Whether it’s through bad calls from the government, medical professionals, and police forces or if the mass panic in large cities like Los Angeles is the perfect breeding ground for new zombies. More often than not, I find myself watching the background action in every scene. Why continue to shove poorly written characters in our faces when the best part of the show happens without them? Numerous fans have told me they’d much rather the show follow Tobias. He seems to be the only one fully aware of the ramifications of these attacks and what it means for mankind’s future. But he’s only on screen for a few minutes total halfway through the season. It’s like the writers want to hide his intelligence after realizing how moronic the lead characters are when it comes to common sense.
Head’s up! There’s episode spoilers in the rest of this review.
Some of you surely think I’m overreacting, that there’s no way the same people who gave us Rick Grimes and company can produce such wholly flawed characters. I’m not talking flawed like Carol’s sociopathy or Daryl’s antisocial nature. We’re talking characters so poorly written, if they were actual people, they’d find it impossible to function in normal society without ending up injuring themselves or others. Madison in particular cannot operate under basic logic. In the beginning of this episode, not much time has passed since we left off in episode 2. So she should still feel the adrenaline rush—or at least the let-down from it—after bashing in Artie’s head with a fire extinguisher. You know, her friend and coworker. The man she risked her life to help despite Tobias’ warnings. At no point does reason say Madison should force her children to wait at the house for Travis and his family when she knows these infected people can and will hurt others. Not to mention, she watched an infected neighbor chow down on the birthday party crew, so she knows danger is at their door.
Does she make Captain Addict and Princess Stubborn climb into the car? No. Madison sits them down to play Monopoly. Her dingbattiness must be inherited by the kids.
When they hear a noise at the door, Nick just wanders over to open it, letting in a stray German shepherd. Hold that thought for a second. I have a bone to pick with the writers about that dog. It’s always been a big mystery on TWD: where are the animals? We’ve seen a few, either eaten later on or too feral to re-domesticate. It only makes sense that this show would attempt to show what happened to them. It doesn’t make sense to introduce a gorgeous dog, only to kill it off-screen minutes later. There’s no point in forcing fans to listen to a dog’s whimpering and yelping as its attacked. Matter of fact, that is flat out cruel. Yes, people react when animals die. It’s a lazy way to garner emotions from the audience when they aren’t connecting to the humans in the story. Make us care when people die. Quit using animals to make up for two-dimensional characters.
When the infected neighbor breaks into their house and kills the dog, Madison and the kids return the favor and break into the house next door. Nick steals their shotgun. Madison snags the shotgun shells. Alicia wanders around, wondering what’s going on because he mother refuses to tell her that zombies exist.
Across town, Travis, his family, and the Salazars are forced out of the barber shop by a fire in the strip mall. Griselda’s foot is broken when a police water cannon topples a scaffold. Luckily they just happen to be right next to Travis’ truck. Going to the hospital isn’t an option—duh. Hospitals are ground zero for all infections and viruses. We’ve always said the first institutions to fall would be anything medical. That’s one thing the writers for the show got right.
Unable to find help for the injured woman, Travis opts to bring them with him to the house. They arrive seconds after the dog dies. Madison attempts to cut them off before they find the infected neighbor inside the house. Despite hearing the munching noises, Travis strolls up to his undead buddy and almost gets the same treatment as the birthday party crew. Daniel saves Travis, despite Travis demanding no one shoot the shotgun. The makeup effects for the infected in this scene are amazing and detailed.
Back at the neighbor’s house, Alicia backtracks by herself to grab the shotgun shells Madison dropped. She’s attacked by their neighbor, Susan. Chris comes to her rescue and gets punched in the nose as thanks. With everyone together, they should be ready to head to the desert, right? Wrong. Travis demands they wait until daylight. The Salazars argue whether or not they should go with the others, considering Liza is going to school to be a nurse and may be the only medically-inclined person they can find given the scene at the hospital they passed on the way to the Clark house. Ofelia thinks that since the others are kind, it’ll mean they survive. “Good people are the first ones to die,” Daniel tells her. They’re still arguing when Travis and Madison finally get in the car and drive away in the morning. For a heart-stopping minute, I wanted them to just drive off and never be seen again. It doesn’t happen. Susan’s husband returns home. Madison rushes back to warn him. Too late. He reaches out to embrace Susan . . . splat! A soldier puts a round through Susan’s skull.
Half the National Guard suddenly appears in their little suburb, locking it down. They catalogue every living person in the neighborhood. The corpses are taken away in body bags. Now they’re stuck huddling in the middle of a crowded city where the infection rate is climbing.
They should’ve left the minute Madison got home with Artie’s brains on her jacket.
First, adding unnecessary time to the pilot, killing what little momentum was in the episode with slow pans of Los Angeles, false zombie sightings, and sandpaper smooth character development. The latter is a huge deal-breaker for fans. They need a character to latch onto and love as a friend. I’d hoped the second episode would be better without the luxury of extra time to futz around, forcing it to focus on the plot. Yeah, not so much. All they managed was to make a bigger mess of the characters. Then, they continuously used slow-mo shots to try and ramp the tension throughout the episode. Except after an incredibly snail paced pilot, starting the second episode with a quiet slow-mo shot of Alicia walking down the street is the exact opposite of what they needed to do to catch fan’s interest again.
Caution: Show spoilers below.
The writers for this show can only write one female stereotype—the strong, independent woman who doesn’t need to listen to anyone, let alone a man, in order to keep her family safe. Madison was locked into this trap from the get-go. In this second episode, Liza is crammed into the same mold—vehemently refusing to deal with Travis even though the tone in his voice when he calls her to warn her about the strange happenings in L.A. says something is seriously wrong. Automatically, she jumps down his throat, much like Madison when he attempted to tell her there was something wrong in the church where Nick got his fix. Alicia does nearly the same thing after visiting her boyfriend Matt, only to discover he’s so sick, he should be in the hospital. Madison warns Alicia to back away, afraid Matt will turn into whatever Cal was before Nick ran him over twice. “People are getting sick. It could be contagious.” Predictably, Alicia fights her mother. “If he has it, I have it.” While it provided a great throwback to the harsh secret Edwin Jenner told Rick Grimes before the CDC building exploded on TWD, it makes no logical sense for Alicia to completely dismiss her mother’s concerns. At no point does she stop to actually process what is going on. The women all give into knee-jerk reactions, simply to create tension. It makes them all one-dimensional, dull, and predictable. Even Madison’s emotional breakdown near the episode’s end is telegraphed. Strong, independent women always cry when alone. Then when someone catches them, they brush it off. Yawn.
So what actually happened in episode two? Travis and Madison concoct a fool-proof plan: gather their kids, his ex as well, and drive out to the desert to wait out whatever is going on. Oh and detox Captain Addict. First, find Alicia. A task hindered by overworked cell phone towers and her stubbornness, as mentioned earlier. After they spend far too long arguing whether or not it’s safe to be around Matt, he finally sends Alicia away. This time she listens. Travis drops everyone off at home and heads out to pick up Chris and Liza. Chris dodges Travis’ calls like a professional disgruntled child. While he’s busy with his metaphorical fingers in his ears, Chris winds up smack dab in the middle of ground Zero for another officer-versus-undead shooting. The public doesn’t understand why the officers unloaded their magazines into the homeless man.
In a scene reminiscent of the 1992 L.A. riots, the crowd demands an explanation. Chris films the altercation, which only incites the protestors as they defend his right to film the police who tell him to stop. By the time Travis deals with Liza’s unreasonable refusal to listen to his warnings and they track down Chris, the riot is in full swing. An infected woman shuffles toward a female officer and is shot twice. The second she hits the ground, pure chaos erupts. Travis and Liza grab Chris. They run until the riot is too much to navigate, eventually begging for shelter in a barber shop owned by Daniel Salazar. His wife Griselda is the one who makes the final decision to provide a safe place for the family. Daniel’s daughter, Ofelia, is also there. The episode ends with them still trapped inside the barber shop while outside, the rioters blow up vehicles and loot shops which haven’t been locked up. Back at home, Madison is desperate to score meds to wean Nick off heroine. She leaves him with Alicia to break into the nurse’s office at the school, where she scores enough OxyContin to do the job. Hopefully. As she’s ready to leave, Tobias suddenly appears—never mind that he doesn’t have keys to the school or a reason to be there, really. But since he warned Madison about the outbreak, she relents and gives him back his knife. Oh and helps his steal food. Because that’s what good guidance counselors do, right? Sure. They also hand out drugs and encourage kids to have unprotected sex—my disbelief crash-landed the second she willingly committed a crime with the kid. Tobias and Madison aren’t alone.
Artie, the school’s principal, has a new, fresh look. He shambles after them. Stupidly, Madison tries to help and is attacked for her efforts. Her big, bad protector doesn’t so much as make Artie flinch with his itty bitty knife. When the infected principal turns on Tobias, Madison rescues her rescuer by bashing her friend’s head in with a fire extinguisher. She takes Tobias home, leaving the food they stole. Because that makes sense. If you want to die from starvation. The episode ends with the family living across the street becoming Infected Chow and Alicia finally demanding to know what’s going on.
The most frustrating thing about this episode is the fact that they more or less present Tobias as an apocalypse expert. He babbles tons of useful survival information. But when it comes to practicing these skills, nothing. Nada. It’s dumb move after dumb move. First, fruitlessly stabbing a man repeatedly in the chest. Second, leaving the food behind. They wrote him as the Harbinger and Encyclopedia, but negate these traits at every turn when Madison doesn’t accept what he’s telling her. The show is written almost as if each character is trapped in their own bubble, utterly incapable of actual interaction with each other. How do they expect fans to root for what should be a cohesive survival unit when the characters have no vested interest in one another? Yes, it’s early in the game, still. However, the season only has six episodes. There’s not much time left to build up the characters from their current two-dimensional caricatures. Without a connection to this family, all the groundwork they’re laying for the apocalypse— the riot scenes were brilliant if one ignores the family story line— is for naught.
Poor Theresa didn’t survive the beating at the end of the last episode. Seeing as Sebastian had a knife in his head before the attack, there’s a new killer on the loose. Liv wastes no time digging into Theresa’s snarktastic brain—served on a BLT with not-spicy-enough mustard. The first vision connects the dots for the Scooby Gang; the kids were attacked for the Max Rager flash drive Theresa took from Sebastian’s pocket before they buried him. It explains all the texts about “The stuff” and money flying around during Kimber’s case. Someone from Max Rager wants that information and they’ve resumed killing people to get it back. The lone survivor from the band, Cameron, is missing. When the police finally locate information, it’s from a gas station surveillance camera. Cameron walks in, grabs enough food for two people, and mouths, “Help me.” It’s a good cover story. While he’s dropping breadcrumbs for the cops to follow his “kidnapper,” Cameron meets a Max Rager representative and sells the flash drive. Then they try to blow him up. Terrified, Cameron hops on a bus to Canada . . . and is caught at the border because he didn’t think they’d catch on to his scheme and put out an APB. Moron. Faced with Clive’s not-so-veiled threat to hand Cameron over to Max Rager—who has plans to get their money back if the tracking device in the bag of cash is any indication—Cameron spills everything, including a cloud-stored copy of the flash drive’s contents.
Max Rager’s part in zombie creation is bigger than anticipated. And an accident. Vaughn Du Clark tasked his scientists with creating Super Max, an energy drink which makes the consumer never need sleep again, plus a few other enhancements. The tainted energy drink which went public is likely the test batch of Super Max, sent out in the world to see what’d it do to humans. MR took advantage of the opportunity when Sebastian made his way back to them post-turning. He went to them in good faith. Then went nuts and killed the lead scientist. It’s okay, Du Clark has a spare scientist laying around. Once the guy recovers from the whole, “Zombies are real,” shock, he’s pretty onboard with the Super Max plan. Though that doesn’t stop him from being Creepy Mc Staresalot when Liv and Clive come for yet another friendly chat with Max Rager’s CEO, Du Clark. Despite all the manipulation and murders, the documents they hid came to light. It’s no rain on Du Clark’s parade. He’s got the makings of his own personal undead army. He may not be able to keep that army undead for long. Ravi’s cure is on the fast track to success. Hope 2 (as I call her) is alive and well after taking a low dose of the cure. Unfortunately, with all the zombie-related deaths, Max Rager antics, and Major’s kill-’em-all approach to the undead, Liv’s patience will not last long enough for Ravi to test the long-term effects.
“I don’t care. The man that I wanted to marry has vowed to kill every last zombie and last night my best friend looked at me like I was a monster. Which, incidentally, I am. I want my life back, Ravi. I eat brains. It’s disgusting. I am disgusting. I’ll sign a waiver, just let me do it.”
Ravi talks her off the ledge, begging her to give him time to test and replicate the formula. There’s only one, maybe two doses left after returning Hope 2 to the land of the living. He wants the cure for every zombie Blaine and Max Rager made over the last year. Liv almost doses herself at one point. Then she gets a phone call about Major.
What about Major? For most of the episode, he’s rooming with Blaine. By rooming, I mean Blaine keeps him locked in a freezer at Meat Cute, hoping slow torture will get Major to cough up the location of the astronaut brains he stole.
The stubborn human doesn’t budge. Eventually Dupont and Blaine put the pieces together—Liv has the brains. Blaine’s call, interrupting Liv’s impulsive decision to test the cure on herself, is pretty predictable. She gives him the brains, she gets loverboy back. Only, Blaine can’t let a mere human run around yelling, “The zombies are coming!” He dresses a random dude in Major’s clothes and trades him for the coveted astronaut brains. While he’s away, Major escapes from the freezer, using a lighter from the corpse chilling with him and urine. Hey, whatever works in a pinch. Robo-Counselor retrieves his small arsenal from his car and doubles back to kill every zombie in Meat Cute. Blaine returns, stabs Major. In return, Liv shoots Blaine. Ever the opportunist, Blaine offers to give Liv his entire client list. He justifies his actions, saying he’s the only reason the zombies aren’t attacking the city, turning and killing everyone in their path. It’s a valid point, I’ll give him that. Only, the city wouldn’t be in such dire straits if he hadn’t turned the majority of the people now threatening it if they don’t get their six o’clock dinner delivery.
Then Blaine goes for the sucker punch. All Liv’s work to keep Major from finding out she’s a zombie flies out the window. His dying moments are spent reeling from her betrayal. In return for Blaine taking away something she holds dear—Major’s trust—Liv takes away something Blaine loves more than anything, his zombiehood. He gets one dose of the cure, and it appears to work before he runs away, leaving Liv to deal with Major. Liv does the only thing she can and scratches Major without his permission. Not something he’s likely ever going to forgive, by the way.
She takes him home. Makes him soup, which he doesn’t eat. He’s livid. Unable to process how she lied to him for so long, allowed him to think he was insane. Liv justifies her brain-eating, saying it’s all in the name of helping others. Said aloud, it feels like another excuse, something Blaine might say if his inclinations weren’t so rule-the-world. Unlike Blaine. Liv has a potential fix for at least one problem she’s caused. Major gets the final dose of the cure.
Lt. Suzuki takes it upon himself to clean the mess left at Meat Cute. He stages the scene as a shoot-out, shooting himself in the leg, as well. The next step is to destroy the evidence contrary to the story he wants the other detectives to follow—that means using fire, and a lot of it. Suzuki blows up Meat Cute. Unfortunately Liv’s brother, Evan, arrives for his first shift seconds before. Their mother calls Liv. Together they watch Evan in the ICU, struggling to survive. He needs a blood transfusion desperately. The only match they have at hand is Liv. Was Liv, at least. The episode ends with Liv refusing her mother’s pleas to donate blood. Sure, it’d keep her brother alive, but without the cure, she’d condemn Evan to a half-life. She could only spare one person she loves.
Not a bad ending for season one. Filming for season two is already underway and the premiere is on October 6th. What predictions do you guys have for the sophomore season of iZombie?
Look, the gang’s . . . still not all here. Addy and Mack haven’t returned to the group. That’s okay, because the group isn’t too far behind them. Right? Wrong. More car troubles. If the zombies don’t kill these guys, I’m convinced the vehicles will. They’ve got to be Decepticons, or another sentient creature set to make Murphy’s dwindling escort crew hike across the United States. Otherwise, all these transportations issues have become an incredibly boring, predictable way to cause chaos beyond simple zombie antics.
The truck dies, leaving the crew to walk the forest near The Black Hills, SD. Luck is on their side, for now, and the zunami is far behind them. Unluckily, they’re lost, out of contact with Citizen Z—who’s toying with causing nuclear holocaust in order to destroy the zombies; Dog sets him straight on that matter—and about to stumble into a situation far worse than a broken-down truck. First, they accidentally find Mt. Rushmore. Much like the Liberty Bell, it’s been vandalized. Each President is painted to look like a zombie. Roberta isn’t amused.
While searching for a town to settle in, the crew finds what they think is an empty warehouse. A few glowing zombies later, they realize something isn’t right. Enter Wilbur and Amelia Grady, two-thirds of the remaining survivors in the town down the hill from a failing nuclear reactor. Wilbur worked at the reactor. He’s been trying to get past the zombies to figure out what’s preventing the reactor from cooling itself, but with only his daughter to help, they’ve made it exactly nowhere. The logical solution is to ask a bunch of unprotected civilians to wander into an active nuclear event in order to make a path into the facility. Hey, they’re only exposed to moderate radiation levels for a few minutes. What harm can it do?
Wilbur dies from radiation sickness after they get him inside. The reactor is still in crisis. In two days, it’ll blow, covering the area in radiation. Amelia knows a lot about airplanes and nothing about her father’s vocation. The group’s only hope to stop the meltdown so they can leave South Dakota without glowing like the zombies is to track down Homer Stubbins.
Homer isn’t a fan of people. Or zombies. His property is booby-trapped. Roberta leads the crew in a non-violent takeover. Mostly non-violent. 10k diffuses a stand-off by holding a knife to Homer’s throat. It’s surprisingly easy for them to talk Homer into helping. He even arms the crew from his own stockpile. Before they head inside, Homer asks 10k to be his backup after they bond over a knife which looks similar to the one Homer’s son owned. Sure, one knife makes a kid the logical backup when trapped with radioactive zombies, not the woman who sacrificed her family to be with the National Guard, protecting the masses.
10k gets Homer inside. There’s some technical talk which leads to unveiling a nifty little robot . . . armed with the world’s strongest laser cutter. Robby, the robot, manages to take out a few zombies, but is useless as far as stopping nuclear meltdown. The group reconvenes outside to formulate Plan C.
Plan C puts even more people inside with heavy radiation levels. Cassandra and Doc join Homer and 10k inside the plant, where Homer manually moves the rods preventing the reactor from cooling to safe levels. Roberta stays outside to help Amelia solve a different problem—the plane they’d banked on to get Murphy away from nuclear fallout if the worse happens doesn’t actually have fuel in it. They convert the plane to run on the small lake’s worth of vodka Homer squirreled away. Amelia and Murphy take off, heading toward Wisconsin. But not before Roberta and Murphy say their goodbyes.
Murphy tries to cut the awkward moment off at the pass. “Ah, shit. You’re not going to say goodbye, are you?” Roberta replies, “I was going to say, be grateful for all the sacrifices everyone has made.”
The plane makes it ten miles. Amelia doesn’t survive. Murphy’s alive, kicking, and shouting sarcastic quips at whoever or whatever may be in charge of the universe. Oddly, zombie Amelia emulates Murphy’s every move, even following him the ten miles back to the nuclear reactor.
Inside the reactor, Homer is a hero, dropping the last two rods into the cooling tank. Here’s where the bonding moment comes back for the emotional gut-punch. Homer asks 10k to kill him before he becomes a zombie. 10k killed his father. Obviously he should be able to kill a strange man with only vague fatherly feelings for the kid, right? Wrong. 10k hesitates. Homer takes matters into his own hands and cutting his safety line. Zombie Homer flails around in the cooling pool. We assume 10k does the right thing before leaving.
With no casualties amongst the main crew, it looks like they’re back on the slow road to California. Maybe. Roberta found a battery charger to use on the broke-down truck. It may get them another state closer to the goal. Zombie Amelia isn’t invited along for the ride, though she is left to live out her undead days. Murphy bonded with her during their hike through the woods and defends her right to live by saying, “Maybe it’s time for a different kind of mercy.”
Three episodes left and we still have no clue if there’s anyone waiting in California for Murphy and his miracle cure. A lot can happen between now and the finale. All I’m hoping is they find a car which runs so we’re spared another, “Oops, things happen because we’re forced to find a new ride again.”
The show will air its 90-minute premiere episode on Sunday, August 23rd at 9/8c. The episode was written by executive producer Robert Kirkman and FtWD’s show runner, David Erickson (co-executive producer and writer for Sons of Anarchy).
We’re not jumping into the middle of the zombie apocalypse this time around. We’re witnessing the outbreak as it happens. Watching as the characters learn the hard way how to dispatch the undead. Observing the chaos of a civilization’s dying gasp. Kirkman promises FtWD will show, “…all the insanity of civilization crumbling that Rick Grimes slept through.”
It won’t be an instantaneous change. Producers say the full zombie apocalypse, as shown in TWD, won’t happen until the final episode. However, there is absolutely no overlap between the shows. The characters, locations, and plot are unique. A breath of fresh air for fans feeling TWD has grown stagnant with all the long forest walks and Rictatorship monologues. Alycia Debnam-Carey (Alicia Bennett) says, “You don’t have to have watched the original. It’s coming from a very different place, a very different time, it’s before everything happened, so it’s completely refreshing and different.”
Bringing the action to the beginning of the end will liven things up a bit with the zombies. The makeup design isn’t as heavy-handed as later seasons of TWD, leaving the zombies with more face to show on screen. We still have no clue how these fresher zombies will act, if they’ll move faster or retain more human characteristics. Like most things within the franchise, fans must wait and see. One thing we know for certain, they won’t be telling us how zombies are made.
This show is billed more as a family drama with an undead war brewing on the horizon. Be prepared for the initial tension to be because of family issues—a couple attempting to make their teenaged kids get along before their wedding, ensuring their grades don’t fall, and keeping one kid in particular off drugs.
Fear the Walking Dead stars:
Kim Dickens (Sons of Anarchy) as Madison Bennett
Cliff Curtis (Gang Related) as Travis Manawa
Frank Dillane (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) as Nick Bennett
Alycia Debnam-Carey (The 100) as Alicia Bennett
Lorenzo James Henrie (Star Trek) as Chris Manawa
Elizabeth Rodriguez (Orange is the New Black) as Liza Ortiz
Rubén Blades (Safe House) as Daniel Salazar
Mercedes Mason (Quarantine 2: Terminal) as Ofelia Salazar
To tide you over, here’s a look at the trailer released at SDCC:
Sebastian rallies, after being buried in a shallow grave, and kills Kimber Cooper—a cheerleader too nice for her own good, killed because she wants to say a few kind words about the mystery dead guy. The others—members of a metal band, The Asshats—bolt. Kimber’s body is discovered by a hiker’s dog. Actually, Fido only brought his owner a foot. Liv panics when Ravi points out that this is likely a zombie killing. With plenty reason, too. The body count raised by her kind is reaching terrifying numbers. Eventually humans will notice.
What can humans go without? Watching Liv make a room-temperature chocolate milkshake from Kimber’s two-week old, liquefied brain. Even I got a little queasy. She should’ve warmed the brain to make hot chocolate. Gives it a buttery aftertaste.
Cheerleader brain makes Liv difficult to tolerate. She uses lazy teen-speak to coerce Kimber’s friend into giving up her location for the night of her disappearance—at rehearsal for The Asshats. Bubbly Liv is annoying. Luckily, she ditches the cheerleader brain at one point. Unfortunately, it’s so she can eat the brain belonging to Nate, one of the guys from the band who Kimber hooked up with. Liv and Clive discover Nate’s body in the band’s rehearsal space when they head over to ask about the stolen car. Before Liv gets a bite of Nate, Clive takes a taste of the pizza she put his brain on. If only Clive knew . . . .
Nate was perpetually high while alive, something Liv contracts from her lunch. She reneges on promises made to Peyton—girl chat and spin class—in favor of smoking and chasing case leads from Nate’s text history. Mostly smoking, though. During the one viable vision from her time with Nate’s brain, Liv discovers he and Cameron, another band member, argued about whether or not they should go to the cops about the hit-and-run. There’s also money involved somewhere, it pops up in this vision and in a text sent from Kimber’s phone a week after her death. Theresa, the band’s drummer, comes forward about hitting Sebastian with the stolen car. After she sits with a sketch artist to recreate Sebastian’s horrifically scarred face, Theresa is texted by Cameron to meet at a hotel and not trust anyone. She’s attacked in the hotel room. The last we see of Theresa, she’s struggling to reach the phone and call for help.
While Liv plays brain ping pong, Major prepares for war. He records a video in case he dies confronting Blain. His grand plan involves casing Meat Cute by posing as a health inspector—putting him face-to-face with Blaine. Of course Blaine smells something fishy. He hasn’t been this successful murdering people without exercising caution. There’s a few more additions to Major’s personal weapons cache, including a grenade. No amount of preparation will change the fact that Major is acting impulsively and fails to cover all his bases. Dupont gets wind of the surprise inspection and puts a name to the face which annoys Blaine. Seizing the opportunity, Dupont abducts Major and presents him to Blaine as, “The guy who knows too much.”
Peyton learns far too much, as well. Sebastian snaps, speeding up the inevitable meeting with Liv, the zombie detective after he’s driven to kill his aunt. He breaks into the apartment, knocking Peyton unconscious. Then decides to make dinner. Sure. Every bad guy stops for a meal when plotting his next murders, right? (Hannibal, you don’t get a say in this.) Liv and Sebastian fight. They both go full-on zombie. Liv is stabbed multiple times before gaining the upperhand and murdering Sebastian.
What neither notice is, Peyton regains consciousness seconds before. Liv has no option but to tell the truth—she’s not bleeding and her eyes went freaky-red because she’s a zombie. Peyton takes it about as well as expected. She runs. Doesn’t tell Liv or Ravi where she’s going. Just vanishes with the suitcases she packed for a romantic trip with Ravi. What will Peyton do with what she knows? Is she heading for the police station? How much long will the zombies fly under the radar? I’m going to say, not much longer.
The episode focuses on Addy and Mack, who have yet to catch up with the escort crew after the zunami separated them. Citizen Z has tried and failed to reconnect them, leaving the couple in Four Corners, Utah with virtually no resources. Luckily, they find a creek to get water–at least they have a hand-up on the others, who relied on Murphy’s ruthlessness to obtain a two-day food/water supply.There’s trouble in paradise. Addy refuses to talk about the memories haunting her. Mack is frustrated. He doesn’t understand why she won’t open up to him, trust him with everything. Their argument is cut short when they move on from the creek. Addy wants to stay, it’s beautiful and relaxing next to the water. Mack points out, “Beauty attracts trouble. You should know that.” He’s got a point, even if it’s a slightly snippy way to say that Addy’s a magnet for trouble.
Maybe leaving the creek isn’t such a good idea. Their motorcycle runs out of gas down the road. The couple set up camp at a rundown warehouse—in front of said warehouse, not inside under an actual roof. Because that makes sense. Sleep out in the open with only a couple broken steel sheets to make a tent. The downtime gives Mack a chance to pry into Addy’s problem again. She finally tells him about the flashbacks. She thinks it’s a memory, but isn’t sure. Mack may be the guy fighting a zombie in these mental hiccups, but again she isn’t sure. With a total lack of nothing to go on, they devolve into an awkward game of Twenty Questions in which they realize they know nothing about each other—meanwhile they’ve failed to secure food, water, gas, and electricity so they can contact Citizen Z.
“We never stood a chance, Mack.” Addy points out that without the zombie apocalypse, they would have never made a logical couple. They have little to nothing in common. Heck, she doesn’t even fully remember the night they met. Addy can’t see a future for herself, let alone a future with Mack. Kids and marriage? Impossible. Mack wants to prove her wrong. He asks her out on a date. While he’s fashioning their meager supplies into a gourmet “dinner,” Addy sleeps in their makeshift tent. Mack comes back and opts to let her sleep. He dozes off, as well.
This is where the annoying part comes in. Everything from here on out is a series of dream sequences. Mack wakes and hears Addy scream. He runs after her, encountering a trail of dead zombies who’ve been bitten by something—a rattlesnake. There’s also one live zombie left. In each dream sequence, Mack fights the zombie in some way and dies. In dream four, he survives long enough to find a random wall with a door in the middle of a warehouse before he’s killed.
It’s not until dream number five that things notably change up. This time Addy is still in their tent when Mack wakes. He tells her he thinks he’s been dreaming about the future. They hear the same zombie roar from Mack’s dream. They run off, taking the same path from the dream, but everything is different. No dead zombies. No snake. The door is still there, along with the live zombie. They break through the boards on the inside of the door, but not in time. The zombie bites and kills Addy. Dream six, Addy is gone again. Mack goes straight to the mystery door. The zombie waits, but doesn’t interfere. The boards behind the door are gone, allowing him to rush down into a basement. There’s a dying kid, bitten by a female zombie who attacks Mack. He stabs her repeatedly in the torso.“Why won’t you die?”
Addy wakes Mack from the dream because he’s yelling at the dream zombie woman. He asks Addy where the necklace came from. Suddenly we’re in Addy’s dream sequence, not Mack’s. She goes to the door. She kills the male zombie which has killed Mack so many times.
Down in the basement, Addy is the one who stabs the female zombie. After the zombie finally dies, Addy opens her hand to reveal her necklace. Suddenly we’re back at the creek. Mack sleeps beside the motorcycle. Addy weeps hysterically down by the water. She remembers the first night of the zombie apocalypse now. Remembers she didn’t know how to kill a zombie and that her mother was the first she gave mercy. Forty minutes of a reoccurring nightmare—which we thought were Mack’s for thirty minutes—just to tell viewers she’s having issues about killing her mother. 10k killed his father and they handled it with two or three flashbacks.
Addy and Mack aren’t characters who can carry off their own episode, let alone an episode where the writers decided to play with weird story-telling techniques. The next episode better have more than two main characters. This was ridiculous and did nothing for the main plot.
The victim is Scott E, the guy who told Major he’d seen zombies after their group session together. At first it looks like Scott’s death is suicide. Ravi points out the obvious—there isn’t enough blood in the bathtub where Major found the corpse. The suicide is staged. At the lab, they discover that Scott overdosed before his wrists were cut by a crude shiv. Unfortunately, the medication in his system is one anyone on staff at the hospital can get their hands on, along with any patients not too keen on taking their pills as prescribed.
Their suspect list is, as always, too long to manage. For a heartbeat, Major is on that list. He tells Liv about Scott’s obsession with zombies and the video his deceased chess partner shot at Lake Washington the night Liv was turned—which he apparently sent to someone at a TV station. The only obvious option: Liv eats crazy brain and waits for a vision. Actual police work is so last year.
While Liv suffers the effects of Scott’s brain pretty quickly, the visions take a while to filter through. Through the first, they learn he’s been sleeping with a woman who wants a baby, despite his disapproval. It’s not the woman he was sleeping with at the hospital—Brie—and they’re back to no solid leads. That is until Johnny Frost, local weatherman and oddball supreme, comes in to identify Scott’s body. Hey, look, someone who may have the zombie video. Except, he doesn’t. Johnny does know where Scott hides important things. Off they go to commit crime, breaking into Scott’s apartment to find his laptop. They use the laptop to track Scott’s missing cell phone after failing to find the video. The search sends them to an orderly’s apartment, where they find not only the missing phone, but a bunch of pills and personal items stolen from hospital patients. Faced with serious time for drug possession with intent to sell, the orderly turns on Dr. Maddy Larson—Scott’s doctor and sometimes bed-buddy. Guess what? She’s pregnant. Dr. Larson admits to killing Scott, claiming she was afraid he’d tell her husband.
Throughout the case, Major dogs Liv’s steps. Checks himself out of the hospital. He talks to Clive more than her, digging deep to track down information on the zombies his deceased friend claimed to see. Eventually, Major ends up minutes behind Liv after she breaks into Scott’s house and leaves. He finds nothing, she took everything of note, but he does make an impressive climb from a window to avoid running into Blaine—who is likewise tracking the mythical zombie video to destroy it after paying a surprise visit to the morgue and chatting with Liv. After escaping Scott’s apartment, Major hides in Blaine’s trunk. Blaine unwittingly takes him right to the base of his operation. The following day, Major steals several coolers containing bits from an astronaut’s brain.
Or does he? See, the predominant side-effect from eating Scott’s brain came in the form of vivid hallucinations. Most in the form of a cartoon devil endlessly harassing Liv about case details he “knew” but she couldn’t figure out. At the end of the episode, we learn that Johnny Frost is likewise a hallucination. As well as Major. Well, in part at least. There’s the moment in this episode. The moment when Liv finally comes clean about Lake Washington and zombies. She and Major are finally on the same page. But the Major she confesses to and kisses isn’t real. The real Major is more focused on finding the truth himself. He barges into Liv’s apartment armed with Blaine’s coolers of astronaut brain, ruining the illusion from the night before, and declaring war on every zombie in existence.
The reveal is well done. At no point did anything not line up, giving up the truth through poor timeline handling or shoddy dialog. Where was this level of writing back in the baby-crazy episodes? At least this show is ramped to end the season on a higher note than it began.
Thirsty, hungry, and hesitant to stress their truck, the group hasn’t made it far from the massive zombie horde sweeping westward across the central states. Matter of fact, the horde moves faster than our heroes.
Well, except Murphy. Dehydration hasn’t done a thing to tarnish his shining personality.
Desperate to survive the zunami—zombie tsunami, coined by Citizen Z—everyone clambers into the town’s mortuary. Seeing as it’s made to store corpses, not keep animated ones out, the building isn’t anywhere near secure. Roberta has one choice: make her people climb into the morgue’s refrigerated body storage or watch them overrun and eaten alive. Again, except Murphy. Everyone reluctantly agrees to chill out and hide until the undead move on. They clear the storage shelves, making room for Doc, Cassandra, 10k, and some random guy who ran into the building with them. Roberta is left without a cubby to hide in when she fails her gut-check and can’t move a dead zombie. Left with no time to spare, Murphy tells her to climb into a body bag. It’s almost touching, Murphy standing over Roberta, his presence unnoticed by the dead as he protects her.
Then Murphy walks away.
His affinity for the dead guys gives him free pass to surf the zunami without care. In the minutes during the heaviest wave of the zunami, Murphy finds two survivors holed up in an apartment building, food and water, and his inner not-giving-a-damn. Yes, the savior of the human race robs a terrified mother and child, then leaves the building’s door open so the undead husband/father may rejoin his family. What a tender-hearted guy. I’m getting the warm-fuzzies.
It’s not all bad from Murphy. He doubles back to the mortuary. In the nick of time, too. A particularly bright zombie takes a closer look at Roberta’s body bag and realizes, “Ooo, a burrito!” Using his zombie mojo, Murphy calls the dead guy off and saves the day. The group, grateful for the water and food Murphy found, finally accepts him as more than a sarcastic burden to haul across the country. Their time is running short. Murphy is becoming more zombie than human. What does this mean for the cure?
Up in the middle of nowhere, things get weird . . . er. Citizen Z stops a cyber-attack on his system. Moments later, an unidentified object falls from the sky, landing near the NSA base. Turns out, there is a guy inside, an astronaut from the International Space Station who was stranded up there for three years during the zombie outbreak. Yuri is convinced the air isn’t safe in the base. Citizen Z brushes it off, inviting his new guest inside for copious amounts of vodka, video games, and a round of indoor golf.
No amount of distraction placates Yuri. His actions grow odder; what he says make no sense to Citizen Z—not because Yuri’s mother language isn’t Engligh. Yuri snaps, attacking Citizen Z, forcing him to listen to the same question over and over: What’s wrong with the dog? Turns out, the HVAC system for the base malfunctioned. There’s virtually no oxygen. Yuri never existed. He is a hallucination coughed up by an oxygen-starved mind.
I have to admit, it’s a cool way to mix up the scenes in the base. However, the repetitive dialog for these scenes makes it feel like it was written by someone likewise suffering oxygen deprivation.
Liv, obviously, isn’t handling Lowell’s murder well while operating on PTSD brain. The police drag her into interrogation after neighbors report gunfire at his apartment and they discover the body. She’s lying badly, about to be arrested for the murder, when Lt. Suzuki—Blaine’s pet zombie-cop—walks in and says Lowell shot himself, case closed. Is this to save Liv, Blaine, or keep the undead truth under lock and key? All of the above, I’d say. Suzuki knows what happened. He has to. Blaine dragged him too deep into the muck around his brain delivery scheme for him to deny anything z-related coming through his office—including Liv herself.
How does Liv celebrate escaping jail and a murder charge? Dives face-first into an alcoholic’s brain. This particular alcoholic happens to be Rebecca Hinton, the reporter who broke the story about the police department’s failure to allocate resources to find the missing skate park kids. Her death has nothing to do with Blaine and company, though. Over the last few months, she chased a story about seemingly random, violent outbursts—including a young man, Jason, who snapped and assaulted people in a library. Long story short, Max Rager is at the center of attacks in at least three cities.
Day-drunk and brimming with journalistic bravado, Liv marches into the Max Rager offices. Bypassing the high-strung office assistant, Adele, she comes face-to-face with Vaughn Du Clark. He attempts to charm away the accusations. Their conversation is cut short by Adele and two security officers. Apparently they were smart enough to call in to check Liv’s credentials. Oops, not actually a cop. Time to go. Go get drunker, of course.
At the bar, one of Rebecca’s sources for her story comes forward. Sebastian tells Liv about a second informant, someone on the inside still. It sets a fire under Liv to find answers. Alcohol and fire, a great combination.
She finds Rebecca’s inside source at a morning Pilates class. Adele hesitates before agreeing to make a deal—and runs the second Liv leaves her alone. Neither make it far. Sebastian waits in the parking garage, easily taking the women. Liv wakes on a boat with Sebastian and a corpse. Into the drink goes Adele. Sebastian takes time to taunt Liv. Bad move. She’s sobering up and it doesn’t take much to go full-on-zombie. Liv saves herself, running the Max Rager hitman over with his boat.
Except he tasted her blood first. Dun, dun, duuun . . . .
A far more pressing problem—which Liv ignores—is Major’s descent into madness. Clive can’t find anything to substantiate Major’s story. Dupont is at the gym, bench-pressing a small car. Obviously he doesn’t have three bullets in his chest. Worried, Clive advises Major find psychological help. Ravi unfortunately has to parrot the idea. When he asks Liv to tell Major, she shoots it down.
“He’s lost his job. He’s breaking into cars. He’s shooting people. He’s doing all of this when he thinks the Candy Man is killing kids. What’s his move when he finds out he’s eating them?”
She has a point. Some people aren’t built to handle the truth. Isn’t she selling Major short, though? He’s proven there’s not much which will dissuade him from finding the truth, no matter how odd. So zombies are real and have a taste for young brains, it’s not too far of a stretch from thinking that body builders munched ’em to build muscle. Cannibalism is cannibalism. No one says anything to Major. He leaves for Blooming Grove mental hospital after taking care of Liv after yet another binge-drinking night. At the hospital, he meets a man who likewise faced a zombie and walked away to tell the tale. Sad when a complete stranger is more helpful than the woman he was supposed to marry.
Liv does come to terms with Lowell’s passing and her part in it. Ravi signs a falsified coroner’s report stating Lowell killed himself. Now more than ever, Liv is determined to kill Blaine. I think this time she won’t hesitate with her finger on the trigger.
Some of you surely think I’m overreacting, that there’s no way the same people who gave us Rick Grimes and company can produce such wholly flawed characters. I’m not talking flawed like Carol’s sociopathy or Daryl’s antisocial nature. We’re talking characters so poorly written, if they were actual people, they’d find it impossible to function in normal society without ending up injuring themselves or others. Madison in particular cannot operate under basic logic. In the beginning of this episode, not much time has passed since we left off in episode 2. So she should still feel the adrenaline rush—or at least the let-down from it—after bashing in Artie’s head with a fire extinguisher. You know, her friend and coworker. The man she risked her life to help despite Tobias’ warnings. At no point does reason say Madison should force her children to wait at the house for Travis and his family when she knows these infected people can and will hurt others. Not to mention, she watched an infected neighbor chow down on the birthday party crew, so she knows danger is at their door.
When they hear a noise at the door, Nick just wanders over to open it, letting in a stray German shepherd. Hold that thought for a second. I have a bone to pick with the writers about that dog. It’s always been a big mystery on TWD: where are the animals? We’ve seen a few, either eaten later on or too feral to re-domesticate. It only makes sense that this show would attempt to show what happened to them. It doesn’t make sense to introduce a gorgeous dog, only to kill it off-screen minutes later. There’s no point in forcing fans to listen to a dog’s whimpering and yelping as its attacked. Matter of fact, that is flat out cruel. Yes, people react when animals die. It’s a lazy way to garner emotions from the audience when they aren’t connecting to the humans in the story. Make us care when people die. Quit using animals to make up for two-dimensional characters.
