"Fear the Walking Dead" Recap: "We All Fall Down"

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

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.

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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.

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