RECAP: Fear The Walking Dead “Not Fade Away” [Episode 4]

Under the sun in L.A., Nick lounges in the pool, Travis jogs the neighborhood, Daniel keeps a watchful eye as surviving neighbors gather to talk in their driveways, and Chris uses his video camera to document what is essentially the end. He narrates the video with talk about neighbors being ushered away, “somewhere East” but no one knows where. It has been nine days since the lights went out, the fences went up, and the soldiers arrived – and they are still in the dark about what is really going on.  As he waxes poetic about nature taking back everything she’s ever given, he picks up a flashing signal from outside the gates.  

Maddie has her priorities straight – she wants the family room painted, again, when it was just painted the week before. As if someone is going to come to an open house, Alicia snaps.  The power flickers, briefly, giving hope and then dashing it.  That dashed hope is perfect for sparking the simmering  tension between Travis and Maddie.  She snaps about not knowing where his ex-wife goes during the day. He snaps in response and reminds her that Liza is out helping others who are ill.  It leads Alicia to scream at them to stop pretending they are a normal couple in a normal situation. While Travis is busy trying to appease the ever unhappy Maddie, Chris has a mirror and is trying to make contact with the person on the outside of the fence.  Travis pretty much tells him it is all in his head.  Is Travis weak, as Daniel charged, or afraid that if someone is out there he will be obliged to help and put his family at risk?

Nick is next on Maddie’s hit list. He left his pill on the counter.  He claims he doesn’t need it, and has to kick his habit, anyway.  He wants Griselda to have it.  Another role reversal, Maddie is now saying no, that Nick  has to wean slowly. (#WhyDoesntSheBiteItAlready?)  She leaves the pill for him to take if he needs it – telling him to not be a hero.  Truly heroic, and sadly overly confident, soldiers at a community meeting proclaim that those behind the fence are the lucky ones. They are infection free for at least six miles in the zone. They are in one of 12 safe zones south of the San Gabriels, but the soldiers are in no mood to answer any questions beyond their statements. While Ofelia flirts with one of the soldiers handing out supplies, Travis is asked to help one of the residents, Doug, who is refusing to submit to the routine health screenings everyone has been required to submit to. He doesn’t seem to be ill, just afraid and exhausted. Another unattended Clark-Manawa kid takes advantage of being unsupervised. Alicia is back at SuSu and Patrick’s, remembering them, missing them.  

Liza is with a resident, Hector, who is clearly dying and on a morphine drip. His wife is desperate to keep Liza with the two of them, offering soup made from the squash in her garden.  I only hope her garden isn’t close to the Clark-Manawa backyard where the dog and Mr. Lawson are buried (#runoff – and you know the writers would go there!)  As Liza leaves, we begin to understand why Nick is so jolly and brave in beating his addiction. He watches Hector’s wife leave to tend the garden and sneaks into their home to steal Hector’s drip, shooting up between his toes and leaving the man in pain, probably to die sooner.  Sorry, writers, but I need a freakin’ two-for-one deal, here.  Let Nick and Maddie go, together… SOON! Since this is ep 4 in a 6 ep arc, I know I won’t get it, but a fan can dream.

Ofelia and her soldier boyfriend are dangerously unaware of their surroundings, making out near the fence.  She has to slow him down as he starts to remove her shirt.  I was hoping we wouldn’t hear the question she utters next. She wants to know if he has medication for her mother. He doesn’t. The military is gearing up to take the city back and there are no spare meds.  Is their relationship real, or an exchange of goods?  He certainly seems to be into her.  Even if Ofelia is stringing this guy along, it’s not as bad as the next scene: Maddie and Travis having make up sex in the back of a car in the garage. I would rather watch a walker on the loose, folks. Sorry. Luckily it is cut short by Maddie, who begins arguing with Travis when he tells she’s being hot and cold – hovering over her kids one minute and then aloof the next. She tells him to try giving his own kid positive attention and begins discussing the video Chris took. She has heard about the “quarantine camps” from the neighborhood gossip and wonders if Chris really picked up on something (someone) out there. Travis is still in doubt. Maddie wonders why the promises of doctors, medicine, electricity, and phones have not materialized… why are there no landlines? Just then Maria, Doug’s wife, shows up to inform everyone that he has taken his beloved car, left his family behind, and is missing.  

Doug’s empty car is found outside the fence the next morning. He was found by the soldiers, crying sitting in his car.  He has been shifted to “headquarters” to get the psychological  help he needs.  Travis is dubbed “Mr. Mayor’ by the officer in charge when he dresses them down for not telling Doug’s wife< Maria, and leaving her to worry. As  a goodwill gesture, Travis reports the lights Chris saw (and the person Maddie made contact with while Travis was out).  Strangely enough,  the information is seemingly  ignored.  Things get even stranger when we learn that Hector has also been “transferred” to a government medical facility and is being questioned by a new player on the scene, “Dr Exner”.  His wife is next to be transported with him. That can’t be good. Here is something even worse…Maddie brilliantly cuts the fence to go looking around outside. She gags at the stench of corpses lying around- corpses she has to hide next to in order to conceal herself from patrolling soldiers.

At home, Liza’s work has changed the luck of the Salazars and the Clarks. Exner has come to meet Griselda and treat her leg, offering to take her in for surgery. She asks Nick about his need for Methadone while examining him. He lies and says he is fine, but is unpleasantly shocked to learn that Hector Ramirez has been moved. Exner is not fooled by the lie. As Exner is leaving Maddie returns and tells Daniel what she’s seen, seemingly healthy individuals who were shot and killed. Daniel recounts experiencing disappearances in his village when he was a child. They washed up in the river where he was fishing, shortly after.

We hear the infamous line learned from his father (paraphrasing) “men do evil because of fear, not because they are evil.” He realized then his father was a fool for thinking there was a difference. If it happens, it will happen quickly, he says, and Maddie  must be prepared.  She is confused by his warning (of course). He tells Maddie he is going with his wife, if he doesn’t return she has to look after his daughter, for him. He tells her to keep her son close. The only person with vision in the group and he’s leaving them to fend for themselves? This can’t be good either.

Real Nick returns, angrily searching for drugs. in Hector’s room.  He callously asks, “What do you want me to say?”, when his mother catches him.   It prompts Maddie to ask, “You don’t know?”. The questions unleash a bitch slap beat down that scares the hell out of him (and me). She literally beats a stunned Nick into a corner and leaves him there.  Wrong? Yes.  Impressive?  Most definitely!  At home, Nick refuses to let Alicia into the bathroom but finally relents when she offers to go get their mother.  She is stunned by her brother’s bruised and swollen face.  Maddie is in the garage crying and just as Travis is about to approach, the soldiers come to take Griselda. The soldiers won’t take Daniel, and are there to take Nick instead. Exner talks Liza into going, promising she will be able to return.  She tells Liza that Griselda and the others need her.  Instead of being grateful that Liza went with Nick and Griselda to protect them, Maddie blames Liza.  At the end, Alicia is under her covers reading the letter she took from Susu’s.  It was a suicide note, stating that the time has come and she  hopes Patrick will hold her one day again.  

One last betrayal.  Travis is on the roof, looking out over at the city, sick with worry for his family when he sees gunshot flashes.  The shots are coming from the building where Chris made contact,  His seemingly ignored report was, most likely, used to hunt down a survivor.

 

 

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