'Fear the Walking Dead' Recap: 'Grotesque'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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

When we last left Travis, Madison and the rest of the Los Angeles survivors on Fear the Walking Dead, the situation looked grim. The Abigail compound was left burning, it seemed as though Daniel perished in the fire and the rest of the group was scattered to the wind. Madison took off with the girls and Strand in a truck. Travis and Chris took off on their own so a father could help his son and Nick, well Nick decided he was better off with the dead than with his own family.

It was a dismal and bleak midseason finale and it left all of us wondering where exactly the story would decide to go from there. As it turns out, last night's midseason premiere would bring forth something that I've heard quite a few fans clamoring for as the first half of season two pressed on, character development, and quite frankly it did it in beautiful fashion. There was no major pressing test or quest on hand for us to better understand the people we have been on this journey with, there was merely the open road and the silence of the world to allow us to reflect with our characters...or character in this case since the first episode back from the break was all about Nick, and 'Grotesque' taught us everything we ever wanted to know about the young man who has spent so much time struggling.

For starters, we learned exactly how tough of a kid Nick really is and how adept he is at survival. Faced with the wide open spaces of Mexico before him, Nick had to deal with some incredible hardships. he lost all of his food and water in a misunderstanding with another pair of survivors, but that certainly didn't stop him. Anything the man ever read about or learned along the way in life about staying alive in the wilderness he applied to his situation and tried his best to survive the elements and while it was incredible to see nothing stop Nick or bring him down, there was a sorrow that you felt for him when it came to facing off against the one thing he simply never handles well...human beings. 

For a good majority of the episode, anytime Nick faced off against his own kind in any form or fashion, the results were disastrous to say the least. One meeting we briefly discussed, where he was forced to abandon his supplies, and in his next encounter he found himself under fire from renegades who killed the infected for sport. It spoke to his decision to stick to death and the desolation of the world he once knew, yet while this was all fascinating to watch, it only grew our curiosity about Nick further. Why be so adverse to dealing with mankind? What could motivate a man to want to pursue death and be surrounded by it over anything else? 

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The answer as it turns out...was that Nick was a on a spiritual journey to understand death and what it means because it has taken so much from the young man. A series of flashbacks explained this to us in great detail, and in these delicate moments from the past we learned more about Nick's time in rehab, where he befriended and fell in love with the first walker we ever saw on the show...Gloria. She was, of course a beautiful conundrum. Supportive and loving of Nick, but she was also dangerous, since she also supported his drug habit.  

But her love was not the main reason Nick went on this journey. That came about from the death of his father. His dad was a man he viewed as lazy and weak, but ironically enough, when he spoke of his dad, there was a sense of hope that perhaps someday he would see the man become more in life, and to know his father would never receive that opportunity and that Nick would never get to say to him what was in his heart was outright devastating. The memory of his father is now clearly with him always, especially considering the night before the dead began to walk the earth, he was reading a book his father gave to him before shooting up with Gloria and clearly her death was equally as jarring to Nick, as was the bastardization of it with her resurrection.

The good news is however, that Nick did indeed survive his lengthy and harrowing journey and even found a sliver of civilization that seems to respect the dead in similar fashion to Celia's beliefs. But the tragedy therein is the fact that while Nick claims to want to find a place where the dead aren't viewed as monsters, in reality he sees them as an opportunity for philosophical answers whereas this group no doubt sees these beings as natural evolution and those parallel views will eventually clash. Because at some point, Nick will find the answers he seeks, and understand that these creatures are living death and to be feared and he will also learn what death means to him on a personal level and what it means to honor those we've lost...and when that day comes, let's hope he is far away from this camp since some of these folks may see any belief outside of their own outright dangerous.

Either way, this was a low key, fantastic way to start the second half of the season. It was filled to the brim with sheer beauty visually and plenty of horrific moments as well to satisfy the zombie and gore lover in all of us. The scene where Nick begins to hallucinate and hears the dead speaking is one that comes to mind immediately as chilling to say the least. But the show does deserve some serious credit for spending so much time on Nick and what the man is all about. He no longer seems like a punk junkie out to do whatever. He is truly a broken man looking for purpose at the end of the world, and well...if the show continues on this character driven path, something its sister show does often, then perhaps it will finally win over the skeptical fans and find its true potential at last. Time well tell, but so far so good and next week it should be interesting to see what life is like in this tiny community outside of Tijuana. Until then.

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