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Fear the Walking Dead 4.15 Review – ‘I Lose People…’
Loading...Tonight on Fear the Walking Dead, all of Morgan’s sidequests are finally paying off!
The plot: Everyone starts exactly where we left them last week: Morgan and co are stuck on top of the hospital with a dying Jimbo, Althea is who knows where, Alicia & Charlie just found John & Strand, and Crazy Martha is still at large in the SWAT van somewhere. The various groups get in touch via walkie, but Morgan warns Alicia it’s not safe to give details of where they are, but not before Martha gets enough info to find the two young ladies and attack them. She faints from her wound, however, and they tie her up inside the SWAT van, which they then just drive through the shallows of the river to retrieve John and Strand. At the hospital, they find the floor they left Al behind on has been emptied out, mostly thanks to a caved in ceiling in one spot, and Al is MIA though she left a note. They place is still surrounded, though, so Morgan goes back to the roof and swings a dead body onto a car to set off the alarm, drawing the walkers away so they can escape. He’s then stuck up there with Jimbo, who is spectacularly unhelpful, but then the whole dang crew returns with a plan to save Morgan whether he likes it or not. They succeed, but are surrounded on top of their rescue vehicle, a broken down fire truck, until Jimbo literally steps up, tells Sarah his beer recipe at last, and then copies Morgan’s move from earlier, falling from the roof onto a car to draw walkers away with its alarm. The group drives off, determined to find Al and then go to Virginia, all of them together, but Crazy Martha has escaped, and has other ideas, of course, and now Jimbo is her latest pet walker.
Morgan’s been working at inspiring this ragtag group for quite some time now, and while the episode came with a heavier-than-usual does of plot convenience, tonight it finally paid off. The true moment of solidarity when our D-list Avengers Assembled was cheesy and heavy-handed, yes, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me smile all the same. Maybe because there’s so little that ever does feel this way in the Walking Dead universe? Generally speaking, these things never work out this well, and sure enough, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop throughout the episode, especially given the title. I fully expected that either June or John would die before they were reunited, or Morgan would end cut off from everyone, or multiple people would die. And yet, just this once, everybody lives!
But–of course there’s a but–it didn’t exactly feel right. Note that I didn’t say it wasn’t earned, though. These people have been through a whole lot of shit, I’m not about to say they haven’t earned something good. But it still feels off, nonetheless. While Morgan has been plagued by guilt before, and with good reason, having him suddenly talk and act like this was weighing on him again to the point of him looking for a kind of suicide by noble deed was strange. Lately, Morgan’s been trying to convince this group to come together, sure, but it’s like he killed one of them (Jimbo’s blame there is very much misguided). They were in a tough situation on the roof, but they got out of it. Morgan’s sudden sinking into despair felt misaligned with where his character arc has been lately. All that said, I’m glad to see that his work on helping everyone else not only worked, but came back around in the form of the team coming together to save his ass this time.
Jimbo had a decent turnaround at the end, the last Avenger to rally for the greater good, as it were. I’m still a little sad we won’t get to get to know him more or hear more of his delightful poetic waxings about beer, but man, was he ever a little pissant in his final hours. Refusing to give up his precious beer recipe, hardly saying any goodbyes much less friendly ones. I get that he’s been dealt a shit hand here–he’s been bitten, he’s going to die and turn and it’s going to happen soon–but come on, Jimbo. Try not to live up to that “Class-A Asshole” rep for once, maybe? However, he got there eventually, finally inspired or moved enough to stop thinking only about himself. The touch of having a secret ingredient that even we didn’t get to hear was nice. But my favorite Jimbo moment came after Morgan had set off the car alarm and the two of them were stuck on the roof together again. He made a guess that Morgan was taking something of an easy way out by not trying to get out of the certain doom scenario, and we finally got a peek behind the curtain on Jimbo, a hint that he had things in his past he wasn’t proud of and had never made up for. I’m okay with not ever knowing more about that past, but I am glad we got this excellent line from him about it: “Take it from a Class-A Asshole. Death is a certainty. Getting out from under the shit you’ve done isn’t.”
The rest of the characters didn’t really have much of an arc in this episode, and that’s fine. I enjoyed seeing John and Strand flip-flopped from where they were before in terms of hopefulness. I’m glad no one died, but I’m not expecting we’ll get out of next week without someone going. Which leads me back to that note about convenience. There was just so much of it! I liked the fairly happy ending, sure, but they could’ve gotten us there more deftly. Alicia and Charlie coming across the flooded road at exactly the right spot; Martha finding exactly where they were as well, meaning they ended up with the van (her fainting I’ve got no problem with, she’s lucky to still be alive after the hit she took); the floor in the hospital that was overrun is now completely empty; Morgan and Jimbo both hitting the cars exactly right on one try, and both happened to have alarms that still worked and went off; Jimbo’s head somehow surviving impacted undamaged enough for him to still turn; and finally, they found and towed a freaking fire truck back to the hospital?!
What did you think of the episode? Will you miss Jimbo? How do you think things will wrap up next in next week’s finale?
Other Thoughts:
– Martha’s escape wasn’t surprising however, though I did roll my eyes a little at them leaving her unguarded.
– Why couldn’t they extend the ladder on the fire truck over to the SWAT van? It wasn’t that far away and I don’t recall them saying they used up the hydraulics on it. Do the ladders not work that way? Maybe someone who knows more about fire trucks than I do can fill me in.
– Jimbo’s Beerbos is a terrible name, but it is in keeping with Sarah giving out truly terrible nicknames.
– Speaking of terrible, go back and watch Alicia’s fake driving after they pick up Strand and John, it’s hilarious.
