There Are Spoilers In Our Fear The Walking Dead: The Wrong Side Of Where You Are Now Review – Episode Discussion
So this week’s episode of Fear The Walking Dead just went to air and it picks up pretty much immediately where last week’s episode ended, with a standoff between Alicia’s group and the Vultures. We also flash back to the past where Madison makes a tough decision to give medical treatment to her enemy.
One of the big things that happened at the end of last week’s episode was to do with its cliffhanger. Right at the end we saw Alicia shoot John and he went down pretty quick. Now there’s always the possibility he could be dead, but we are not TV show novices here, this isn’t the first person we have potentially seen die at the end of a TV show episode now is it?
So this week’s episode airs and John is pretty much okay, but he’s injured and he’s going to need treatment. This later on means that John, Morgan, Althea and Laura are on a quest to go back to the baseball camp and get John some treatment. Not much more happens with these characters until the end. We see them get to the old camp where Madison and everyone live, but it’s ruined and full of walkers. They get trapped there and this is probably something we’ll explore next week I think. There’s also a little alluded to about Althea, I think she’s likely to get an episode next week or at least very soon as we haven’t explored her story at all.
In the present, not too much happens. But we see a continuation of what I call ‘ruthless Alicia’. There’s a moment where the leader of Vultures is trying to escape after a shoot out. Laura is chasing him as she’s trying to get medicine for an injured John, then out of nowhere Alicia blows up his truck, with the guy inside! It’s the best moment of the episode easily and I love that she just blew him up. Even more so, he comes crawling out and is almost dead and she finishes him off in most gruesome way possible, no mercy given.
That’s it basically, Melvin’s out of the show! Is that all for the Vultures now though? Or is there another leader of them out there and also where in the world is Madison??
Although I like what Alicia did in the present, I don’t really like the story we get for the flashback. We see Melvin, who is the guy Alicia just killed and we see how he was taken in and treated by Madison and the group there. Why would you bother to treat someone who established himself firmly as your enemy is unknown to me, but it happened, they treat him. Eventually Madison has enough of him and becomes suspicious and Melvin gets kicked out. Alicia and others feel sorry for him and go out to rescue him, on their way back their camp is attacked by The Vultures and is filled with Walkers. My problem with all of this is why would our characters even bother with this guy? My second problem is with the flash back storytelling. It’s annoying to have characters killed in the present, then have an episode flash back to the past so we can learn and feel for who that person was. If the story was told in proper order his death would have great meaning as we would have got to know him quite well. But to be honest, I don’t care about the character. Also why would Alicia and the rest just sit in the parking lot and let their car get surrounded by the Walkers? What are they doing?
There’s still some more to go with Madison’s camp as we never saw what happened to Madison and why it was that Alicia thought that Laura was dead. There’s also quite a lot of questions about who Althea really is, we probably need an episode to get to know her. I think I can feel another flash back to the past coming. How long can they keep this storytelling going though?
Overall I enjoyed the side of the episode in the present and I like the direction for Alicia’s character at the moment. The flashback’s the past seem to me to be little odd now and the decisions that characters made in this episode seemed really silly to me. The show can at times be slow, but when the action episodes do come, I always think they do things pretty well. Alicia blowing up that truck was enough for me and impaling that leader not long after was great. Laura and the rest will probably be the focus for next week as they got into a lot of trouble, but I do wonder what will happen with Alicia and her group now in the present, it seems their arc is over, they just need to find Madison now I guess. Also when will we see Madison again? It’s been so long now, is she even alive?
Fear The Walking Dead airs every Monday on Showcase on Foxtel at 1:30pm and 7:30pm. Weekly reviews and episode discussions on Resident Entertainment.