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Fear the Walking Dead 4.11 Review – ‘The Code’
Loading...Tonight on Fear the Walking Dead, Morgan is once again a traveling man, but this time he’s caught in something of a loop.
The plot: After falling asleep in the back of a semi, Morgan ends up accidentally being transported about 400 miles east into Mississippi. At a surprisingly well-stocked gas station, he briefly chats with someone on the radio before meeting Wendell and Sarah, who drive the rig he fell asleep in, and drop boxes with supplies off along their way. They tell him how to get back to Texas, but partway there, Morgan turns back, runs into a microbrewer named Jim, and eventually finds out that Wendell & Sarah too the truck from the man who was actually dropping off the boxes, and they’re very interested in finding his distant home in Alexandria. Morgan ends up stranded with his hands tied on a van roof surrounded by walkers after they ditch him and decline to help him, but it’s Morgan and he doesn’t die, so he manages to get out of it, find them again, and tell them he’ll take them to Virigina if they help him get his friends in Texas, and also continue to honor the mission of the man who owned the truck. And finally, a creepy, crazed-looking woman turns out to be the one on the radio, and now she’s heading to Texas, too.
I was a little unsure about this episode going in for two reasons. First, I didn’t know if we would be retreading the hurricane hours over and over with each character, and second, we’ve had a lot of Morgan-centric episodes on The Walking Dead. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed them, it’s just that I wasn’t sure what was left to explore with him. And yes, some of this felt like a bit of retread, but overall, I do think we got something new out of it. And it wasn’t a hurricane retread, and we’re getting some more color back into the world again!
Morgan starting to flake on his friends and thinking the worst of himself for it, experiencing fear and cowardice with regard to the people he cares about, believing he will only make their lives worse and not better, being uncertain if he’s needed or if he’s a burden, making people’s lives worse just by being in them–all of this isn’t new. Morgan not dying, finding the one improbable way out of an impossible situation, is also not new. But Morgan turning that around the way he does in the end, having a net positive effect on a group at once, taking command of the situation, that is something new.
Morgan is often only one thing: all about pacifism or all about killing, all about having hope or all about being hopeless. But here, he’s finally gaining some nuance. He lies to Wendell and Sarah about how to get to Alexandria, knowing they’re more than likely to leave him to die. He gives them the chance to show their mettle, to be better, and to save his life, but he guards his friends back in Virginia from being preyed upon by these people at the same time. (Though, let’s be honest, Alexandria could deal with these jokers pretty easily.) When he finds them again, he doesn’t even pretend that what they’re doing is negotiating. At this point, Morgan has the upper hand, he knows it, and he’s going to use that without abusing it, which is what they did. He tells them they can get what they want, but they’re going to do it his way. He’s still hopeful, but he’s smart, and he’s going to do what he can to make these people into better people by the time they get what they want. And judging by the montage of them leaving the supply boxes at the end of the episode, his plan just may be working. Towards the end of the episode, I kept thinking that it really looked like he was taking a few pages out of the Rick Grimes playbook and finally learning some things about what it takes to keep a group together and inspire people to change.
I’ll also give Morgan credit for progressively shortening his turnaround time, though. It’s gone from taking months to weeks to days to a measure of hours this time, if I’m getting the timeline right.
As for our new characters, I’m on the fence about them so far. Sarah hasn’t impressed me much, personality-wise I feel like we’ve seen her type before. Jim comes on with a lot more personality, which I like, and rides the line between idealist and idiot who believes too much of his own hype. I also find it a pleasantly amusing break from the usual background we see to have a craft brewer who’s very intent on his craft show up, it makes him stand out. Wendell, too, is an interesting break from the norm. It’s great seeing a disabled survivor–played by a disabled actor no less–who has found a way to make it in this world, where the odds are even more stacked against him. His attitude is somewhat more bluntly selfish than we’ve usually seen, and with a very different reason for being that way. I hope these three stick around long enough that we get to know them all even more and that they aren’t just this season’s fodder, though. Fear has a tendency to do that with their side characters, bring them in only to dispose of them by the end of the season, or half-season, and we’ve lost some characters whom I think would’ve been great to see more of to that ‘slate cleaning’ process, if you will.
But possibly the interesting new role of this episode is the incredibly creepy and crazy lady at the end. I’m very curious what’s going on there, and what role she plays in this whole scenario. Did she kill the previous person who ran the radio? What does she have to do with the boxes being left? Were they her scheme or someone else’s that she’s now using to…well, I’m not sure at all what she’s doing exactly. The walker she has pinned to the wall seems to maybe be the person who originally ran this outfit, is my guess. In just a few short lines, however, she conveys a lot and she certainly gets the creepy-crazy vibe out there fast. I’m intrigued and I can’t wait to see more of her.
