Fear the Walking Dead - Season 5 discussion and spoilers.

Merging FTWD with the parent show would not prevent all of the other AMC plans for WD projects, only they would better off as quarterly movies--anthologies where there's no obligation to plan season arcs, but return to the beginning/middle/end method of storytelling as in their old webisodes. In that way, they could explore whatever they desired in any location, but not feel the creative burden of trying to sell characters that are supposed to be long-term heroes.

 

Well, one problem is the number of characters. Walking Dead already has a huge cast. If Fear only has one season left, it would be best to just have Morgan wander back to Alexandria. But it would be nice to see stable communities established in more than one spot.

 

Fear the Walking Dead
Season 5 / Episode 8 - "Is Anybody Out There?"
Mid-season Finale.

Morgan / Grace: Oh, for---Grace wrecks the truck just trying to turn around? Now that's some bad 80s horror movie setback of convenience.
Its about time Morgan offered to train someone, and it would make certain characters' ability to survive a wee bit more believable.

Alicia: Grace's semi-comforting words were...just that. Alicia could be ill and still take her bow sometime this season.

Daniel: Christmas lights. Inventive substitute for runway lights. His reunion with Alicia was played well--the same with Strand. From this point forward, I do hope the animosity of the past is truly buried.

Strand: "She'd be proud of you." Nice touch that he's aware of Alicia's demons. As Madison's closest friend in the ZA world, the showrunners should have more of a personal connection between Strand and Alicia.

Dwight / June / John Dorie: June and John's relationship is one of the best developed of the WD shows--not there just be the obligatory romance, but a real history is felt beyond dialogue. Probably the best thing to happen to the series after the move past the Clark family story. But the marriage proposal....on any other show, that would promise hope, but here....

While the proposal was going on, one could not help thinking of Dwight, and if the showrunners intend to bring Sherry back to the series to complete his arc.

Sarah /Wendell: Wendell's big moment...well, of course he was going to overcome the walker threat and activate the lights.

Logan: Matt Frewer has his fanbase, but I would have avoided using any relatively well-known actors who previously appeared in other popular zombie productions. In his case, its the Dawn of the Dead remake (2004), which is generally credited with launching this century's resurgence / popularity of the zombie genre. Although his characters could not be more dissimilar, Dawn of the Dead is still a well-remembered film, so his appearance here comes off as stunt casting.

NOTES: Being the mid-season finale, you just knew something had to happen with Logan. The questions still bubbling beneath the surface are his ties, and if he's--as Sarah and/or Luciana asked--leading them into a trap. Was he really beat up, or is that part of the trap. Perhaps it was punishment from the group he's working with...

GRADE: B.

 

I was literally laughing at the whole wheelchair predicament which I don't think is the intended outcome but the scene was just so ludicrously set up to try to inject some drama it was funny. This not long after the only competent zombies of the whole season couldn't be shaken off the cargo net.

Are old planes actually that rickety? Those controls looked amazingly unwieldy.

This definitely has to be the most optimistic zombie show ever made, hell, even Matt Frewer seems to be along for the ride. I don't know how realistic that is but it's certainly novel, I don't think I've ever seen a zombie story that has gone in that direction.

 

This show is so far from the concepts set up by the original show, that it might as well be in it's own universe. We now have a large group of purely altruistic heroes surviving impossible situations with their ethics held intact. That just is NOT the Walking Dead.

 

I'm not necessarily a fan of the protagonists acting like the Zombie Apocalypse Peace Corps, but early on, the series was dragging on as just "The Walking Dead: West Coast / Southwest" with all-too obvious sociopolitical commentary, but now it has its own voice. I suppose the test for the "Morgan Way" of doing things will come once the still-shadowy black-suited group (and/or Logan's), and if that Peace Corps philosophy will lead to a great price being paid to the point where the heroes just accept the world as brutal and (if the showrunners have the stones to do so) become the very thing they were rising above.

 

So all that set up about Nuclear Walkers and don't let one touch you, and ending last week on a cliffhanger of Alicia getting infected by one, and it's just resolved in the first ten minutes with a shower? Anticlimactic. Still, at least we got to see Alicia taking a shower. I guess that's not nothing.

The plane landing sequence actually was a tense scene. I mean, I was reasonably certain everything would work out, but they did a good job ratcheting the tension for that bit.

So now Logan is a reluctant ally as the gang search for one hella gas depot or something. The Logan aspect I could give or take. There isn't really much to the character on paper, but Matt Frewer does have screen presence so I'm fine with that. Actually, now that the gang is altogether it'll be nice to develop the dynamic with Dwight and Daniel mixed into the new Fear crowd in the second half of the season.

 

Suspending disbelief is getting harder to do with this show.
As an airplane enthusiast I was screaming at the TV at all of the stupid airplane stuff.
If it wasn't for June and John I would have bailed long ago.
I don't like the story couple but I do like the actors.

As a "Mid-season Finale" it was underwhelming and formulaic.

 

This was the most implausible season yet of either series given the rules they set up for themselves. Yes, I do know I am watching a zombie show.

 

I'm finally caught up and I've been enjoying the season overall. I actually like the fact that they're focusing on helping people, it's a nice change of pace from the usual focus on fighting the latest enemy group.
I really like the current cast too.
I have to confess, once John proposed, I expected him to immediately get sucked out of the plane.
It was a little annoying how quickly they brushed off Alicia being exposed to the possibly irradiated blood.
It's definitely starting to feel like they are setting up a potential romance for Grace and Morgan.

 

Focusing on that with only one episode left would have taken time away from the group's effort to fly the plane/John and Dwight finding their way back/escape the meltdown zone. I'm almost certain Alicia's problem will be a running plot in the second half of this season.

Will Morgan get involved with someone who believes she is on borrowed time?

 

Well, that was an action-packed episode. "We need to get rid of that dead weight."

And everybody survived. I thought for sure that Wheelchair Guy was a goner, but he really came through with a heroic effort to get those lights back online. And it was Salazar, of all people, who supplied the lights. He seems to have exorcised his demons. I wonder if he's back on the regular cast list now.

And those weren't the only twists. Dorie and Dwight made it to the plane in the nick of time, and Dorie has proposed to June. I guess now they'll have to go back to Alexandria, because Father Gabriel is the only living priest that we know about in the ZA. And besides that, Max Headroom has shown up looking for shelter, since his tough guy friends have apparently turned on him.

Alicia got to take a shower, and Karen Grace thinks she'll be okay, but Alicia's not so sure. Maybe she needs to take more showers. And what about Karen herself? She seems to think she's doomed, but she's showing no obvious signs of radiation sickness. And what about Morgan, who seems to have had some exposure himself? And what the hell was that business with the stick? He gets it back only to have Karen snap it in two? How is that fixing it? Was only half of it radioactive? Poor Morgan. He looked so sad without his stick, and now he looks even sadder with his little dinky half a stick.

And back on the other side of the mountains, the nuclear plant has melted down, so we can presume that the area is flooded with radiation-- any other survivors in the area area dead meat, and I wonder if that means Dwight's wife. If so, it would be kind of anticlimactic.

Matt Frewer is always stunt casting.

Eh, I've had enough of that nihilistic world view from Walking Dead. It would be nice to see the good side of human nature ascendant for a change.

 

I see what you did there.

That depends on the duration of her initial exposure / level or radiation. She might believe she's sick based only on the others who ended up dying from said exposure, not any personal symptoms. At this point, I would rather not see her get into any romantic relationship with Morgan, all for it to end soon afterward.

Yeah, I do not know what the significance of breaking the stick was. Its not as though he was a violent man, and breaking the stick meant he was sort of half between that and a peaceful man. It was just showcased, leaving Morgan looking at it. Still, since he offered to train Alicia, maybe his broken stick will come up again.

I'm starting to hope she shows up, but the appearance mean something to the larger story, not just Dwight.

Good sides are few and far between; there will always be some threat to peace, whether it comes from external forces or from within. As far back as the Green farm, it was pretty much as peaceful as one could imagine, but external threats--namely Shane--ultimately caused its downfall. In FTWD's case, being a traveling band of peaceniks can go how far before they are forced to defend themselves from uncompromising people?

 

The Walking Dead showed us over and over and over that focusing on anything other than one's own survival means the end of said survival. Now Fear just appends everything and shows us that actually a group can be traditional "good guys" and still thrive? It appends everything the parent show (and the beginning of this show) went out of its way to show us!

 

Supposedly, though I'm not sure how that works. And I got to say, this whole business with Morgan's stick and his quest to replace or retrieve it, though amusing at first is starting to become a tired plot point.

Dwight and John seemed to think that painting on a tree they saw was somehow connected to Sherry, and the trailer for the second half of the season indicates they're going to find more similarly painted trees.

 

Ah so Sherry has crossed the uncrossable mountains?

 

She broke the stick and threw away the bottom half that was the part that went into the walker's skulls and absorbed the radioactive blood.
That was where the danger was. The top half is safe.

 

Same here, but I'd rather see her stick around.

Yeah, in fact the stick is a symbol of him overcoming his personal demons.

Sure, there has to be threats and feral humans in the ZA, but, just like in any disaster or war zone or dark age, there must be people who come to the aid of others and try to make things better.

It's certainly a confusing plot point.

Right, I forgot about the message on the trees.

I was surprised when Dorie and Dwight made it back to the plane. I thought they would find a backyard bomb shelter or school basement or something to shelter in, and find Sherry inside.

That makes sense, I guess.

 

Glad to know I wasn't the only one confused by Grace breaking Morgan's stick. I thought maybe I missed something there.

 

Yes, but I meant the heroes of the show--eventually, their hand will be forced and that's not stopping enemies with good intentions, so the peacenik mindset will be challenged, perhaps shaken to its core.