Spoilers Fear the Walking Dead - Season 6

Fear the Walking Dead
Season 6 / Episode 6 - "Bury Her Next to Jasper's Leg"

June / John Dorie: June blaming herself for the loss of the guy with the ruptured appendix is misplaced guilt; whatever happened in her past, it should not make her think she could make up for that by running be a mobile hospital in a devastated world with limited resources. She's sort of ridiculous to carry that on her shoulders.

John itching to flee Virginia's group...sounds like the recipe for a terrible mistake, as its clear June is obsessed with trying to save everyone in sight--even if its against Virginia's wishes.

Luciana: She lives (see NOTES).

Sarah: So, she has her reunion with Wendell. If the showrunners have a backbone, they will not make him one of this season's losses. Far too predictable.

Virginia and the Gang: Escapee Paige--one of the "End is Just the Beginning" people--preferred to commit suicide instead of revel what her own group is doing. She did note that Virginia was afraid...and that's interesting, as it would suggest she (Virginia) knows something not too pleasant about Paige's allies, which is teased again when she tells June she has something to talk about.

Virginia believes Wes is a member of the spray paint crew. Surely, Luciana or June can explain that Wes is an artist who used spray cans when they met...?

In a pleasant surprise, Virginia was bitten, however, even as the walker took a chomp, I knew June would save her, which would be her leverage against Virginia...that, and the show gets the added "benefit" of Virginia taking on the appearance of a (cliched) mutilated villain. If anything, she will use misplaced anger to fuel her death-wish for Morgan.

Oh, and any promises or meeting of the minds June has with Virginia is not going to be on the level. With no gas source, it will be very difficult to transport anyone to her "hospital"--even via horses. Her obsession has now separated her from John--the other character carrying too much baggage from the past (trying to be his father / falsely believing he "failed" to save Janice). It remains to be seen if John stumbles across Morgan's group...or runs into the spray paint gang.

NOTES: If this series has one failing, its the total lack of development of Danay Garcia's Luciana, who has been so marginalized and absent for most of the significant plotlines of the past two seasons. After Nick died (S4 - "Good Out Here"), she--or rather the showrunners--lost any real drive to develop a solid plot for Luciana.

Back to June: she really comes off as an obsessive idiot. No one living in the zombie apocalypse would still run around with the TV medical drama stereotyped "Damnit! I'm saving everyone!!" personality. She blames Virginia for the oil field deaths, bur her not getting to the truck--playing that TV stereotype--led to their being in the area long enough to be caught in the explosion. For one of the series' protagonists, June really does not deserve anything she's asking for, and I would not be shocked if her "hospital" goes up in flames.

NEXT WEEK: The mid-season finale, where Alicia is in some trouble, and Strand has a decision to make about what side he's on.

GRADE: B.

 

Oh, hey, the rest of the cast shows up this week to make their season six debuts. Don't really have much more to say about this one, though I was surprised when June chose to save Virginia. Mainly because I've had a theory all season the reason Virginia wasn't promoted to main cast was because she was going to be written off by the end of the first half of the season, and so when she got bit in this episode I automatically assumed "and here we are." Well, guess I was wrong.

Danay Garcia must have one hell of an agent, considering she has main cast billing and is therefore being paid for every episode despite this being the first of six that have aired that she appears in. Similar situation in the third season, she barely appeared that year, but was listed in the main cast and thus paid for all of the episodes.

 

Whatever the case may be, Garcia is so underused that viewers could forget Luciana ever existed if a another two episodes aired without her. As it stands right now, I'm not certain she's in next week's mid-season finale, which--from previews--appears to focus on Alicia, Strand and Morgan. If that's the case, once again, Luciana may be a footnote on the show.

 

It'll be interesting to see how big of an impact losing the gas will have on the communities. Do we know how far apart the communities are?
I was starting to think they might kill off Virginia for a minute there.
I'm sad to see John leave so soon after getting back together June, but after his last episode I can understand needing to get our of there. Hopefully he'll find Morgan and his people.
It was nice to finally see Luciana again.
I was surprise to see Wendell again. I wonder when this films in relation to NCIS: New Orleans, which features Daryl Mitchell as cast members. I hope for his sake there's a fairly big one, because I can't imagine it would fun to be constantly flying back and forth between NoLA, and Texas, especially as a person in a wheelchair.
So the spray painters are a bigger group than just the two guys.

 

^ The problem is that John is acting like a child who was just told that Santa is fiction. He's living in the zombie apocalypse--a reality resetting event if ever there was one--and he's still thinking he can play this straight "law and order" act around people who clearly revealed that they do not run their fiefdoms in a way that would work well with his philosophy of one. He learned nothing from Morgan--that any true law and order society cannot stand should to shoulder or mix with tyrants. How can John not know that--or is he...dumb?

 

He seems more naïve than stupid to me, though I guess in a zombie apocalypse there isn't much difference in the two concepts.

 

And this week's focus was on June, with a little help from Luciana and Sarah-- but still no sign of Grace. We got a couple of surprise developments that I'm not sure will turn out as expected.

June is a doctor now, for all intents and purposes, working for Virginia but motivated by a desire to save people. That's not easy, given the conditions and her lack of training, and the old medical drama trope of the doc trying to resuscitate a dead patient took a grisly twist when the patient woke up hungry. As if this wasn't bad enough, she had to deal with a massive disaster at the oil well-- which turned out to be sabotage. Those graffiti artists mean business. It looks like our heroes will be stuck between a rock and a hard place, and maybe needing to choose the lesser of two evils.

In our first twisted turn, Virginia was actually bitten by a Zombie-- but will perhaps be the second known person saved from this fatal wound by amputation. Or will she? They argued about it for quite a while before it was done, and I wonder if Virginia may start having to hide symptoms before too long. But in the meantime, she is indebted to June and has agreed to give her a hospital-- thus cancelling her plan to run off with Dorie.

Which brings us to our seconds twisted turn-- Dorie has seemingly chosen escape from Virginia over June, heading down the road to his old cabin. Which sounds like a really bad plan to me if it's that close to Pioneer Central. This was quite a surprise, but could very well be a red herring with Dorie returning to June next week, or whenever we see them again.

 

A tiny uptick in viewers for this episode - 1.27 million up from 1.24 million... People really should give this show another chance - this is the best season yet!

 

Eh, I'm not sure how she could. I mean, death and turning typically happens within a day of being bitten, right? She's not really going to be fooling anyone for very long if she does try to hide her symptoms.

 

True--its fine to not lose yourself to corruption and brutality if you are not actively trying to live next to and/or influence those who have fully embraced the immoral "anything goes" philosophy. It makes me wonder how Dorie can survive in this Virginia arc (other than plot armor).

Grace seems to be saved for some big reveal--either she successfully delivered her child, she died in childbirth (leading to a flashback episode to her life after being separated from the others), or perhaps there's more to her than she ever let Morgan and Company know. There are still unanswered questions about her.

...which might play into Strand's plan to disrupt Virginia's group from the inside--or modify that plan to usurp her authority, if that's even possible with her loyalists. Then again, in the coming mid-season finale, Virginia questions Strand about his own loyalties, so the heroes may not get the chance to take over, forced to--as you say--accept the lesser of two evils.

I have the suspicion that their romance will not end well; she's too convinced that she's the "I'm not gonna lose a patient, damnit!!" kind of doctor, while Dorie wants the word to operate in an honor/justice system that barely exists anymore. There's no way he would have survived The Governor, Terminus or Negan's view on life.

 

Didn't it take Carl a long time to get noticeably sick? Plus the amputation could have slowed the spread of the disease through her system.

I hope so. I'd like to see her with a higher profile for a while.

Hopefully they don't kill him off. He's too lovable.

 

It seemed like a long time from our perspective since it was spread out over a few episodes, but within the show's timeline it wasn't any longer than a few days. I'd be surprised if it was even three. Hell, I think that whole season only takes place over the course of a few weeks, not much longer than a month.

Dorie appears to be the show's moral compass, and such characters almost inevitably meet horrible deaths in this franchise.

 

I noticed something back towards the beginning of the season, and I'm curious how significant it will be as the season goes on. Dakota is listed as a regular on Wikipedia, while Virginia is just "supporting cast", which I'm assuming means she's just recurring. Usually their pretty quick to promote their season Big Bads to the regular cast, so I'm wondering if Virgiania won't make it all the way through the season. So based on that, I'm thinking Virginia will end up dead somewhere before the end of the season, and Dakota will end up being a part of the main group.
The big question for me what will happen to Virgian's communities once she's gone. Will one of the main characters take over, will we get an ally of our heroes in charge, or will someone even worse take over?

 

Thanks for the spoilers...

 

There are no spoilers involved, everything there beyond the cast list is purely guesswork on my part.
And as far as I know, cast lists are not considered spoilers.

 

Ah, okay. It's hard to keep track sometimes.

It seems like both shows have been doing better with that lately.

That's the problem with a power vacuum. Someone will take over.

 

It worked for Hershel. Admittedly, his amputation was a bit quicker than Virginia's but both were within minutes after being bitten, so she--like Hershel--should be fine.

...well, on that note...

...there's that.

 

In case you all haven't noticed, the tone of these shows has significantly changed in the last few seasons. Lessons from the original walking dead series might no longer apply.

 

That's exactly what I was thinking-- that Herschel's amputation was done far more quickly. There was a lot of arguing and fighting with Virginia. If even one little Zombie cell made it past the amputation point....

 

Well, Virginia appears in the mid-season finale, and she's not pale or sweaty in the manner of Carl in his last two episodes, so I think she will be around. Plus, her losing a hand might lead her to take it out on one of the heroes, probably using it as bait for Morgan.