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Fear the Walking Dead 4.14 Review – ‘MM 54’
Loading...Tonight in an action-packed episode of Fear the Walking Dead, Crazy Lady’s name and backstory were revealed, and that was just the beginning!
The plot: In a flashback to the early days of the apocalypse, Crazy Lady–whose real name is Martha–and her husband were in a horrible car accident that killed him slowly, not unlike Polar Bear’s situation last week. After a number of cars drove past and refused to help them, he died, turned, she killed and buried him, and then she snapped. When one the dropbox trucks came by later, she killed the driver and thus went on her killing spree of the dropbox crew, looking to find and kill Polar Bear, but then she found out about Morgan. In the present, everyone survived the strafing run on the semi, though they are injured. Their attempt to attack her is short-lived, and soon they’re fleeing a growing herd of walkers by taking refuge in a hospital. That, too, proves perilous as they are steadily forced upwards, eventually becoming trapped on the roof with no obvious means of escape, and Jimbo now facing the death sentence of having been bitten. Meanwhile, Alicia and Charlie find only the burned out remains of the semi and keep moving east. Alicia to show Charlie the beach, one good thing she can be certain of, but they end up finding the flooded road that stranded John and Strand–including John’s lost hat. It seems likely that they’ve spotted their friends as well.
As seems to happen at least once a season on this show and TWD, this felt like a Part One of Two, but in a good way. As far as Part Ones go, this was solid. We got some new and interesting background on the villain hounding our protagonists, we got an action-filled dire situation, we have the fate of basically everyone left on a cliffhanger (some more than others), and some nice moments of character growth mixed in with it all.
First, Martha, aka Crazy Lady. It’s impossible to not feel for her in that opening scene; what’s happening to her husband is just awful, and the lack of humanity from any of the passers-by is just cold. It’s not that any of them could’ve done anything, practically speaking. I doubt even with fully available emergency services that anything could’ve been done to save her husband, but it’s still harsh that no one even so much as slows down. It’s also easy to understand why she snapped, after what she had to do. Not that it excuses what she went on to do, of course. The parallels drawn between her and Morgan make me wonder if she’ll be redeemable at all. For all that he’s firmly on the side of the angels now, Morgan did have a very dark period where he was operating pretty much on Martha’s level. He wasn’t actively setting traps exactly like she is, but he was certainly killing both the living and the dead with no remorse. Does he have the ability to get through to this woman? Is there anything left to get through to? And
if there isn’t, will Morgan be able to recognize the difference?
While we wait to see how that goes, Morgan’s doing rather well as a leader of this rag tag bunch in the meantime. He gets them to hit the deck in time to avoid being killed, he gets them to the hospital, he gets them away from the herd. Of course, things don’t exactly turn out so well, though they are all alive, so, there’s that. But despite that, the group is coming to trust him and see him as the person to go to, the person to call the shots. Sarah and Wendell, hard sells to start with, follow and respect him. Sarah even snaps at Jimbo that he owes Morgan when he tries to walk off. And Jimbo sort of comes around, almost apologizing to Morgan before they are interrupted by the herd of walkers, though it’s not a smooth ride of course. He soon goes back to blaming Morgan for their situation, forgetting that he made the choice to follow the group after all, but then takes another step forward when he finally kills a walker on his own. Not soon enough, unfortunately, as the thing did still graze him with a bite. I have to say, I loved that his protest was “I have beer to make!” when faced with this news. I’d say “Jimbo, never change,” but I’m curious to see if and how he does change before dying. But I will miss his zeal for brewing when he’s gone.
Other characters who get short moments to share and shine include Wendell, Sarah, and Althea. Althea’s kind of a great addition in the writers toolbox for this show–is your cast going to be frequently changing and full of people who don’t want to talk about their past? Add a character who’s obsessed with knowing their stories and who will doggedly ask about them! Through her persistence, we learn that Wendell was paralyzed when he saved another kid from getting hit by a car when he was 10, and that Sarah “quit” the Marines because she “didn’t like their code of conduct.” She lets it be implied this is because they laughed at Wendell for trying to enlist, but I think there’s more to it than that. Althea, meanwhile, is finally losing her fixation on her van and her tapes. She makes a furious attempt to get the van back and is nearly chomped by a walker for it, but once it’s out of sight again, she’s fully focused on doing what she can for the group rather than getting revenge and getting back what’s hers. She tells Sarah to go back to her brother and leave it to just her, Al, to turn on the generators so that they aren’t both stranded, telling her to spend time with her family while she can, because it sucks when that’s gone. This is a marked change from the Al who kept people at arm’s length and put possession of her van above June’s safety not long ago. At the end of the episode, we have no idea if she’s alive or what may have happened to her, but she did succeed in getting the power on at the very least.
Alicia and Charlie don’t have much to do with this group, but have some notable developments on their journey. Charlie soon realizes something is up–Alicia insists on moving East even when they’ve gone much further than the others could have traveled. Alicia’s goal is a decent one; she’s trying very hard to focus on something good, anything she can do that will be effective in the slightest. It makes sense for where she is and what she’s been through, and Charlie is honestly too young to be able to argue with her. But fate steps in and plops them right alongside the river that has cut Strand and John Dorie off from the rest of the world. While finding John’s hat is ominous, the smile and happy, surprised exclamation Alicia makes in the last shot to me imply that they’ve spotted their friends across the river. I’m not sure how they’ll be able to help deal with the gator problem, but it’s something that they’ve found them!
Which brings me to how strong a hand coincidence is playing lately. It was one thing when the radio lead them to reconnect at certain mile markers, that was fair. As much as I like the group finding one another again, Alicia randomly walking to a point where she can see Strand and John is awfully convenient. As is no one being fatally wounded by a huge round of automatic gunfire being unloaded on them. As is the fact they all got on the elevator and the doors closed before some walker’s arm or head could trigger them to automatically re-open!
What do you think? A little too much coincidence, or just enough to still get away with? And how do you think Morgan’s group is going to get off that roof? Finally, what about Martha? Have we seen the last of her for this season? Only two episodes left, after all!
