‘The game has changed. We return to the old rules’
Well, we’re five episodes in, one episode away from the end of this first season, and we finally meet our first breakout character of the series.
I don’t think we learned his name in the episode, but according to IMDb his name is Strand – he’s played by Broadway veteran Colman Domingo – and he is just absolutely awesome. He has a low, raspy drawl and, as one of the best salesmen in LA, can talk anyone into anything. He can even talk Travis’s neighbor Doug, already emotionally frayed, into a complete nervous breakdown. God, I love this guy. He’s like Deadwood’s Al Swearingen but, you know, from the apocalyptic future instead of the grimy past.
Strand is taking care of Nick, who is going through serious withdrawal in a makeshift cell in some giant holding pen somewhere in downtown Los Angeles. Why is Strand there? It’s unclear, but you know it can’t be anything good. Strand is supposed to be a malevolent force, but when he saves Nick from going “downstairs”, where surely those about to turn into zombies are taken, Strand makes a bargain with one of the guards to keep Nick in the cell.
It seems like he might actually be a good guy, but he informs Nick he didn’t save him. “I obligated you. It’s different,” he says. He’s just like the devil, offering people what they really want, but for a price somewhere down the road, one that is surely going to twist them up morally inside.
Strand seems to know just what is going to go on now that the plague has come and he is ready to bust out of this holding cell for a shot at survival. He needs a man with Nick’s talents to help him out. (“You’re a heroin addict,” he tells Nick. “They’re the gold standard. Don’t sell yourself short.”) Strand really calls attention to the theme of this episode, that the world has changed and those who aren’t willing to sacrifice will die.
‘The man with the blade and the man in the chair are no different. They both suffer. Which one will I be?’
Daniel Salazar is definitely willing to do what it takes, and I like how the slow introduction of details about his life in El Salvador has created someone really conflicted. He asks whether he would be the man with the knife or the man in the chair and while he says he suffered for his decision, once he’s flaying the skin off the soldier’s arm it’s clear what his decision was then and what his decision is now.
Like he says, the man with the knife suffers too, and in this case he suffers by losing the love of his daughter and the respect of Travis – if he ever actually had it. They think he’s turning into a monster, but he knows he is just giving everyone in his crew the information to survive.
Maddie is also conflicted. Daniel asks her if she doesn’t want the soldier hurt or if she doesn’t want to know about it. It seems, initially, like it would be the latter, but eventually she doesn’t really care at all. When she finds out that Daniel is torturing him she asks: “Did he tell us what we need to know?”
Maddie learned really quickly that at the end of the world, the means justify the ends.
They did get very good information out of the soldier: that “Cobalt” is about to take place. The troops are set to evacuate LA and move to a more strategic location. That means leaving survivors behind to fend for themselves and the “humane termination” of everyone who is being held in the LA base. To our crew of survivors, that means Nick, Grizelda and possibly Liza are going to get shot or gassed or something else horrible.
We also learn that the army locked a bunch of walkers in the LA Coliseum alongside a bunch of people who weren’t sick yet, essentially sacrificing them as they join the undead, or at least become an all-you-can-eat zombie buffet.
I’m not entirely sure why Daniel goes to the Coliseum at the end of the episode. Is he going to break them all out and use them as some sort of way to get back at the army? Did he just need to go see it for himself to believe it was happening? Regardless of his motivation, the zombies pushing against the door to break free and eat his smooshy little brains were frightening enough to send him back a few paces.
‘Mr Mayor, you’re up’
It’s been clear since the start of this ordeal that Travis is too idealistic to survive the new world order. When he finally gets his courage up and confronts Moyers about taking him to the LA base so he can check on Nick and Liza – but mostly Liza, to shut up his sniveling son, Chris – the trip into town goes disastrously wrong.
First the convoy happens upon a lone walker hanging out in a doughnut shop. Moyers instructs Travis to kill the zombie. Travis is reticent because he is a decent human being, but there is no room for that here. Moyers makes a very persuasive case for killing her, saying that if Travis won’t kill her, he must think that there is something human about her, which there clearly is not. Also, if he won’t kill her, he must think that the soldiers that are keeping him safe are vicious murderers, mowing down hordes of humans to maintain order. (Well, they kind of did, but Travis doesn’t know that definitively yet.)
Though he gets behind the gun, Travis can’t do it, fixating on her nametag. “Kimberly”, it says. That is enough to make Travis wimp out. He’s still transfixed by the humanity of her name, thinking about who she must have been and trying to honor the life she had by letting her reanimated corpse go hunting for a meal that is far warmer and more deadly than a chocolate glazed. As we’ve learned on The Walking Dead: Original Recipe, such sentimentality will get you nothing but killed.
Even Moyers, who seems like he has what it takes to survive, doesn’t make it. When the troops bust into an office building to rid it of walkers, most of the convoy, including its leader, doesn’t survive.
Maybe there is some balance to achieve between aggression and passivity that is the sweet spot for survival. Maybe we should call it passive aggression. No, wait…
‘One slip up and we all find out how the neighbors taste’
Both of the women in Travis’s life seem better equipped to deal with the outbreak than he is. While helping triage the sick, Liza is mostly concerned about helping Grizelda and Nick. Dr Exner tells Liza she is fixated on saving six people when she could save 6,000. Basically, she’s telling Liza the same thing that Moyers is telling Travis: let go of your attachment to these people, because focusing on the details is going to ruin the big picture.
By the end of the episode, Liza finally comes around. When Grizelda dies from septic shock after having her foot amputated, Liza is the one who gives her a blunt force trauma to the skull in order to keep her from turning. She honors Grizelda’s life by doing the right thing for her in her death. That and she doesn’t want everyone to be attacked by a zombie. Liza has seen the horrors of what making it in this world entail, and she’s not afraid to do the right thing.
Dead ends
- Chris remains the absolute worst, first insulting Maddie to her face and then refusing to apologize, like some petulant child. (Oh wait, he is a petulant child.) Then he starts crushing on his future stepsister Alicia, which is gross. Finally he and Alicia trash a rich person’s house, mostly because they are bored and they might have some sort of class rage in them. God, what wasted minutes we spent with these two this episode.
- Why does Nick look like a goth teenager going to Siouxsie Sioux night at the local discotheque? Is that what kicking heroin looks like?
- Isn’t it a little crazy how Strand does his negotiation with the crooked guard in front of all the prisoners? Wouldn’t they be upset if they thought Nick was a danger to them and might turn into zombies? Wouldn’t they all start bribing the guards for whatever they wanted?
- What the hell happened to the people living in the house that were flashing the light at Chris and Maddie a couple of episodes ago? Has everyone just forgotten about them? Apparently Chris would rather lust after his sister and play around rather than save lives. Some idealist he is!
