Can a hotel be home?
What They Say:
Pablo & Jessica – Alicia and Madison work to unite two competing factions. Meanwhile, Nick draws upon the skills from his past to take on a new role at the colonia.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Fear the Walking Dead is a show where I feel like I could just say “against my better judgment” more often than not when talking about things. I know what the show is, I accept it for what it is, and I enjoy it for that as well. Last week saw plenty of terrible moments and some awkward editing at times but I really enjoyed the way the hotel story has been playing out, seeing how the Walkers have been corralled and why, giving Alicia a chance to step up a bit more, and providing another flashback sequence to the outbreak in this region with Elena. The show can really separate itself from the main series by doing this more often and that combined with the visual differences and the landscape/locales can definitely help to give this its own voice. And yeah, there was some awkward at best material with Chris and Travis the last time around but the less said there there better.
The cold open here gives us something that I almost think it shouldn’t have as it gives us a look at how Madison and Strand survived with a bit of luck. You knew there had to be a twist to it since they were surrounded but survived and nothing about it is a surprise when you get down to it. The things one has to do to survive in this world is grim but it’s another moment where we see how Madison is learning from Nick about what they have to do. Those moments of being covered in blood of walkers and moving among those creatures are just tense. We’ve seen variations on what draws their attention and this does complicate it a little more since Strand and Madison are a bit more active in what they do but it’s still pretty well done and they’re at least showing a few more smarts in surviving, including holding onto a weapon and finding some height.
With that bringing things full circle to last week with the arrival of Alicia along with Elena and her nephew, there’s still a lot of tension in the moment. Madison wants to find Ofelia as she’s convinced that she didn’t leave and the hotel has a lot of supplies. The problem is that Elena is definitely still very much hated by the other survivors but Madison is reluctant to leave a place that has a lot of safety overall and a good deal of supplies in it with canned food that will last them for months. We’ve seen how stationary places are not safe within this show and the main show numerous times so you know that the hotel won’t last long in the end. But, like the ship, I like the setting and that it’s something different, especially compared to the run down shacks that dominated The Walking Dead for so long.
I also like that we get Madison doing what she can to convince the other survivors in the hotel that they need to work together to survive, especially since others that come along won’t be as cooperative as they are. It’s complicated by the mother of the bride wanting nothing to do with them since she’s driven by grief, ,but we get a good meeting when Madison and Strand interact with them and she does all the talking, making some headway into making some converts. There’ a lot that can be done to secure and fortify the hotel and begin to sprawl out from there for various supplies, but it needs more than the few people that make up Madison’s group.
When they talk about how they have so many floors to clear and three buildings, well, it does come across as a pretty intense job to be sure. There are some good bits to what they’re doing inside and out with it but it’s Alicia that comes up with a pretty big plan to deal with the walkers en masse with a pier, riptides, and drawing everything out into it. It’s the kind of plan that really needs a lot more people with a lot more experience, but it’s the kind of gutsy early stage plan that can really move things along and change the confidence level in a very good way. Some of the plan is just kind of awkward as hell, such as how they draw them out of the rooms and all with how tight and tense it is, but the fact that they’re essentially creating a herd is pretty damn frightening all on its own. Visually, it makes for one dramatic sequence overall with what it does combined with mostly everyone working together to get it done all while Madison takes the dangerous point on it as she’s literally running out of pier to walk on.
The running subplot for this episode focuses on Nick coming up with a way to deal with the deal that hey made for the drugs that involves him utilizing his skills as a junkie to extend what they have. It’s not a bad thing and even the doc comes to respect him a bit, filling him in on his own past a bit. There’s some background for Luciana brought into it as well but it’s hard to find too much of it very compelling overall because one can’t help but to view a lot of the residents of the colonia as just fodder in the making.
In Summary:
While I’ve liked a good bit of what Nick has presented here so far in the second half of the season, the subplot with Luciana and his drug making time here is pretty bland overall. But at least we see that he’s doing his best to try and adapt to the area as he’s a smart kid but one that had a whole lot of issues that he lost himself in with the drugs. The main storyline is one that works really well for me as we see Madison stepping up as a leader, connecting better with her daughter, and working a big plan to try and eliminate a lot of threats while working to create a place the can survive in. There are challenges she won’t get past as others are making some hard choice about what they want to do and be in this world and they can be pretty interesting to watch unfold. As problematic as the first season was and some of this season at the start, I’m definitely digging a lot of what it’s doing since the return from the break.
Grade: B