Fear the Walking Dead
Season 6 / Episode 10 - "Handle with Care"
Daniel: "you could see why I was hopeful...then it all changed." The opening certainly ended with a eye-opener, that being Daniel locked in a cell.
The second he recalled storing all weapons, I thought the harmony he expressed in the framing story was going south. All of the group members (A and B characters) were at each others' throats, all accusing each other of using the dynamite to cause a distraction (to steal the guns) and draw a crowd of walkers to the unarmed group, but that would still require the culprit to expose himself as the thief once the walkers overrun the sanctuary, so Daniel's suspicion seemed odd from the start. That said, the story was good in painting characters as so shady that any one of them could have been guilty.
This was an interesting study of Daniel falling apart, coupled with his history of suspicious behavior leading him to dream up phantom thefts he was responsible for, blaming Strand, and claiming he told Grace to go to a location that may have led to her (and Charlie's) death. We were meant to believe he's still putting on an act, or perhaps suffering from the early onset of Alzheimer's. June believed its psychosomatic, and in a good callback to season two's "Shiva" (S2, E7), Daniel himself remembers how he set Celia's cellar on fire, while hallucinating the image of his wife--and his victims, so there's precedent for his current breakdown.
Strand: It did not take long for Daniel to suspect Strand of stealing the weapons, and while Strand has been self-serving on several occasions, there were enough hostile personalities among them to not think of Strand as suspect #1, despite the fact he held on to his own gun.
The most positive outcome of the episode was Strand--Daniel's eternal suspect--to offer to care for him...more for the late Ofelia than Daniel himself. Despite the agreement for the groups to work together, Strand has clearly had enough of Morgan, or his demands, not just about Daniel, but in general.
Grace: I was hoping her issues was not teasing a bad end, but she's threatened so often (by Virginia on a couple of occasions, and by Daniel sending her to a potentially dangerous shack), that it makes me feel the showrunners are stringing the audience along with "will we / won't we" teases, only to catch viewers off guard by finally killing her off in the near future.
NOTES:
Next week is the beginning of a new threat (or promise) as the heroes finally run into the "End is the Beginning" group.
GRADE: A.
