‘What lies beyond the wall is worse than death. It is a wasteland. It is the end’
Finally, a really great episode! The show decided to stop being oblique about its intentions and murky about its existential philosophy and offered up a solid hour where themes of motherhood, family, imprisonment and faith reverberated throughout disparate storylines. Each storyline featured a major conflict between someone in power and a subordinate, in which the lesser person took control. The fights between Nick and Alejandro, Madison and Alicia, and Ofelia and the ghost of her mother signified that the next generation has to take over in order to survive.
For Nick that means taking the best interests of the colony into his own hands, even if that isn’t what Alejandro, the founder and leader, wants. When one family goes missing and the colony doesn’t exchange Oxycontin for water with Marco and his gang at the supermarket, Nick knows the warlord will come looking for them. It takes a junkie to know a junkie. Alejandro doesn’t let anyone leave and ends up in a quarrel with Nick, telling him he never asked to be put in a position of power and doesn’t want it. He’s also just waiting for some sort of spiritual awakening that he’s convinced is on the horizon.
Nick says: “You’re waiting for faith to work, for the dead to wash the world clean. The danger is now. It’s coming.”
Nick eventually goes behind Alejandro’s back to attempt to make the meeting with Marco happen. His new lover Luci doesn’t want him disobeying either her or Alejandro, so when Nick ventures out of the colony and Marco spots him on the rooftop, marking it as their home, he’s going to be in very big trouble.
‘I understand grief, but this is a bit extreme’
Eileen, the mother of zombie bride Jessica who Strand offed at the end of last episode, is so upset she knocks on his hotel door and stabs him right in the gut. And just when everything was going so well! They had planted crops, they got the generator working, there was even a clean bar, surfing lessons, and all the ice they could eat. It was like a regular Peroni commercial.
In order to get medical supplies to save Strand, Elena takes Madison to Marco’s Gang Supermarket and Looting Spoils Emporium. Elena’s nephew Antonio is a member of the gang and she wants to trade with them, and maybe convince him to join his brother Hector back at the hotel. It would seem like the big event of this episode is the trip to the supermarket and the intel that Madison gets about Nick, but I think that isn’t looking far enough into the future. The real big incident is when Madison locks up Eileen “indefinitely” for stabbing Strand and says that if anyone raises a hand to someone else, they get thrown out of the hotel. I have a feeling that pronouncement is going to come back to haunt her.
‘I would have done anything for you. That is love’
Well, we finally figured out what happened to Ofelia – she took off in a pickup truck. Yup, that’s it. Now she’s off on her own, remembering the time that guy proposed to her and then moved to New Mexico and she decided to stay with her parents. But we already know how it ends because Ofelia told this story to Nick in a previous episode. Where was our spoiler alert?
But it’s not the fiancé that’s important, it’s her mother. She recalls the conversation they had when her mother told her that her father had seen so many awful things he still had nightmares. She wanted to spare Ofelia from a life where she was a part of all that evil. Too bad she failed, because now everyone is living that life. But Ofelia’s mom tells her that the way they managed was to stick together, and as Ofelia remembers this she says that she finally understands and drives her truck toward the US. Wait, does that mean she’s going back to the hotel to be with her new “family”, or does that mean she’s abandoning them? Is she going to look for her father who might still be alive? What is her decision?
‘Turn it off. The whole world can see it’
The biggest conflict of the episode, and the season really, is the one that has been slowly building between Alicia and Madison. Alicia feels like her mother has always neglected her to take care of her father and Nick. Madison returns from the supermarket frantic to find Nick. (Seriously, did she think that rushing a bunch of Mexican gang members for information about her “ratty-haired gringo” son was a good idea?) She powers up the generator to turn on the sign at the top of the hotel, trying to signal to Nick but also signaling their presence to anyone who can see it.
Alicia has to take control the situation and talk some sense into her mother. Earlier, in the van on the way to the supermarket, Madison told Elena not to give up on her nephew, who joined the gang and wouldn’t come live at the hotel. She’s speaking like the mother of a junkie who never gave up on her son. But Alicia lets her know that is time to give up. Nick chose to go live out in the chaos of the apocalypse and she can’t sacrifice their safety in order to woo him back. Alicia has chosen to stay with her and make things work, and it’s time that Madison make a home for her.
She relents and shuts the sign off, but not before Travis, seemingly having left his own son behind, sees it and starts to make his way toward the hotel. Even the cliffhanger at the end was subtle but good.
