van, Althea gets another piece of the story she’s after, this time about when Naomi, Madison, and Strand went on a long-distance run. They interrupt Naomi leaving (which she eventually admits she was doing) and head to a place she knows quite well: a former FEMA shelter. En route, they stop at a motel and tensions rise when Naomi admits she was going to run, and in the morning, she hotwires a car and leaves ahead of them to the shelter, which is locked up and full of walkers. Naomi gets a notebook about planting from a locked chest before eventually ending up in a room full of cots and walkers, cornered on a scaffold after being emotionally overwhelmed at reminders of her lost child and seeing people she once knew. Madison and Strand help her get out, and she tells the tragic story of how her daughter got sick and died before she could get medicine, and ending up infecting the rest of the people here. She says she had to take the risk to get here and get the truck full of “just in case” supplies to make up for what she did and to help the stadium try to last. They end up heading back with a truckload of seed and food and supplies. The Vultures pack up and leave, apparently deciding this will take too long, but Mel’s cryptic warning to Madison, as well as Stand having admitted to packing his own car, has Madison on edge and she tells Alicia to prep a car just in case. Back in the present, Strand, Luciana and Alicia are suspicious when Morgan and John show up. Morgan explains and tries to talk down Alicia from her anger, but the Vultures’ armed arrival cuts that short. Then, unexpectedly, Naomi pulls up and steps out of one of the stadium’s cars, alive and working with the Vultures. John starts towards his lost love when Alicia, enraged at the betrayal, turns and shoots at Naomi — but the bullet hits John instead.
The last few minutes of this episode throw the rest of the hour very much into question. Was Naomi working with the Vultures the whole time? Or did she only join up after the stadium fell? Alicia seems to think it’s the former, or at least that’s my guess given how angry she was and how quickly she fired on Naomi. Alicia isn’t generally this prone to rash and angry decisions, but she’s just lost her brother and it certainly looks like she’s lost her mother recently, as well, and to the Vultures at that. We know she and Naomi were friendly, that until now she bore her no ill will. But as we don’t yet know enough of the past to have a full picture of what went down, it’s hard to know what to think of this development.
What I am sure of is that I seriously hope John Dorie isn’t dead! John’s been a unique and compelling character, one I would love to see a whole lot more of, and on top of that, he had just learned his lost love was still alive after all. I will be truly bummed out if we lose him this quickly and I think it would be a mistake to cut him out this quickly. My hope is that, since we know Naomi is a nurse, she can do take quick action to save his life, a little role reversal from when and how they first met and fell in love.
Naomi really is an interesting and multi-dimensional character, and I love that we’re learning more about her and peeling back layer after layer in every episode so far with her. She’s tormented, driven, adaptable, duplicitous and yet emotionally laid bare at the same time. Even knowing she’s a Vulture, and maybe she always was one, I still believe everything she’s told us. I believe she was going to leave, but changed her mind. That she dreaded going back to that shelter, yet knew she had to do it and had to do it on her own. I believe the heart-breaking story about her daughter, Rose, and that she feels the weight of guilt from blaming herself for what happened to the people in that shelter. And I absolutely believe that she may have been one of the bad guys this whole time yet she also truly wants the stadium to do well, wants to make things up to them, wants to be one of them and repay them a debt they don’t even know she owes them. I even believe that Madison’s insistence on trying to save her–as well as Alicia’s, from two weeks ago–has partly won her over. Maybe Naomi’s caught in a bad situation with the Vultures, maybe her instincts point her to the easier path and the people she thinks she has the best chance with and that’s thee guys, who knows. Maybe I’ll change my mind about all of this by the time we have the whole story, but regardless, it’s a testament to Jenna Elfman’s acting that she makes all of this believable and makes Naomi somehow sympathetic despite everything she’s done. I’ve been known to be a sucker for a redemption storyline, I’ll admit, so heck, maybe it’s just that I want to see Naomi finally choose to be her better self, after all.
You may note, however, that I’m not giving my accolades to the writing in this case. Now, it’s not that the writing’s bad, but it isn’t as sharp as I’d like it to be. In both this episode and the season overall, there’s a pacing issue going on. I know they’re saving the reveal on Madison’s fate as long as they can, but keeping it hidden is starting to be a problem. Part of the problem is that the Vultures still don’t feel dangerous. We’ve been told they are a number of times, but we haven’t seen anything that backs this up. There’s been a little bit of implied menace, suggestions that they blew up the campsite where Naomi was found, and Mel’s warning to Madison in this episode, but that’s all. We need something to work with here, guys! I love the reveal of Naomi being with the Vultures, but I would have loved more to know exactly what Alicia is feeling, to know what she knows when this happened. Especially given that it leads her to shoot and maybe kill a man who definitely didn’t deserve it.
Strand also had some good moments of character realization tonight, which were enjoyable since I always enjoy Strand. At the same time, a lot of it feels very familiar: Strands struggles with doing the right thing for the group vs. looking out for himself. Tonight he landed on doing the right thing for the group, and in the present day storyline, he’s certainly all about protecting and avenging his chosen family over looking out for himself. Will he stick with it this time, though? Or has Madison’s belief, and perhaps her loss, sharpened him into a better man for good?
My hope is that we get a lot answers on that backstory in this half of the season before the show takes a brief break for the summer. I want to know if Madison is alive or not, and some portion of what makes the Vultures so evil and not just kind of annoying. Well, that’s not entirely fair of me–we did get a small glimpse of something new from Mel at the end. He looks like he’s almost as angry with Alicia as she is with him. When she says she’s not sorry his brother is dead, Mel is downright pissed off and hurting from that statement, and I again give props to the acting for that. One little twist of Kevin Zegers’ lips in that reaction shot spoke volumes. But even before that, the Vultures are coming out armed to the teeth, which is new for them. They not only actively sought out this fight knowing it was coming, they considered this group dangerous enough to arm themselves heavily for it and not take any chances. Aside from not telling Naomi what was up, which is an odd choice now that I think about it. Why wasn’t she made aware that she was driving into a dangerous situation with the people who had once trusted her and believed her to be dead?
