When your boat breaks down in a world slowly being eaten by zombies, it doesn’t take an engineer to guess what’s wrong – some breakdowns stink and some actually, physically stink. Travis didn’t need to go all Jacques Cousteau to discover that some disgusting zombie guts were gumming up the works, but he uses what mechanical ability he has to pull a rotting hand from the pipes and get the boat in gear before a herd of zombies comes after the characters.
He doesn’t want to be the help – and his exchange with Strand, who is both appreciative and insistent, was amazing – but he saves the day. Thanks for getting the job done, Travis, though you might never forget the smell.
‘Don’t keep us at the kids’ table’
While the boat is stalled, the kids have an awful idea, which seems to be all that they do. They want to loot the baggage of a crashed airplane visible on the coast, thinking it’ll hold supplies, but of course this is the wreckage of Flight 462, of the “zombies on a plane” web series that AMC started running – a spinoff within a spinoff. Unfamiliar with the new ways of cable marketing, Daniel agrees to take the kids in search of antibiotics for Ofelia.
Chris, who remains the worst, does what comes naturally. He wanders off and finds a survivor and two zombies in some wreckage. He seems to enjoy dispatching the zombie, but is tortured by the survivor, whose injuries are so severe that his spine is exposed. Chris decides the most humane thing is to kill the doomed man, but, being Chris, when he finally manages the task, he’s hunky-dory, as if the wrenching experience had no emotional impact at all. He may yet become one of the series’ rare protagonists that you hope ends up on the wrong side of a walker.
Alicia isn’t as bad as Chris, but she’s close. When the zombie herd is running for the group and she finds out Nick is alive, she wastes precious time hugging her brother instead of immediately getting on the raft. She, too, doesn’t seem to have learned a basic rule of the new world: there’s plenty of time to get all emo with relief once everyone is safe.
‘I was just hungry’
Nick again proves himself MVP of the kids, though it’s no high bar to pass and he suffers from some of their stupidity, maybe by association. He finds a captain’s shirt for himself and a floppy hat for Alicia, and most importantly, he finds rosary beads and the right medication.
Then he finds himself in a pit where blue crabs are eating a zombie. If anything, it’s amazing that a show this gory can still find ways to surprise us with its imagination for the disgusting ways people can die.
When Daniel, Chris, Alicia, and the airplane’s mystery woman are about to be done in by the zombies, Nick comes and saves them, covered in zombie blood. He has learned the oldest trick in the Walking Dead book: if you smell like a zombie, they leave you alone. But between this discovery, the rosary and the zombie clogging the boat, this episode felt like a string of recycled plot devices from the original series: can we get some fresh material, please?
Nick explains his competence as an extension of his junkie life in the pre-apocalyptic world. He survives by faking death, just as he did when he was an addict. After getting back to the boat, however, he only gives Ofelia the rosary beads. (Sorry, Nick, but you’re no Carol.) What happened to the drugs? Did he leave them behind? Were they painkillers he took for himself? Who knows?
‘You still don’t trust me’
When Daniel finds out Strand is headed for Baja – Mexico, not California, for those of you who missed geography – he tells Madison and thinks she’s the best to confront Strand. He’s right, but Strand still blows up and insists that his rules are the only ones that matter. Still, he seems to have a bit of a breakthrough, agreeing to let them come along.
Turns out he has a fortress with food, water and even gardens – gardens! I don’t know what the apocalypse would be like if we couldn’t hide away in the scent of some pretty flowers. Travis isn’t so keen on going, though perhaps not for the right reason: what’s the difference between being trapped with Strand on a boat and trapped with Strand in a fortified home? Not much. Madison’s right in that they need a destination, if only for a sense of purpose.
This being Strand, it’s all still a bit sketchy. He can’t get whomever is supposed to be on the other end of the satellite phone to pick up. When they do, it’s a bad connection. Is the satellite compromised or there is something wrong with Rosarita?
‘This is the worst’
Daniel brings Charlie, the woman who survived the flight, and her burned friend back to the boat. We know she’s suffered through a lot and even killed off a couple of the other survivors to keep her hurt friend alive.
Strand insists that they can’t come on the boat because the boy will die and be infected. It seems like an effort to preserve his precious rules. Alicia freaks out about setting them loose and Travis has her back, eventually coming up with the solution: tow them behind the boat until they get to San Diego. “This is the best I can do,” Madison tells them sadly.
As the boat pulls away, Madison looks back wistfully, watching the yellow raft get farther and farther away. Charlie tries to soothe her burned charge, saying this is the worst it will ever be and that that must mean hope for the future. Then Strand charges down and severs the tow line, setting them adrift, crushing Madison’s heart and erasing any trust he had accrued.
We were promised that one of the survivors from the flight would have a role on the show and I hope that Charlie comes back in some capacity. Karma is cruel in the land of The Walking Dead, and it can be in ours too: if all Charlie got was a glorified cameo, fans should be pissed. If Chris survives for the rest of the season, the should be livid. Can’t we trade Charlie for Chris? Can it get any worse than him?
