Last week, Fear the Walking Dead finally reached its full potential as a series by delivering its best episode to date with some top notch storytelling and that does unfortunately mean that the stakes were high this week to give us something equally as impressive. It may seem silly to think that, but when the sister show is one of the highest rated series on television, the spin off better at least try to hold a flame to the original.

The good news is, last night's episode did indeed deliver one incredible story, and while "Ouroboros" was not as cerebral as last week's stellar episode, it didn't have to be. This was a tale that was grounded in the sheer horror of the dead coming back to life to attack the living and the savage new world that comes with that and it was also an episode that actually managed to deliver some answers to a couple of burning questions that have been nagging at the fan base's mind for a few weeks now; what the hell happened to Flight 462, and what the group is going to find in Mexico. 

We will get to the latter of those two questions in a moment because Flight 462, the living dead and tough choices were the centerpieces of last night and the effect they had on our characters was absolutely stunning. Case in point, Chris. He truly thought he was some kind of badass extraordinaire after killing a walker or four at the sanctuary, so leave it to him to wander off and kill a couple more. But to run into the man with the broken back aboard the plane, and be left with no other choice but to kill the man or let him suffer and die a slow and horrible death...well damn, that's one hell of a twist.

It's hard to say what kind of lasting damage this will have on the young man, but lately Chris has been faced with some tough realities and tough choices and has made them with little fuss, part of him understands that horrible things are going to happen and there's no time to stand on ceremony or moral debate and one should simply act, regardless of the consequences. That may prove dangerous in the days ahead with a boat full of people hanging on to ideals and morals from a world now gone, so it will be quite interesting to see what comes of this important moment. 

Yet while I found Chris' journey last night to be fascinating, he was overshadowed by the stunning moves made by Flight 462 survivor, Alex. We already knew this young woman was plucky and resourceful based upon her actions aboard the flight, but there's something incredibly fascinating about the fact she was willing to take lives to save one, especially considering the circumstances surrounding this choice. 

After all, Jake was badly burned and doing poorly in the opening moments after Flight 462 went into the water and while it would make sense for this show to sacrifice the weak and wounded like Chris did, Alex felt better putting down the other two men in the life raft in order to save Jake. It's a stunning call on so many levels and one that quite frankly I could spend an entire blog upon, but at its core; it speaks to one particular thing...it's about survival of the fittest, and the bold, at this point in time. Kill or be killed. There's no civilization left, no rules, just survival mode and that's what makes the world so dangerous right now, the fact that everyone is willing to do whatever it takes to save their own hide.

What makes her decision more tragic however, is that it may all be for naught when all is said and done since Strand was happy to cut their tow line and let them drift off into the ocean, no doubt sentencing them to a horrible death by way of starvation and it ruins any good will Strand brought us this episode, since he finally revealed that the Abigail's destination is Baja, where a compound with high walls and plenty of food awaits them all. For a moment there I finally thought Strand was opening up and doing the right thing but his cutting the raft loose, and Travis pondering why Strand is just now providing them with information on their destination leaves you wondering what the hell everyone is going to find when they get to Baja and what Strand has planned for them. 

A few other highlights from last night include the awesome surprise discovery by Nick that if you smell like a walker, you can stand toe to toe with them and blend in just fine in a throwback to the sister series occasional use of zombie guts as camouflage in a stunning scene where the dead were everywhere on the beachfront with nowhere for the survivors to go. The Infected are becoming quite the viable threat on this show and it's a wonderful thing to see them pop up and cause trouble so often. Plus, I also loved the whole piece around Travis finding one stuck in the filtration intake valve. It's cool to see that the dead are quite the nuisance any way you slice it and big kudos as well for that gross scene where Travis had to pull the severed hand out of the pipes. Either way, the more I think about this episode, the more I like it. It was brutal from start to finish and I love that everyone is trying to figure out their place and their role in the new world to come. As long as they keep this kind of storytelling up...season two is going to be absolutely fantastic. Until next time.  

I honestly feel that Fear the Walking Dead has faced some incredible odds in winning over the fan base of its sister show. Sure it does great in the ratings, and while a lot of my friends watch it, the overall quality of the show continues to pop up in our conversations about it. I consistently hear that the show's characters are a little flat and I myself even gave the show a little bit of hell on its lack of walkers in a city once filled with thirteen million people. But, regardless of its flaws, I've stuck with this show for several reasons. For starters, zombies. Second to that, it is a show filled with enormous potential.

I would venture to say that last night the show finally tapped into that vast potential and in the process, managed to deliver its finest episode to date because "We All Fall Down" was everything we have hoped this show would be and more. For those who haven't been happy with the lack of character development on the series, this episode finally provided us with some. For folks like me who want more of the living dead, they were everywhere last night. But most importantly, this particular tale was top notch horror, giving us an in depth look at something rarely seen in horror while continuing to world build and give us a universe where nowhere is safe and death is everywhere.  

That was actually the first thing that caught my eye last night, the fact that the show went all out to continue to show us how far and reaching Operation Cobalt turned out to be. I know it's something that I keep harping on but there's a reason for that. This show has to feel like the end of the world and that everything is falling apart and to know that in essence every single major American city was burned to the ground in the hopes of containing this infection creates that feeling. There's a real sense of doom hanging over the show now that we know Cobalt was a nationwide containment measure and the bleakness of this episode didn't end there. 

It was only further enhanced by the dead themselves. I loved that they are washing up on beaches everywhere now following the destruction of Los Angeles. It creates an atmosphere I haven't felt since the first season of The Walking Dead, where you know they are out there waiting for an opportunity to strike or surprise and that was only compounded by the view of the pier on Catrina Island, where a small herd roamed about aimlessly. It's those simple visuals that serve as a fine reminder that the end has come at last and everything our characters held near and dear belong to the dead now.

That point was driven home so well by this show, that it made the sense of normalcy that George's family exhibited damn uncomfortable. We've spent so many weeks experiencing tragedy and terror that it's truly become the new norm for our rag tag group of survivors and seeing any sliver of the life they left behind just doesn't seem quite right at all, and George's family and their troubled idea of where they belong in the world as it is now led to the centerpiece storytelling wise...a long awaited look at what the apocalypse does to the weak.
 
I say that, because the zombie genre has always given us incredibly strong characters, emotionally at least. Sure they have their moments of frailty, but they can always handle what's going on around them. They are often balanced by the weak who let's be honest, usually serve as delicious fodder for the living dead. But George and Melissa, well they took the concept to a whole new level, and a disturbing one at that to say the least. After all, it's one thing to give up when there's no hope left, something we've seen before in this series, but it's quite another thing to be prepared to take your family down with you in the process. 

It was dark territory I honestly wasn't prepared for, and well...I found it fascinating. While we only spent a brief amount of time with George and his family, I'm dying to know what drove him to this kind of decision and why above all things, he was willing to see his family dead rather than fight to see them survive at all costs. Especially considering they put up fences to keep the dead out and managed to get a farm going with healthy crops, so there was certainly plenty to eat. In reality, it's obvious that George and his wife simply lost the will to live at the end of the world and while Melissa may have had a change of heart, it doesn't make this fascinating little twist any less impactful. 

That whole theme of surrender and survival of the fittest was nicely counterbalanced by Travis and Madison's drive to keep their family going and find somewhere safe to ride out this living nightmare and that's where we finally saw growth from our characters. It was wonderful to see Nick finally do something morally right for a change, and it was incredible to see Madison sway Travis to her side of thinking and save lives rather than abandon them. It shows they're finally finding purpose and direction, and also an understanding of who they are and who they want to be when the dust settles from all of this. But while nothing went according to plan, the fact that there was a sliver of hope once again in this show was extremely welcome, despite the fact that the odds are against all of them, and getting back out to sea also brings us one step closer to finally getting some important answers; specifically who was Strand talking to on the phone, and why are they headed to Baja, California? Until next time.

In its freshman season, Fear the Walking Dead managed to pull off some incredible precedents for the zombie genre. It was the first real spin off television series involving walking corpses thanks to the success of its sister show The Walking Dead, but more importantly, it managed to provide a few things on screen that no other zombie story has ever managed to accomplish.

Two key things that stick out in my mind, is that the show gave us our first big budget look at the end of the world, and also took us inside those all important moments following the collapse of mankind, where our characters were forced to figure out what comes next...without a clue if they were doing the right thing or not. We were witness to plenty of mistakes and plenty of primal moments as modern day humans, used to creature comforts did their best to simply survive. It made for some compelling storylines and I was curious to see if the show was going to stick to that formula of storytelling for its second season premiere, "Monster".

As it turns out...it did, and not only did it manage to stay true to its roots, it managed to up its game in the process by giving us one of the most bone chilling visions of the end of the world I've ever seen in its opening moments courtesy of the military's counteroffensive against the living dead that was hinted at late last season. The image of watching a pair of fighter jets soar over the boat before revealing that all of Los Angeles was burning was enough to set the tone, and I have to be perfectly honest...it took my breath away, it was that powerful and that terrifying. To know that it had come to this, spoke volumes to how many walkers were roaming the countryside and the intensity didn't end there.

There was...a fire to the characters we didn't see last year in this episode as the reality of everything settled in. This was a group frustrated with their current situation and completely unsure of what would come next and with a moment to finally breathe, reality finally settled in and it certainly wasn't pretty. Chris obviously bore the brunt of it all emotionally this go round since he essentially shut down following the death of his mother. Sure we saw signs of life by the end of the episode when he decided to go swimming, but this is a young man suffering and it seems that part of him understands that everything is different now. There won't be any time to himself to grieve properly, just more fear, more suffering and sleeping with one eye open. 

For a brief moment in the show however, it did seem like the mistakes that everyone made last season were going to be left behind when Travis and Strand made the call to not help out the boat of refugees floating in the ocean, but it didn't take long for Alicia to change all of that with her non stop chatter on the radio. Sure, I understand why she did it, the need to belong, the need for a sense of normalcy, but that doesn't make it any less furious for the audience since we know...the world isn't a safe place.

That's perhaps what ended up being the best part of last night, that despite the fact we had a moment to breathe, to relax with these characters after an intense escape from Los Angeles, the danger of this terrifying new world was still there and that it is evolving. It was a wonderful touch to find the walking dead floating about in the water thanks to the capsized boat and of course, we are all dying to know if Jack was simply accepting his fate with his message to Alicia near the end of the episode...or if he is indeed coming to see on that boat that Strand now has on the ship's radar.  

Speaking of Strand, he is perhaps the last grand mystery of the episode as well. Can he be trusted or is he leading these people to their doom? That's a set of questions that are difficult to answer simply because of the fact we have seen a case for both. On one hand, we have seen that he is capable of great cruelty. Those moments last season in the Army's Gulag were not a positive first impression for him as he did his best to break the weaker people around him in the cell, but at the same time...he saved everyone. Without him, everyone surely would have perished in the decimation of Los Angeles and let's be honest...he didn't have to do anything to help.

If anything I think Strand will be the grandest mystery of all this season. We still have no idea where the group is headed, and it is clear that Strand is intent on getting there as quickly as possible. I do love the fact that Daniel is keeping an eye on Strand and I can't wait for the two of them to start squaring off because we all know Daniel isn't a man to wait for the answers to come to him. Either way, I have to say I was pretty impressed by this season premiere. I loved the fact that it was so incredibly intense and I'm dying to know what Strand's agenda is, and where exactly this weary and worn group of survivors are headed. Should be a fun second year, until next time.