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Fear the Walking Dead 4.12 Review – ‘Weak’
Loading...Tonight on Fear the Walking Dead, what makes you weak? Let’s find out!
The plot: With the hurricane having passed, Althea and June are stuck in the van, trying to stay put and hope their friends will come to them. There’s not much gas left, so they don’t risk the drive, but when they are out of supplies, they finally leave it behind and risk it to find higher ground to get a clearer signal on a garbled radio message. Along the way, they find a truck, someone else steals the van, Al gets a twenty-four stomach bug, June goes to get medicine that doesn’t exist on the SWAT van and nearly kills someone for it. Morgan briefly encounters the woman whom we know is a little crazy and keeping Purvis, the man who was doing the box drops, and is unsettled by her, but goes on his way. Al and June hear Morgan’s message clearly but can’t radio back, and though Althea nearly sticks with her van, she ultimately comes with June and they meet up with him. June also radios the man she almost killed, who eventually found fuel and invites him to join them. He believes he’s at the right mile marker, but isn’t–and is then attacked by the crazy lady’s pet walker. She gets the SWAT van, and he’s her new pet walker.
The idea of weakness is only labelled with that word by the Crazy Lady (which is what I’m calling her until we get a name or other descriptor). First, she tells Purvis, the walker who once left the drop boxes, that he made these people weak. Then, when Morgan sees her at one of the drop boxes, and invites her to indeed take whatever she needs, she tells him, “I’m not weak.” The implication being that needing help, or relying on others for it, makes one weak. We don’t get further insight into her meaning until the very end when, having killed and turned Quinn with her first pet walker, she tells him, “You’ll never be weak again.” The moment and its context largely reinforce her actions so far: she knew what mile marker Morgan had said he would be at, per the radio signal, and since she was near that mile marker earlier herself. She intentionally mislabeled another mile marker to trick whomever would be coming there and killed the person who stepped out, the person looking for help, for other people. We know she’s been following this group via the radio, seeking them out to kill them for this perceived weakness. She’s also preying on it by tainting the water bottles in the drop boxes with dirty water (just how dirty or tainted is unclear, but someone’s in for a bad surprise, whatever the case).
In contrast to that, we have Al and June’s journey in the episode. June is missing John something fierce, and struggles somewhat with not being the person she used to be: the person who didn’t trust, who didn’t stay with anyone, who didn’t even share her real name. Without John at her side, it’s harder, but she’s making it happen. She’s been to that dark place of isolating herself, and she’s found the other side. Being alone and just surviving isn’t enough. For her, strength comes from opening up to other people and letting them in, depending on and protecting one another. I’m glad that her near-loss of this was brief, as we’ve explored that enough with her in the first half of the season, but it made for a good counterpoint and contrast both to the Crazy Lady and to Althea.
Because, as June points out, we don’t know much about Al, and she seems to prefer it that way. Her obsession with recording and learning the stories of others is kind of all we know, but she is also a good enough person outside of that, and while she tries to maintain a distance, she can be swayed to be pulled into things and do the right thing. We get a glimpse of what’s going on with her, but only a glimpse–something about some of the stories on her tapes being connected to people she loved. And while the van is clearly an excellent way to travel, she still nearly goes back for it even when it has no fuel and she and June know where to find Morgan. But June’s point resonates just enough to stop her: They’re here, they’re alive, and those tapes don’t have to be everything for her. Even so, Al isn’t making any long-term promises of hanging around, as she makes clear to Morgan later, saying she’s still only sticking around to get the stories from them.
Al’s all-too-brief sickness leans into this theme as well, as she is literally and physically weak for this episode. It makes her rely on June more heavily–as well as manipulate her to get what she wants–but we also see that even when weakened by illness, Al rallies in order to protect herself and June (and her van). She forces herself up when she hears the gunshot and tries to change the tire on her own, and then manages to kill the walker coming at her with some creative use of her surroundings. Attachments are not necessarily a weakness, whether to people or objects, although they do leave you open to certain manipulations, potentially. And really, it’s the question that this whole half-season has been asking and exploring: people trying to cut themselves off from others, being stuck on the past, when they have a better chance of survival when they are with others. Morgan’s learned that time and time again, and it’s why he wants to go back to Alexandria; Alicia learned it during the storm with Charlie; June learned it in the last half-season as well, but she gets reminded of it again tonight. In other words, the show is and always has been clear about its opinion on this question, and while it doesn’t shy from showing that violence can be necessary, it also makes the point again and again that violence and isolation are not the better ways.
It makes for a decent character exploration while not being another bottle episode, overall. I’m also enjoying the crafty threat of Crazy Lady. She’s a little bit of a psychopath and, like Al, I’m very interested in what her story is. Was she always like this? Did something happen since the apocalypse to make her this way? Also, this kind of threat is a new and different one. Usually, it’s all about a collective threat, a group that’s opposed to our protagonists, a warring society of some kind, most often with a notable leader. We haven’t the single threat in a long time on this show, or TWD. I’m having trouble remembering an instance off the top of my head, in fact! It’s a little more like your standard horror movie, and I’m liking the vibe. It’s unique for this and after so many seasons, that’s hard to accomplish.
What are your thoughts? And what do you think makes a person weak in the walker-infested post-apocalyptic landscape?
