S06.E14: Mother

[nodorothyparker]

Airdate 2021.05.23

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While held prisoner by Teddy, Alicia reunites with old friends and must confront her past. 

 

[DrNowsWeightScale]

All in all, that was a pretty good episode.

It held my attention. I found it entertaining.

I hate Dakota even more now than I did before. It's bad enough she murdered John Dorie, but now, she's siding with Teddy the cult leader against Alicia!

As I said in the Live Thread, Dakota now reminds me of the little girl who gets brainwashed by the cult leader (played by Chris Hemsworth) in the movie "Bad Times at El Royale."

In the original show, Carol realized the only way to take out mentally disturbed, twisted people (in a time when there's no more mental health treatment facilities, etc) was to make them "look at the flowers."

Unless Dakota has a change of course, I'd like for someone to get her to "look at the flowers," if you catch my drift.

Dakota can maybe only redeem herself with me at this point if she realizes she was wrong to kill Dorie Jr, and if she rescues June and/or John Dorie Sr. (if the occasion arises for that).

I'm going to have to re-watch this episode to see what the deal was with Teddy locking Alicia up in that cell.

Does he want her to survive the nuclear holocaust he's planning?
If so, why? (If he explained that, I missed it).

I totally forgot who Cole was, and so I had to google him (Cole: Season 4 Fear the Walking Dead Wiki Site).

Even though this episode had more of that Group A vs Group B (vs Group C) type fighting go on, which I find tiresome, I think the way it was handled in this particular episode made it interesting.

That whole thing with Teddy taking the corpse out of the grave and putting it on the back of the pick-up was bonkers.

I liked the brief take on what the apocalypse looked like at the out-set, when the show did the flash back to Teddy in his jail cell.
I wish this show had done more of that over the past several seasons.

I like the actor playing Teddy. I think he's doing a great, entertaining job playing this character. 

BTW, sorry to nit pick about clothing on this show again...
but they are in Texas, where it gets quite hot and humid in summers, early fall, later spring, etc., but the living folks on the show keep wearing things like long sleeved shirts, denim jackets, heavy-ish jackets with wool collars, sweaters, etc.

I lived in Texas (and other gulf coast states) for many years, and you do not wear that much clothing in the warmer months there - you would swelter.

But anyway - good episode tonight, IMO. 

Edited May 24, 2021 by DrNowsWeightScale

[TWOPrefugee]

Completely agree with the questions and confusion due to clothing in this show. My theory is that the zombie virus has also caused some sort of polar shift/continental drift resulting in cooler dryer temps, land upheaval, and droughts of historical magnitude and after seeing the preview for the next episode, you can add receding ocean levels that cause friggin' submarines to run aground in the middle of treed vistas.

[BasilSeal]

5 hours ago, DrNowsWeightScale said:

6 hours ago, DrNowsWeightScale said:

Does he want her to survive the nuclear holocaust he's planning?
If so, why? (If he explained that, I missed it).

That whole thing with Teddy taking the corpse out of the grave and putting it on the back of the pick-up was bonkers.

this is my take on it.

when Teddy takes the body out of the tomb we assume he's just a standard issue Norman Bates psycho with mummy issues who is doing mad shit for, er, some reason. so the Mother of the title is his mother. Except it is revealed that the body is not his mother, just some random corpse he collected as part of an elaborate head fuck he's perpetrating on Alicia.

Teddy takes Alicia to the area near the stadium, in order to demonstrate to her that her own mother's sacrifice was in vain as everybody she tried to save died, he gets an unexpected bonus as some of the stadium redshirts turn up to be redshirted all over again. Teddy shows Alicia that the people Maddison sacrificed herself for are a bunch of double crossing shits and hence Maddison's sacrifice was in vain. Teddy's reasoning is that the world is full of people like  them, and they need to be destroyed in order that a new, better world can begin from the literal ashes of the old one.

The presence of the stadium redshirts is a call back to Alicia's own relationship with her mother, which in turn is paralleled by the mother / son relationship of Teddy and ties in with the parent / child theme which is important in fTWD. 

Teddy locks Alicia in the bunker because he has chosen her to be the leader of his envisioned brave new post nuke society, and in one sense the mother title refers to Alicia who will be the 'mother' of the new world.

[Lamima]

So if Teddy destroys the world, how does he expect Alicia to get out of the bunker?

[BasilSeal]

A wizard will do it, then run away.

[Starchild]

Can't figure out what kind of new world order Teddy wants though.

[nodorothyparker]

Teddy seems to be operating under the impression that if they wipe out most of humanity what's left will be better people and will build a better world. But they just lived through an extinction level event and that's obviously not the case with our current crop of survivors. So what exactly will be different if they winnow what's left even further?

The opening of this one was genuinely great, like made me remember what I originally loved about this franchise in the first place. John Glover may be chewing the scenery in spots, but he's an entertaining as hell villain in the way Negan was promised to be but never really delivered on. Turns out an escaped serial killer turned quirky chatty cult leader is made of win when every other word isn't "my dick, my balls" accompanied by over the top cartoon violence.

So I guess the deaths of the gang that couldn't shoot straight finally puts an end to all the internet theories and hopes that Madison is still around somewhere, maybe with someone else who might have survived the stadium fire. Teddy may be bonkers off slow dancing with random corpses who aren't his mother, but he wasn't wrong that her big huge sacrifice didn't really amount to much except for the continued existence of Alicia and Strand. And I still have no idea what exactly it is that convinces this crazy guy or really anybody that Alicia is the most special to ever special.

There really is no redeeming sister daughter after she jumped to sign up with Team Apocalypse 2.0 against yet another person who tried to help her. Please show, don't try.

[KeithJ]

53 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

Teddy seems to be operating under the impression that if they wipe out most of humanity what's left will be better people and will build a better world. But they just lived through an extinction level event and that's obviously not the case with our current crop of survivors. So what exactly will be different if they winnow what's left even further?

But he only has a single nuke on a washed up submarine that may or may not even launch.  Does he really think a single nuke will wipe out most of humanity?  His whole plan is nuts.

[nodorothyparker]

It totally is. Everyone in this story keeps acting like Teddy can singlehandedly wipe out all of humanity when in reality he has like, a missile or two washed up on a beach in east Texas. I guess at the point that mass media and long-distance mass travel is gone, east Texas might as well be the whole world as far as they're concerned even if none of our main players seem to be from there.

[GustavMahler]

Um..I guess they already know that the beached sub can be powered up and all of the complicated electronics needed to operate it works? Or do they just turn keys in a dead control panel and this will cause............wait, what kind of fool am I to go down such a rabbit hole?!

[BasilSeal]

18 minutes ago, GustavMahler said:

Um..I guess they already know that the beached sub can be powered up and all of the complicated electronics needed to operate it works? Or do they just turn keys in a dead control panel and this will cause............wait, what kind of fool am I to go down such a rabbit hole?!

the most obvious way round this would be if one of Teddy's minions (Riley?), turns out to have been a crew member on the sub

[raven]

MOTHER!

Can someone please kill Dakota?  That would be nice.

[GustavMahler]

10 hours ago, BasilSeal said:

the most obvious way round this would be if one of Teddy's minions (Riley?), turns out to have been a crew member on the sub

You make a good point but still, they are treating this sub like it is an Alka-Seltzer fueled bathtub toy.....

[BasilSeal]

14 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

I suppose that would depend on where he aims the missile.  Will he be able to aim it in a way that sets off a chain reaction.

I don't think Teddy's intention is to destroy the world, just his immediate surroundings. If there was some way he could wreak wider destruction, then we'd know he doesn't achieve his ambition, since the event's in this episode are happening in around 2012/13, but over in TWD original land it's already 2021, and they haven't been nuked.

He's looking to destroy as many communities as he can, including the rump of Virginia's empire controlled by Strand, and Morgan's new utopia in the dry lake bed. The dream episode was a metaphor for the impending loss of this possible peaceful future that the characters could have had there.

On 5/24/2021 at 3:21 AM, DrNowsWeightScale said:

BTW, sorry to nit pick about clothing on this show again...
but they are in Texas, where it gets quite hot and humid in summers, early fall, later spring, etc., but the living folks on the show keep wearing things like long sleeved shirts, denim jackets, heavy-ish jackets with wool collars, sweaters, etc.

So we're watching a show where the dead reanimate in a way that defies the laws of physics and the deal breaker for you is that none of them are wearing shorts? 😉

Actually this is a fair point, i suspect it's partly the practical issues you've already suggested, having long sleeves and long trousers means less zombie makeup. I suspect it similar to the rule that they never find any new things, it's all old vehicles and analogue electronics. The only time they ever used a new car was back in the prison season where rick was driving round in a 2013 Kia  SUV, even though the apocalypse happened in 2010. Clearly the thing to do is try to escape the US and move to South Korea, where they appear to have the zombie apocalypse sufficiently under control to be able to carry on with the production of reasonable priced family hatchbacks.

No one ever finds a CD or a DVD, it's all cassettes and VCR, to look at the things from the old world that appear in TWD, you'd think the apocalypse actually happened in 1988. Now this is partly a practical consideration, as  with the makeup being easier if the actors arms are covered, it's easier and cheaper to find a beat up old car that's actually been abandoned, than get a brand new car and make that look like it's been abandoned. I also think it's an aesthetic choice to use old stuff and have the zombies all dress in a particular way.  the old cars and consumer goods and the zombies, sorry walkers, all dressing in the same disintegrating grey clothes is, IMO, intended to add to the sense of decay and despair.

Ostensibly the TWD universe has been one where everything was the same as ours, except for the whole walking dead people thing, (and no one having seen a zombie movie). It's actually quite a stylized world though. TWD original tended to be dark and claustrophobic with the characters running round the same bit of badly lit woodland. Fear was initially much more brightly lit and expansive, it was quite different in 'look' to the original, but the more recent seasons have more towards the more gloomy decayed aesthetic of the original show.

The way the zombies are dressed is all part of a deliberate choice to create a specific look for the show, they also have the living characters dress in ways that evoke a western / cowboy aesthetic, where the characters find all these clothes is another matter.

Edited May 25, 2021 by BasilSeal

[Bulldog]

On 5/23/2021 at 10:21 PM, DrNowsWeightScale said:

I totally forgot who Cole was, and so I had to google him

I kept asking myself if we had actually ever seen him (and the only other two in the group with names) before.  I thought they might be some of those people Madison magically helped off screen.  I had absolutely no recollection of them.  Madison seems to be getting quite a bit of mentions lately.  I wonder if a return is in the works. 

Slightly off topic, but are tombs really that easy to get into?  TV and movies are always showing people opening up tombs with relative ease.  People seem to have no trouble digging up graves, or, in this case, opening up a mausoleum.   Aren't those things sealed in some way?  And in ground tombs rarely seem to have a vault that you have to get through to access the casket?  And can you really just pop open the lid to a casket?  Inquiring minds want to know.   (And I realize in this instance, Looney Toons has a background in the funeral industry, so maybe he has more knowledge than most, but it seems to be a fairly oft used TV/movie trope.)  

[DrNowsWeightScale]

On 5/24/2021 at 12:34 PM, BasilSeal said:

the most obvious way round this would be if one of Teddy's minions (Riley?), turns out to have been a crew member on the sub

I think that is the case, yes.

I can't recall if I saw it in a trailer someone posted to this forum, or on the AMC channel, but I am fairly sure there was a very brief scene where Teddy is on the sub with Terminator John Connor / Nick Stahl character (named Riley?) and someone else (I forget who, maybe it was Dakota??)...

And whoever the other person is, they ask how Teddy can use the sub, or how he's planning on using it, and he says Riley used to work on a sub like that one - before the apocalypse.

And in the background, while Teddy is talking in the foreground, we can see Riley running around flipping switches and mashing buttons on the consoles, as though he knows what he's doing.

Bulldog asked,

Quote

Slightly off topic, but are tombs really that easy to get into?  TV and movies are always showing people opening up tombs with relative ease.  People seem to have no trouble digging up graves, or, in this case, opening up a mausoleum.   Aren't those things sealed in some way?  And in ground tombs rarely seem to have a vault that you have to get through to access the casket?  And can you really just pop open the lid to a casket?  Inquiring minds want to know.   (And I realize in this instance, Looney Toons has a background in the funeral industry, so maybe he has more knowledge than most, but it seems to be a fairly oft used TV/movie trope.)  

I have no idea. 

But on a related note, I did notice that in the episode where June buried John Dorie Jr. by his cabin, that his grave (that I assume she dug alone?) was awfully perfect - it was a perfect rectangle with perfect, 90 degree angles. Which is amazing because I think she dug it by herself, by hand with a shovel.

I did laugh out loud when I saw a "reaction video" for that episode on You Tube weeks ago, and the young lady doing the video
- when her video showed the shot where the camera panned back, so we could see June kneeling grave side - said something like, "Oh, and June, you dug his grave so straight and perfectly..."

She noticed like I did that the grave was suspiciously straight. I don't think most people could do that with just a shovel. 

It was still a sad scene, though - RIP John Dorie Jr.

Edited May 31, 2021 by DrNowsWeightScale
to address another member's question/comment

[wrlord]

So... anyone else think Cole looks like the guy who had his way with Ned Beatty in Deliverance (only with better teeth)?