In the latest Fear the Walking Dead recap, Travis and Madison find out that the military taking over their town may not be the saviors they were hoping for….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s been made painfully clear through five seasons of The Walking Dead that the biggest threat to humanity isn’t the zombie horde that’s scratching and clawing to get to the last living souls on Earth — it’s the few remaining people with a pulse who are determined to run the survival rate down to zero before the world officially burns into ashes.
Whether it’s The Governor or a pack of cannibals, the survivors on The Walking Dead had to learn that other humans are much deadlier than a mindless pack of the undead because people can think and reason and react and yet they are still doing horrifically awful things.
At this stage of Fear the Walking Dead, we are about two weeks into the start of the zombie apocalypse and quickly finding out that humanity was its own worst enemy from the very beginning of this black plague.
The latest example are the military forces that showed up in Los Angeles promising to stamp out the infected while vowing to save the living. Fences were built, supplies were shipped in, and it was so safe inside those walls that Travis was able to put on some Lou Reed and go jogging in his neighborhood.
But by the end of the latest episode titled ‘Not Fade Away’, Travis, his girlfriend Madison and a whole lot of other people learned that the scariest monsters aren’t the dead ones outside the fences — it’s the living ones wearing camouflage uniforms, carrying guns and instituting martial law on the inside that they really needed to worry about.
Remember, fight the dead — fear the living
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of Fear the Walking Dead titled ‘Not Fade Away’:
Nine Days
According to Chris Manawa nine days have passed since the military first showed up in town while eliminating the infected threat from the streets of Los Angeles. They built tall walls around a several block area while patrolling from morning till night. Citizens living inside those walls aren’t allowed to drive, they aren’t supposed to go outside past curfew and above all else they aren’t allowed to enter the quarantine zone aka outside the walls.
Chris was already questioning authority when we first met him in the first episode after he saw police shoot and kill an unarmed homeless man (obviously not knowing that he was already a zombie), and now as he looks at the fences meant to keep the bad people out, he can’t help but wonder if these walls aren’t actually there to lock them in.
From a distance while recording the neighborhood, Chris spots a flashing light in a window from a building well outside the fenced in area. Chris immediately begins flashing back at them while catching the sunlight on his phone and when the lights are returned, he believes he discovered some people stuck living outside the fences who could probably use some help.
Chris explains this problem to his father, but Travis quickly brushes him off and says to let his imagination stop getting the best of him. It’s actually Madison who finally looks at the camera and sees that maybe there is something in one of those buildings because the flashes of light aren’t random and it certainly appears like somebody is looking for help.
Madison will do her own investigation later, but right now she’s got much bigger problems.
The most vexing of all is the fact that she’s been left to tend to the house and the kids while Travis is out playing peacemaker between the military and the people inside the quarantine zone while his ex-wife Liza has been nursing any and all sick people still in need of help.
Meanwhile, Nick is chilling and relaxing in the pool while actually turning down his mother’s offer of more medicine because he has to kick this habit at some point so why not do it now? What Madison doesn’t know is that Nick has been sneaking next door to a neighbor’s house where Liza has been administering a morphine drip to help an older man deal with a heart problem and hijacking the IV for himself. There’s not much need for oxycodone pills when Nick is skating by on liquid morphine getting pumped directly into his body!
As for Alicia, she’s struggling to deal with much of anything these days, still consumed by the loss of her boyfriend Matt, who is likely dead at this point on the outside of the safe zone. She spends her day going next door to Patrick and Susan’s house (the elderly Asian lady who nearly bit into her husband last week before the army showed up) and perusing through their belongings because she has nothing better to do with her time.
Alicia does manage to do one constructive thing (not really) when she decides to permanently ink the swirl pattern Matt drew on her arm just days before the world fell apart. Nothing like a sewing needle and some ink to make the heart grow fonder!
The New Mayor
Back in the center of the new de facto town, Lieutenant Moyer, the man in charge of the military, is handing down a few orders to everyone gathered round. Now it’s clear that he’s not really a people person because his job is to secure the borders and eliminate the infected, not hand hold the worried and coddle the panicked people living in town. Instead, Moyer puts Travis in charge of that duty when he asks the former English teacher to go visit a guy named Doug Thompson, who has refused to come out of his house to get tested to ensure that he’s not infected.
While Travis is taking on new duties and finally feeling important, Ofelia and Alicia are picking up a daily supply lot from the soldiers. One of them in particular (played by Shawn Hatosy) has caught Ofelia’s eye and later that day it’s clear these two have been doing a lot in the past nine days. Parked up on a hill in a military Hum-V, Ofelia and her new soldier boyfriend get to some heavy kissing, but she might have an ulterior motive in mind. She begins quizzing him about medicine that’s been promised for the townspeople for the past few days because her mother Griselda desperately needs antibiotics. He answers back that there’s still no word, but she will be the first to know. Considering he was sucking on her face like it contained the cure for the zombie apocalypse, something tells me he’s going to try really hard to help her.
Back at the Thompson residence, Travis finds Doug sobbing in his bathroom because he’s afraid that he can’t lie to his family about what’s really going on. He’s positive this is the end of the world, but Travis says for the sake of his kids and his wife, Doug needs to lie and tell them that everything is going to be OK. Travis may not be one for killing zombies, but when it comes to the hearts and minds of the people, he’s got that skill down pat.
Later that night, Travis and Madison make up from their earlier argument about duties being doled out in only one direction by getting naked in the back of the car like they are teenagers all over again. When it’s over, Travis feels like he’s on top of the world but Madison still seems distant and detached. Travis questions why she’s so distracted, Madison just answers back that he needs to pay more positive attention to his son Chris instead of worrying about delegating duties and playing political liaison to the people for the military.
Before they can even get cooled down, there’s a knock at the garage door and it’s Doug’s wife saying that he got in his car and drove off despite the fact that no one is allowed to drive and she’s worried that he might have gone outside the fences.
Travis decides to go look for Doug, but when he finds the car it’s parked near one of the fences and there’s no one around. With no other options, Travis takes this news to Moyer, who is quietly stroking a few golf balls just outside the quarantine walls.
There’s good news and bad news — the good news is the military forces found Doug! The bad news is he was blubbering like a baby in his car so for the safety of everyone inside, Moyer had him put under surveillance at a military controlled hospital on the outskirts of the safe zone.
Maybe heeding Madison’s words, Travis also tells the lieutenant about the flashing lights in a building several hundred yards away. Travis thinks it could be someone left alive that needs help, but Moyer quickly brushes it off and says there’s no chance of that being true.
I wonder why?
Sick and Tired
After nine days of needing medical help, the military finally sends in a woman named Dr. Exner to tend to those sick and in need of attention.
The first patient on the list is Hector, the man with the heart condition that Liza has been giving morphine to help until he could get proper car. Dr. Exner applauds Liza’s quick thinking even though she knows the makeshift caretaker isn’t actually a nurse. Exner then asks Liza to stay on with her to play nurse a little while longer as she tends to the rest of the people inside who need help.
Among them is Nick, who is still a recovering addict and might be in need of some Methadone. The doctor checks him out and everything seems fine, but if there’s one thing that’s tough to hide as a junkie it’s that they are in fact a junkie.
Dr. Exner also goes to see Griselda Salazar, whose leg is only getting worse by the day without any medical care. She immediately orders Griselda to move into the medical facility to get surgery before her leg gets any worse.
As the doctor and her new nurse go around town to identify those people in need of help, Madison decides to do a little of her own investigating to see what’s happening outside these walls that the military don’t want them to see.
She clips through the fencing with some bolt cutters and quickly runs a few blocks over to see what’s what. When Madison arrives she’s met with the stench of a lot of dead bodies, but everything is as quiet as a library. During the course of her impromptu trip, Madison spots a garrison of military personnel closing in on her so she quickly hides under a car to escape them but she can’t unsee what haunts her vision while outside the walls.
There are a lot of dead people with gunshots directly to the head, but more than a few don’t appear to be sick at all or exhibiting any of the signs of the zombies that they were forced to kill to defend their home. In other words, the military forces are killing normal, everyday people for some unknown reason.
Madison rushes back home and tells Daniel about what she found. He then shares a similar story about the time he ran into a lot of dead bodies at home in El Salvador. Daniel’s father promised that everything was fine, but in reality he was a fool. The dead bodies just signified that bad things were happening and they were going to happen in a hurry. Daniel is getting the same feeling right now.
To make matters worse for Madison, she busts Nick sneaking into the neighbor’s house looking for drugs and after all the struggle to keep him clean, she finally snaps. Madison smacks the shit out of Nick repeatedly but little does she know that a few hours later his drug addiction might really cost him his life but not because he overdosed.
Monsters on the Inside
Following a few hours perusing around town and tending to the sick people, Dr. Exner finally orders the military to take everyone out of their houses and onto the convoy that will take them to medical facilities for help. It’s all going well enough until Griselda Salazar is taken away, but her husband Daniel isn’t on the list to take the trip with her. Instead, Dr. Exner’s military liaison informs them that the only other name from this house that needs treatment is Nick Clark.
Yep, it appears Liza revealing that he was a drug addict has singled Nick out as a potential threat and the military need to quarantine him. It’s finally made clear what’s happening — the military are eliminating any potential threats of people who could die and then come back to life again. From the man with struggling with heart disease to Griselda and her infected leg to a junkie named Nick who would dose himself until he died to a confused father suffering from depression who might take his own life, these people could all die and then begin eating away at this safe zone from the inside out.
So the military overlords are eliminating the threat before they become one.
Dr. Exner invites Liza to come along with her to continue assisting the cause and after realizing that it’s probably her fault that Nick is being hauled away with everyone else, she feels guilty and decides to go along for the ride. She mouths ‘I love you, I’ll be back’ to her son Chris who is wide-eyed staring at his mother leaving on the military convoy while Madison is enraged at what she just saw and tells Travis that this is all his ex-wife’s fault.
Travis is devastated because for all the good he tried to do in the past nine days, he’s realizing that he was nothing more than a patsy to help the military take over while he was shaking hands and kissing babies to smooth things over. Travis retires to the roof for some peace and quiet and off in the distance is the house where his son Chris once saw a few flashing lights.
A moment later, Travis sees the flashing lights again but this time they are accompanied by the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire. Lieutenant Moyer was listening when Travis told him about the people who might be alive — so he sent some soldiers into the quarantined zone and killed them.
For the past nine days, Travis wanted nothing more than to feel safe on the inside. After today, it’s clear that he wants out again.
Extra Bites:
The song playing at the beginning of the show when Travis was running is ‘Perfect Day’ by Lou Reed
There’s a bible passage scribbled on the fence where Moyer is playing golf and it’s seen again outside the walls when Madison escapes. The passage is Revelations 21:4, which reads as follows:
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
At the end of the episode, Alicia is reading what appears to be a suicide note. To safe any confusion, it’s not her note — it’s Susan’s (the next door neighbor) to her husband Patrick before she swallowed a bottle full of pills to kill herself. Susan saw what was happening as a disaster of biblical proportions and opted to check out before it got any worse. Alicia took the note when she was in the house and now she’s reading it back aloud.
Tune in next Sunday night for the latest Fear the Walking Dead with only two more episodes to go this season!
