Fear the Walking Dead - Season 5 discussion and spoilers.

We've hit a new series low now with 1.37 million for the last episode. Still serviceable numbers by AMC/cable standards.

 

Well, that was a nice little homage to Dawn of the Dead. I think the original show visited some kind of mall once, but it was very different from the Romero movie. This episode was very visually reminiscent of DOD.

Kind of an interesting mission that they were on, to answer a guy's dying wish. When they found him alive on the roof, I thought it would turn out that he hadn't really been bitten after all. He sure did seem to hang in there for a long time. But it was nice, and emblematic of what this show has become-- an effort to preserve the essence of humanity in dark times. This was echoed by Dwight's encounter with Max Headroom's crony. I wonder if his gesture will prove fruitful or if it will end up biting them all in the ass. Or if we'll just never know.

So in the end, Grace decided not to confirm or rule out her diagnosis. This is kind of interesting. With Grace and Alicia, and possibly Morgan, exposed to potentially lethal doses of radiation, I wonder if they are leading up to revealing that the Zombie Virus confers some measure of protection against disease or injury. I've wondered about this since Rick's improbable survival for several weeks or months in a coma (yeah, I know they eventually tried to explain that) and the times when certain characters survived what should have been deadly injuries. And yes, it has been said that the kids' parents died from exposure to radioactive Zombie blood, but that's second-hand information.

 

Well, the last time an enemy was not killed (on The Walking Dead), it led to the group being tracked and Bob being kidnapped and partially cannibalized by the Terminus survivors. A season later, Morgan not killing the lead Wolf and his crony was directly responsible for their living to discover Aaron's bag, and attack the ASZ, killing many residents. No good deed goes unpunished.

Doubtful, as we have seen characters become very sick in the TV WD universe with no sort of protection, such as Andrea (TWD - early season 3, and according to Merle, she nearly died), the "flu" which killed many of the prison residents (season 4), and Father Gabriel who ended up sick and losing an eye due to whatever he was suffering from.

 

At this point, too many tropes are aligning spelling out Grace is headed to her deathbed that it would truly be a surprise if she survives the season. Alicia's storyline seems to be more stemming from her being traumatized from her potential brush with death to the point that she's seemingly unwilling to get back into the fight, meaning at some point by the end of the season she's going to end up in a fight or die type situation.

 

Yeah, and I'm a little tired of that.

Well, I don't mean that it confers complete immunity or indestructibility-- just resistance and enhanced healing. If the injury or illness is bad enough, then they die-- but still keep walking. It would fit in with my theory that the Zombie Virus is a military biotechnology project gone awry.

 

I have a similar theory...this is a universe where the nanites from the NBC show Revolution are the Zombie virus which reanimates humans. A sorldwide signal activates them so that the dead all arise at the same time....the "bacteria" from bites might be some malfunction in that process.

 

Interesting, RJ. As theorized in TWD's "TS-19" the virus could be man made, and act of God--anything, and there's probably enough evidence to support any of those theories based on how one views the "why" the ZA hit humanity at all. Regarding healing and resistance, I still think the characters have suffered so much by common maladies, and injuries, that the only physiological difference with the humans are the fact that they will return from the dead as cannibals, which bears no defining changes to the host while alive.

 

I've been watching this show (and the parent show) since the beginning (well, not the last season of Walking Dead). But, for some reason, after all these seasons, this thought just now popped in my head:

Why are there so many zombies outside? In Walking Dead and the first part of Fear, it kind of makes sense. The military firebombed Atlanta and Los Angeles, trying to kill all the walkers. That's why portions of LA and Atlanta are scorched. But, rural Georgia, Virginia and Texas aren't. When the zombie virus started, most people it manifested in as a version of the flu, then the people died. So, wouldn't most of the zombies be trapped in their houses, after having been bedridden? Sure, there'd still be some walkers, erm, walking around outside, but most people when that sick aren't going to be shuffling around outside, especially when they're on their deathbed.

 

I'm not familiar with that show, but it does sound similar. And if there was an activation signal, rather than just the tech going viral, that raises the possibility of there being an "off" signal.

Well, I was thinking of stuff like Rick surviving all that time in his coma, plus not needing physical therapy when he revived, and Carl being shot and nearly killed, undergoing amateur surgery, and being all right in a couple of days. And then there was Rick's grand finale when he was impaled on a rusty rod, rode around on a horse with massive internal injuries, fell off a roof, and got blown up by dynamite, and survived. I had a few other examples at one point, but I forget now. Also, this theory could explain why food and gasoline and car batteries don't go bad as quickly as expected.

Maybe they were walking to the hospital. When you think about it, a lot of Zombies are in unlikely places, as if most people died in an instant, without warning. Why were all those Zombies at the mall? Was there an Apocalypse Sale? Or were they all looters?

 

Walkers tend to join herds....if they "see"another they join them.

And perhaps many people got bit, and ran for their lives...with many hospitals being closed, or perhaps "closed" so people had to wait outside...they died of the bacteria bite outside

Do we know if walkers eat people in the last stages of the sickness?

Even if they do...those bitten might have hidden themselves enough to not get eaten and turn walker

 

Not only that many people proably died while fleeing cities or at makeshift military camps. Also lots humans killing other humans for supplies. Plus herds proably broke many doors and windows allowing trapped zombies out or storms destroying buildings. Jason

 

In the real world, when a disaster occurs, the streets are usually filled with people--not only out of fear, but because daily human activities had them out in the world, doing their thing. When the ZA virus spread, I imagine people just did not run to buildings/homes, but jumped in cars, either to reach someone, get help, or flee, but they did not make it. That's the reason why there would endless numbers of walkers on the streets, too.

That's still a debatable issue among fans because the official word has often dodged pinning a hard time on how long Rick was in a coma, or provided conflicting dates. That, and fact he was recently out of surgery when Shane visited him (Rick's memories), yet if he was in a coma--and unattended--he had no bedsores, and his underclothes were not repeatedly soiled from his own waste, etc.--indicators that he would have been abandoned for some time. He just looks like he forgot to shave for a couple of days, and cut flowers dried out (that does not take long). So, Rick being in a coma should--for believability's sake in an abandoned hospital--be reduced to a week or so. Not a month or longer.

Well, you can chalk that up to Hershel being more medically proficient than his veterinarian title would suggest. that, and at the time, Carl was supposed to be long-timer / future of the series, so, he was not going to die in any case.

Plot armor because there was no way AMC was going to close the door of finality on the most important character in the franchise--even if the actor was leaving the series.

 

I can easily see a mall being used as an emergency shelter. It's a large location the public has easy access to and can hold many people within. Granted, the mall in this week's episode didn't seem to be set up as an emergency shelter. Still, they could have been looters or just people doing the usual mall thing when shit suddenly broke loose.

 

"People bitten certain to die..."

"Everybody stay in their homes..."

"THERE'S A SALE AT PENNY'S!"

 

^^

That's possible. When there were fewer Zombies, it would have been easy to get bit and run away.

The streets and highways were filled with abandoned cars, so all those people must have tried evacuating on foot.

There was little to no indication of an impending Zombie Apocalypse when Rick was shot, yet civilization was gone and his friends and family were in a refugee camp when he woke up. That had to take a while. Even taking into account that short film where the nurse stayed with him for a long time, he still would be undernourished and in need of physical therapy when he woke up.

Yeah, but it was still pretty extreme in a world where the Zombie Virus is supposed to be the only fantastic element. It would explain a lot, since we know that "we are all infected."

Actually, a lot of Zombies do exhibit some kind of muscle memory of their former lives, like Morgan's wife and those people in the church. Maybe these were all people who found comfort in wandering the mall when they were alive.

 

Although considering the entrances were barricaded with benches, one wonders how Walkers would have gotten around that.

 

Yeah, most of the walker situations just don't stand up to scrutiny.

 

That depends on how fast the virus spread. In "TS-19," Jenner claimed:

For it to "abruptly" go global means it was rapidly spreading--even before Rick was shot; Like many epidemics, it had not become a sanctioned media concern yet to the point where the general public would react. By the time Rick was admitted to surgery, the plague had to be on its way to sweeping the Americas, and one would assume that long before it went global, eventually, it forced enough panic/reaction for survivors to either seek refuge (official) or clog the streets trying to leave their current location, which would explain why Shane and the others acted so quickly.

..and yet he was not. He was mildly disoriented, not at all how a coma patient reacts. It was not long before he commandeered a bicycle, and how many recent coma patients just run around and do that? That's another reason the "he was in a coma for a month or more" idea never held water.

Plot convenience, or the walkers were simply those who died after barricading themselves?

 

Undoubtedly. I was using the barricades to shoot down the theory they Walkers ended up in the mall due to muscle memory from being alive.

 

Fear the Walking Dead
Season 5 / Episode 11 - "You're Still Here"

Morgan:Yep, he's still hypersensitive about his family, but the show should avoid hinting his rejection of normalcy with Grace, and his attacking Logan means he might not be so sane after all. Interesting how Althea--thinking she reads people so well--was unnerved by Morgan's anger.

Althea: At last--one good idea regarding her tapes: a bank vault. I see that coming into play for someone else in the future. Who knows--it could be someone from another series. Its never explained why she did not lock individual vault where she stored the tapes, then....remove the key. Sure, Logan could have broken into each, but for something she places a great deal of value on, she was rather careless in just shoving them in there with the personal vault door wide open.

Logan and the Gang: Frewer's character is just...annoying. He's another "you're gonna give me what I want" type like TWD's Simon, right down to shitty personal comments to would-be victims. Tiresome, even if he's connected to the season's Big Bad. Let me guess: now that he has Althea's tapes, either she will do something foolish like try to retrieve them, or he will take them to Isabelle's group, and she will be forced to define her loyalties (even though she does not know Althea at all).

Alicia / Strand: Alicia's shell-shocked / guilt / seeking some idea of hope mode certainly ended as quickly as it started, and all due to random Wes' tree-marking closing to his late brother. About Wes, yeah, we get that his believing the worst in people is echoed by the group being screwed over time after time, but his backstory was not well developed (and we don't know if he's in any future episodes to build on that).

The issue with Alicia's journey is that Wes summed up her emotional state, and out-psyched her into making a life adjustment that came straight from the Plot Convenience Store. Moreover, if he would repeatedly claim that killing is the way of the world, not embracing hope, and will kill over a manuscript, he's not going to make some heartfelt change anytime soon--not one that would finally shake her out of her issues, that is, if the show played this anywhere near a realistic manner...

Then there's Strand and the tear gas. Weak plot device to force Alicia to kill walkers. Oh, and if you take guns and ammo, take the VESTS, some of which appeared to be of the Kevlar variety. That's the gift that will keep on giving in the ZA.

NOTES: Nowhere near as effective as last week's two-character episode, but in the grand scheme of things, the series is more enjoyable when they are focusing on smaller groups.

GRADE: C.