S02.E02: We All Fall Down

[Sentient Meat]

This Freak of the Week/Love Boat style... new adventure in a different port type show isn't working for me so far... if that's actually what they are trying to do here.

 

The long play Strand story arc feels half baked too... like the writers are stalling until they can come up with something halfway decent.

 

So far this show in general feels like when I'd buy a dvd to watch deleted scenes from a movie that I really love... exciting in theory, but disappointing in reality.

 

The main problem they are having is that I thought they were going to show a more detailed account of what happened between the time when Rick got shot and woke up and everything turned to shit.  The story has now chronologically advanced too far up to the point where they seem to be where Walking Dead started so instead of having new insights into how things degenerated... they are merely covering the same ground with shittier characters.  Because it is on a boat, it feels like they are just trying to save money and the whole show is nothing more than a money grab to sucker hardcore fans while they wait for the TWD to start.

 

They should just let the 50 caliber gun go off on this group and reboot the show from the chubby kid's perspective back on land.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Sentient Meat

[thuganomics85]

Hey, credit to the show for actually having Travis be Maori.  I truly wonder if Cliff Curtis was the one to suggest that.  I can see him saying "Sure, y'all can make me play a various Hispanic character like I always do, but why not shake it up?  Let me be me!"  And them mentioning New Zealand makes me think that might be one of the safer places to be in a zombie apocalypse.  Pretty sure there is more sheep then people, and there is usually enough open area to see walkers coming a mile away.

 

Even though it wasn't their fault, I was amused that this survivalist family seemed to have their stuff pretty much together throughout the entire thing, but once they meet our intrepid heroes, it suddenly all goes to hell.  I guess that's one thing this group has in common with Camp Dinner Bell.  I did think David Warshofsky was pretty good as George.  Great seeing Catherine Dent, although she sadly didn't have much to do.  And most of it was with Madison, and I kept thinking that Dent might have been a better fit for Maddie, even though I don't dislike Kim Dickens, but still find her kind of cold in this role.

 

Alycia just walking around with her headphones on was so stupid.  She really hasn't learned anything.  I did like the scene with her and Nick, because I do like when they interact, even though there are still times where I feel like Frank Dillane and Alycia Debnam-Carey are giving off the wrong kind of chemistry.

 

I could have spent an entire episode watching Strand and David playing off one another.  Both of them are just so on point with each other, that I don't know who scares me more.  And I don't care how horrible it was, I cracked up over Strand's "Put him back where you found him!", when they brought the kid aboard.  He was acting like they found a stray animal or something.  You are so horrible Strand, but at least you entertain me.  But what is he up too and who is talking with on the phone?

 

Seriously, are they actually going to do something with Ofelia this season?

 

Go Chris!  Embrace killing walkers!  You are going to need to, since it still makes Travis feel icky.

 

Better then last week, but still has ways to go.

 

Side note: having Talking Dead on in the background and 1) you know they're having problems filling up time if Chris Hardwick isn't talking about the episode, but is actually spending time asking Lyndie Greenwood about what happened in Sleepy Hollow and 2) I would so watch Lou Diamond Phillips on this show.  Hell, just have him play himself.  I could buy Lou surviving a zombie apocalypse.

Edited April 18, 2016 by thuganomics85

[rubicon1020]

How could the mother have possibly made it to the boat dock so quickly? Everyone ran to the boat as quick as they could - when they left the mom was still being chewed on. She must've died instantly, turned immediately, somehow found her way down the steps, made it out the front door, and then onto the dock? No way in that short amount of time???
 

 

[phoenix780]

My only thing with the headphones was wondering when she charged whatever device she has. And now thinking it's awesome she bought music, since streaming would be pretty much over. She was in a safe area, may as well rock out.

So, if the survivalist kid knew how to kill the undead because he was taught long ago, does this mean their world had a concept of zombies before zombies appeared? Or am I being too specific and he just meant he was taught how to kill people in general?

[TVFan17]

2) I would so watch Lou Diamond Phillips on this show.  Hell, just have him play himself.  I could buy Lou surviving a zombie apocalypse.

 

LDP was on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!  Pretty much the same thing as surviving the ZA, when you think about it.

[Muffyn]

Full disclosure, I fell asleep during the show with a cat on my lap.  I was in a very uncomfortable position; didn't matter. 

 

One positive I can say for this show, I don't have trouble sleeping after I watch it, nor do I fear sounds in the night. 

[loki567]

I'm close to tapping out. I think the only reasons I haven't already is my feeling that Nick and Daniel have somehow wandered over from a better show and my overwhelming crush on Alycia Debnam Carey (who's being massively wasted as whiny teenager #2). 

 

FWD wants to be more of a family drama than TWD, but the unfortunate fact is somehow they are even worse at writing character and dialogue than their parent show. At least TWD always delivered the action. Here this two minutes of walker drama at the end of every episode isn't going to cut it. 

[Nashville]

Those people had power on the island, but were using candles at night. I wonder why?

 

I don't; look what kind of riffraff comes knocking at your door in the middle of the night if you DON'T turn off the lights.

 

 

Alicia using headphones was dumb.

 

S'truth.  Walking around with earbuds screwing up the entire audio track of your situational awareness is a dumbass thing to do, even when you're NOT in the middle of ZA Ground Zero.  I wanted Felecia to get bit on general principle.

[ottoDbusdriver]

How could the mother have possibly made it to the boat dock so quickly? Everyone ran to the boat as quick as they could - when they left the mom was still being chewed on. She must've died instantly, turned immediately, somehow found her way down the steps, made it out the front door, and then onto the dock? No way in that short amount of time???

 

Did walker island mom bite island dad on her way out of the house ? Or did she let walker Willa munch down on dear old dad ?

[AbFabGab]

The main problem they are having is that I thought they were going to show a more detailed account of what happened between the time when Rick got shot and woke up and everything turned to shit.  The story has now chronologically advanced too far up to the point where they seem to be where Walking Dead started so instead of having new insights into how things degenerated... they are merely covering the same ground with shittier characters.  

 

This. So much this. For the umpteenth episode, we hear about towns being destroyed and see nothing of it actually happening, of the people making those decisions. Since the military/government is making most of these calls, it would have been better to pick a family where at least one of the people was active duty military/government so that we could see those decisions playing out, instead of getting a line here and there about "yup, LA's gone. San Diego is flambeed too." They could still get a guy/gal trying to save their family and perhaps some random people along the way, but it would make a much more interesting story to have that person aware of certain things that couldn't be shared with everyone and the despair as they realize that this is some apocalyptic event that won't be easy to recover from. If they put Madison in that role it might also account for her one facial expression. It would also show how things are failing at the local level, then the state level, then at the national level. That's a backstory. Whatever the writers think they're doing here is not. 

 

How bad was the outbreak when the government decided to set up camps? Where had it spread when the dead started overtaking people beyond the containment zones? What did things look like when they decided to just bomb everything? Where are the people dropping bombs? Are they getting the okay for this from DC or just saying screw it and doing this on their own? So many angles they could've taken, and they give us the Angst Boat with such fun onboard entertainment as "How can someone be fresh out of the shower and still look so dirty?" and "Pity: Party of 1 hosted by cruise director Alicia!"

 

I'm going to try to stick with this for another episode or two, but with GoT coming back next week I can't see many other people doing the same.

[riverheightsnancy]

I saw the episode again as I was up late. I will amend my earlier post: I watched the scene carefully, they had candles AND lights on in that scene. I have to wonder why? To set a tone or ambiance? I would think that self-reliant people would be more aware of the risk of running out of supplies and would be more keen about waste. I wish that CDB would have learned more about survival from these people. Staying on the island is a better choice. The fact that I am fixated on a candle vs. electric powered lights tells you how boring this episode was (except for last 2 minutes).

[ghoulina]

Wow, and Hershel thought CDB was a plague? These people show up for less than 24 hours and both mom and daughter are dead. Nice. 

 

This episode was all sorts of preposterous, I'm not even sure where to begin. I literally said, "That just don't make no sense" (TM Leah from TM2) about 50 times. So let me get this straight, the mother wants to send her children away because....why? It looked, to me, like they had a pretty good setup there. Fairly isolated, and already have a chain link fence. It could do with some reinforcing, but it's the start of a nice perimeter. They've already been living self sufficiently there, so there's not a lot to adjust to in that department. But yet Mom wants to send the kids off with some people she barely knows on their boat? Yea, that's logical. 

 

What did she say, "We're just biding time"? Yea, isn't everyone??? What, are you worried they're going to be bored? Would you rather they have a life of adventure on the high seas??? The entire time, I thought something hinky was going on, and I imagined the dad was abusing them in some way, and that's what made Mom desperate enough to send a signal to a passing boat. Because, really, that boat could have contained ANYONE. She could have just let a gang of wandering assholes know that there were people living on that island. But no, she's just worried they're going to die there. Well, honey, people are dying EVERYWHERE! I mean, her husband has more knowledge than most. They KNOW that the entire coast has been decimated, and even going inland the government is burning and bombing, leaving and cleaving. WHAT does she think is out there for her kids that's going to be any better than what they have going on there??? 

 

And better yet, why does Madison think they'll be any safer either? They just passed an overturned, shot out boat. They know someone was tracking Strand's yacht. Alicia had the cryptic "I got you" message from her ham radio hunk. She knows it isn't safe out there. But sure, give me your kids!

 

 

And about those pills. When watching TTD, I felt like I missed something. Did that little boy tell Nick something about the pills - something that alluded to the dad giving them to the family? If so, I totally missed that. To me, it just looked like Nick was still jonesing for something, and searching high and low to get his fix. I just didn't get how he automatically assumed the dad was going to poison the whole family. Was Nick a pharmacist before the fall? I could understand him recognizing some painkillers, opiates, etc. on sight, but he wouldn't just know every damn drug on the planet. What was this "poison" supposed to be? And who knows, maybe dad had that as a backup plan. If things got way too bad, they had an option to opt out? Or maybe if they were overtaken by bad guys, they could slip some in their food. But no, let's just flip the fuck out and take the kids. 

 

And then apparently the little girl was so interested in what Nick was doing with that globe, that she just had to climb up there and get it for herself. She just had to try the little pills. Now she's dead. And she just happens to reanimate right when her mother comes to check on her. No beautiful, slow, Amyesque transformation for you, little girl. You're going to lurch right to life just like Shane! Or more like a 28 Days Later creature, with the way she attacked her mother. 

 

Oh, and my favorite part! So this group of idiots leaves, gets back on the boat, and the mom is somehow able to get down the stairs, passed the fences, and down onto the dock. The dad didn't stop her? Didn't put her down? How did she turn that fast? Wouldn't the daughter just keep eating? What went on up there??? It just don't make no sense. 

 

Sigh...

 

So Strand must have a satellite phone, eh? I'm so turned off by this mess, I don't even care who he was talking to. 

[gaPeach]

So, it does look like each week it will be a new port in the storm where are merry band of misfits dock, cause havic and leave.  And what does it say when I cared more about the prepper family than I did most of the people on the boat?  The zombie mom rocked it out and I really felt bad for her giving her children to this group.  Well acted and I actually felt for her.  But of course she had to die. 

Ok so prepper dad just let his wife or his daughter bite him?  He was so prepared foir the ZA I can't beleived he just froze when he saw his daughter taking out the mom.  He would have put them both down. And he knew when you die you come back as a zombie so he never would have had pills for everyone to take if the zombies started taking over their little compound (which I found to be pretty safe compared to what we have seen on the WD). And was Nick looking to get high or was he looking for the Power Pill the kid talked about?

I found the last 5 minutes to be the best of the episode.

[oakville]

Hey, these guys really are like the CDB crew. Wherever they go, death and destruction follow.  In other words, thanks Nick for getting the little girl and her mom killed.

 

The island family was as together as you can expect for people less than two weeks after the end of civilization. Lord only knows why getting on a stranger's boat is supposed to be a better choice. But, I guess that's because I really don't think that dad was looking to kill anyone early; he was just preparing a clean way to go if the end became inevitable,

I don't think George was planning to commit suicide. He must have known that his wife was ill & would have her take the pill to speed up the process. Perhaps if the family ran out of food, they might kill themselves but not yet. They were building fences.

[ghoulina]

I finally get why FTWD doesn't work for me. There is lack of tension and fear. I just don't feel like the world is collapsing around these characters because they are so calm and most human beings are not that calm when their lives are uprooted. Travis finds out most of the west coast and country has been bombed and unable to communicate and he barely reacts. He tells Madison and she doesn't blink an eye.

 

This is a very good point. Madison has one look. Stoic. Pondering. Makes me really miss Lori's bug-eyed, freaked out face. 

[nodorothyparker]

Zombie Love Boat: Apocalypse Edition as a show has a problem when survivalist teen points a gun at our main cast and my only thought is I hope they all stay grouped together like that so he doesn't have to unnecessarily waste bullets.  Seriously, they're all right there.  Take care of the problem in one fell swoop and find some better people to ride out the end with.  I hear Alicia was talking to some people.

 

Proving that this show is indeed the thrift store heir of the mothership, it had a kernel of an interesting idea with the survivalist family and where the opting out point comes but then mostly squandered it with meandering talk that was delivered better by Herschel four seasons ago.   And again with the telling and not showing.  Yeah, most of the western half of the United States is toast at least partially at the hands of our government and all these terrible decisions had to be made and all this really terrible stuff happened, but you didn't actually want to see any of that did you?

 

I'll give a small amount of grudging credit for going where the mothership wouldn't and finally showing us a small zombie child taking out their own parent and I did have to laugh at Strand ordering Maddy to put her stray back where she found him.  It's still not enough though, especially not with Game of Thrones returning next week to fill the habitual Sunday night viewing slot. 

Edited April 18, 2016 by nodorothyparker

[ghoulina]

I don't think George was planning to commit suicide. He must have known that his wife was ill & would have her take the pill to speed up the process. Perhaps if the family ran out of food, they might kill themselves but not yet. They were building fences.

 

Exactly. Nothing he was doing said "giving up" to me. I felt like maybe those were stashed away as a last resort. HUGE assumption on Nick's part, and his rooting around eventually led to the little girl finding them and dying. So yea. 

 

And what does it say when I cared more about the prepper family than I did most of the people on the boat?

 

LOL, no shit. In just 45 minutes, that clan showed more well rounded and interesting personalities than anyone in the main group has in 8 episodes. 

 

By the by, I feel like we need a name for their little group, like CDB - only way snarkier. 

[oakville]

My guess is that Strand is actually supposed to deliver the boat to someone who knew what was coming. He allowed the others to come with because he needed Nick as crew and just took them as part of the package because they came with Nick. That's why he knows how to run the boat, and why he was prepared for the trip. It's part of his job.

It would be an excellent plot development to have Strand bring the boat to a group in Mexico that were prepared for the ZA. I would like to see a group that wasn't nuts like Negan or the Governor.

[lulee]

I don't think there will be many more weeks with them stopping somewhere and then heading back out over the water again -- either whoever's after Strand (given all that foreshadowing) will catch up or the group's conflict with Strand will rachet up with to a boiling point -- and the group will find some place on land and bumble around there. And although the execution is less than smooth, shall we say, I think the premise of fleeing the city makes sense, but they'll have to get back to the mainland and scary reality.

 

While I think Cliff Curtis's American accent is OK, this is one of those cases where I think, "Why not let the actor use his own accent?" - Travis could have moved to the U.S. as a young adult - for job, for college, whatever, and decided to stay. Nothing we've learned so far would have dictated that he was born in LA.  Obviously there are limits -- Maddie's kids couldn't purposely have two different accents from her.

[SimoneS]

After the season one debacle, I am fine with putting the characters on the boat. AMC clearly doesn't have the budget to show the collapse of a major city like LA. I found out there were 15 episodes this season and cringed, but I think that they will be encountering a lot of people along the way, some of whom will likely try to take the boat. Plus, Strand has his own agenda. He has somewhere to get to, maybe Mexico. There will be a lot of conflict as he does whatever it takes to meet that person he was talking to on the phone.

[oakville]

I don't think Nick was looking for drugs for his own benefit; I think alarms went off in his head when he heard the little kid talking about "wonder pills" (or whatever he called them.) We were being led to believe that he was just searching for something for himself, but in reality he wasn't. (Now just how believable that scenario is is something else.)

It was in all the papers...

 

I think the gunshot we heard was Dad removing himself from the equation...

 I do think Nick was looking for drugs. He probably thought that the family had some morphine given the wife was suffering from cancer. Wasn't the gunshot, Seth killing his mom who became a walker.?

 

Jonestown happened in the 1970's. Nick doesn't seem to be that well read.

[Jobena]

"Much better episode. So the yacht might not be Strand's. Going to Mexico and that machine gun suggests some kind of illegal activity, but that might be a red herring."

He's going to rescue "El Chapo" .

[econ07]

This Freak of the Week/Love Boat style... new adventure in a different port type show isn't working for me so far... if that's actually what they are trying to do here.

 

The long play Strand story arc feels half baked too... like the writers are stalling until they can come up with something halfway decent.

 

So far this show in general feels like when I'd buy a dvd to watch deleted scenes from a movie that I really love... exciting in theory, but disappointing in reality.

 

The main problem they are having is that I thought they were going to show a more detailed account of what happened between the time when Rick got shot and woke up and everything turned to shit.  The story has now chronologically advanced too far up to the point where they seem to be where Walking Dead started so instead of having new insights into how things degenerated... they are merely covering the same ground with shittier characters.  Because it is on a boat, it feels like they are just trying to save money and the whole show is nothing more than a money grab to sucker hardcore fans while they wait for the TWD to start.

 

They should just let the 50 caliber gun go off on this group and reboot the show from the chubby kid's perspective back on land.

 

Ya, they messed up when they jumped forward 9 days during the isolation zone in season 1.  I commented back then that they missed an opportunity to tell a different set of stories about the development of the crisis.  I would not have minded seeing 1 - 2 seasons of well-developed stories covering this time period.  Once they jumped ahead, it was Walking Dead, LA with just a different set of stories covering the same time period.

[Jobena]

Much better episode. So the yacht might not be Strand's. Going to Mexico and that machine gun suggests some kind of illegal activity, but that might be a red herring. 

 

The family was pretty sad. Too bad the older son did not let the kid go with them or go with them as well.

Much better episode. So the yacht might not be Strand's. Going to Mexico and that machine gun suggests some kind of illegal activity, but that might be a red herring. 

 

The family was pretty sad. Too bad the older son did not let the kid go with them or go with them as well.

Much better episode. So the yacht might not be Strand's. Going to Mexico and that machine gun suggests some kind of illegal activity, but that might be a red herring. 

 

The family was pretty sad. Too bad the older son did not let the kid go with them or go with them as well.

He's going to rescue "El Chapo".

[oakville]

This. So much this. For the umpteenth episode, we hear about towns being destroyed and see nothing of it actually happening, of the people making those decisions. Since the military/government is making most of these calls, it would have been better to pick a family where at least one of the people was active duty military/government so that we could see those decisions playing out, instead of getting a line here and there about "yup, LA's gone. San Diego is flambeed too." They could still get a guy/gal trying to save their family and perhaps some random people along the way, but it would make a much more interesting story to have that person aware of certain things that couldn't be shared with everyone and the despair as they realize that this is some apocalyptic event that won't be easy to recover from. If they put Madison in that role it might also account for her one facial expression. It would also show how things are failing at the local level, then the state level, then at the national level. That's a backstory. Whatever the writers think they're doing here is not. 

 

How bad was the outbreak when the government decided to set up camps? Where had it spread when the dead started overtaking people beyond the containment zones? What did things look like when they decided to just bomb everything? Where are the people dropping bombs? Are they getting the okay for this from DC or just saying screw it and doing this on their own? So many angles they could've taken, and they give us the Angst Boat with such fun onboard entertainment as "How can someone be fresh out of the shower and still look so dirty?" and "Pity: Party of 1 hosted by cruise director Alicia!"

 

I'm going to try to stick with this for another episode or two, but with GoT coming back next week I can't see many other people doing the same.

It's strange that there is enough military still functioning that they want to bomb every major city in North America.

 

Didn't someone say the border with Mexico was closed? Is the Mexican govt still operating? Does that mean that Mexico is still relatively safe compared to the USA?

[CrashTextDummie]

That lady's vegetable garden looked super dead to me. Biggest issue I had with this episode, which means I didn't hate it.

[oakville]

Wow, and Hershel thought CDB was a plague? These people show up for less than 24 hours and both mom and daughter are dead. Nice. 

 

This episode was all sorts of preposterous, I'm not even sure where to begin. I literally said, "That just don't make no sense" (TM Leah from TM2) about 50 times. So let me get this straight, the mother wants to send her children away because....why? It looked, to me, like they had a pretty good setup there. Fairly isolated, and already have a chain link fence. It could do with some reinforcing, but it's the start of a nice perimeter. They've already been living self sufficiently there, so there's not a lot to adjust to in that department. But yet Mom wants to send the kids off with some people she barely knows on their boat? Yea, that's logical. 

 

What did she say, "We're just biding time"? Yea, isn't everyone??? What, are you worried they're going to be bored? Would you rather they have a life of adventure on the high seas??? The entire time, I thought something hinky was going on, and I imagined the dad was abusing them in some way, and that's what made Mom desperate enough to send a signal to a passing boat. Because, really, that boat could have contained ANYONE. She could have just let a gang of wandering assholes know that there were people living on that island. But no, she's just worried they're going to die there. Well, honey, people are dying EVERYWHERE! I mean, her husband has more knowledge than most. They KNOW that the entire coast has been decimated, and even going inland the government is burning and bombing, leaving and cleaving. WHAT does she think is out there for her kids that's going to be any better than what they have going on there??? 

 

And better yet, why does Madison think they'll be any safer either? They just passed an overturned, shot out boat. They know someone was tracking Strand's yacht. Alicia had the cryptic "I got you" message from her ham radio hunk. She knows it isn't safe out there. But sure, give me your kids!

 

 

And about those pills. When watching TTD, I felt like I missed something. Did that little boy tell Nick something about the pills - something that alluded to the dad giving them to the family? If so, I totally missed that. To me, it just looked like Nick was still jonesing for something, and searching high and low to get his fix. I just didn't get how he automatically assumed the dad was going to poison the whole family. Was Nick a pharmacist before the fall? I could understand him recognizing some painkillers, opiates, etc. on sight, but he wouldn't just know every damn drug on the planet. What was this "poison" supposed to be? And who knows, maybe dad had that as a backup plan. If things got way too bad, they had an option to opt out? Or maybe if they were overtaken by bad guys, they could slip some in their food. But no, let's just flip the fuck out and take the kids. 

 

And then apparently the little girl was so interested in what Nick was doing with that globe, that she just had to climb up there and get it for herself. She just had to try the little pills. Now she's dead. And she just happens to reanimate right when her mother comes to check on her. No beautiful, slow, Amyesque transformation for you, little girl. You're going to lurch right to life just like Shane! Or more like a 28 Days Later creature, with the way she attacked her mother. 

 

Oh, and my favorite part! So this group of idiots leaves, gets back on the boat, and the mom is somehow able to get down the stairs, passed the fences, and down onto the dock. The dad didn't stop her? Didn't put her down? How did she turn that fast? Wouldn't the daughter just keep eating? What went on up there??? It just don't make no sense. 

 

Sigh...

 

So Strand must have a satellite phone, eh? I'm so turned off by this mess, I don't even care who he was talking to. 

 

It makes no sense that the mom got to the dock so quickly.

[nodorothyparker]

That lady's vegetable garden looked super dead to me.

 

She had peppers and what looked like about four wilted heads of cabbage.  That's enough to feed a family of survivors longterm, right?

 

Can someone please inform the set designers of both shows that three pots of tomato plants aren't enough to keep anyone fed?  I know it's a very minor point in the grand scheme of suckage but it sticks out to me every time I see it.  Which is probably a good indication that whatever else is on screen isn't holding my attention.

[tiredofwork]

 

FWD wants to be more of a family drama than TWD, but the unfortunate fact is somehow they are even worse at writing character and dialogue than their parent show. At least TWD always delivered the action. Here this two minutes of walker drama at the end of every episode isn't going to cut it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you...,

 

I have said this all along every time I try and watch this crap.   I am trying to let them go through the entire period of.., ok, this zombie thing is happening, this is a possible ELE, etc.., but the show needs to move past the scenes of each of the characters sitting alone.., looking out forlornly and someone else comes up and they start talking about boyfriends/girlfriends and love and keeping family together and keeping a normal life.., and us not losing who we are...,  That "ish" is not going to happen.

 

They need to start getting a viable survival plan, get arms, provisions and deal.  We need to see the cast struggling to do that, not still having the look and attitude of dumbness and numbness.

[eejm]

Hey, credit to the show for actually having Travis be Maori. I truly wonder if Cliff Curtis was the one to suggest that. I can see him saying "Sure, y'all can make me play a various Hispanic character like I always do, but why not shake it up? Let me be me!"

I'm glad the character was changed to Maori, but I wish they'd have let Cliff Curtis keep his natural accent. Why? Well, there are very, very few Maori-Americans that were born and raised in the US as Travis seems to have been. Like, almost zero. I think that affects the believability of the character. Secondly, CC has a lovely accent that's not difficult to understand. There could easily have been a line last year explaining why he is in the US ("I came here when I was in college and fell in love with the place, so I stayed"), and it would have played up the diversity the show seems to be striving for. Travis having an American accent just seems off to me. Edited April 18, 2016 by eejm

[Save Yourself]

Re: people saying why would the dad choose pills as a way to opt the family out instead of brain trauma to stop them turning, I really think some people wouldn't care what happened to them after they are dead. Most 'normal' wouldn't want to see their relatives/friends turned but if they are all dying together, it won't affect them. This would particularly make sense in this instance since he feels it is Mother Nature doing a course correct.

[Save Yourself]

I'm glad the character was changed to Maori, but I wish they'd have let Cliff Curtis keep his natural accent. Why? Well, there are very, very few Maori-Americans that were born and raised in the US as Travis seems to have been. Like, almost zero. I think that affects the believability of the character. Secondly, CC has a lovely accent that's not difficult to understand. There could easily have been a line last year explaining why he is in the US ("I came here when I was in college and fell in love with the place, so I stayed"), and it would have played up the diversity the show seems to be striving for. Travis having an American accent just seems off to me.

It's good that he is actually allowed to be Maori for a change - although it seemed a really odd way to bring it up in the show! - and being Australian I would have liked if he kept his Kiwi accent (Aussies like to claim any successful Kiwis as our own ) but given how hard it is to get a Green Card in the US it would be a pretty unlikely scenario for him to have been raised in NZ but have citizenship in the States.

She had peppers and what looked like about four wilted heads of cabbage.  That's enough to feed a family of survivors longterm, right?

 

Can someone please inform the set designers of both shows that three pots of tomato plants aren't enough to keep anyone fed?  I know it's a very minor point in the grand scheme of suckage but it sticks out to me every time I see it.  Which is probably a good indication that whatever else is on screen isn't holding my attention.

I always thought that at the prison and now Alexandria, they were growing cucumbers and tomatoes and while they are yum, have hardly any calories in them so won't fill them up or give them energy. They need to grow corn (which is so easy I did it by accident when I was 10), root vegetables, mushrooms and wheat.

[Nashville]

It would be an excellent plot development to have Strand bring the boat to a group in Mexico that were prepared for the ZA. I would like to see a group that wasn't nuts like Negan or the Governor.

I would cheer for this - but solely on the condition the town Strand is herding all of them to happens to be named El Rey.

[Save Yourself]

And regarding Nick knowing about Jonestown, it's very well known, I'd be more surprised if he didn't know. Just because he's an addict doesn't make him stupid, he often drops little nuggets of trivia. Hell, I'm Australian and was only 5 when the Jonestown massacre happened and knew immediately what he was referring to. It's as famous as Heavens Gate, Waco and Helter Skelter.

[nodorothyparker]

The Jonestown reference didn't bother me.  "Drinking the Kool-Aid" has become such a popular figure of speech (even though some historians argue that it was actually the more generic Flavor Aid) that I would think most people would have at least a superficial frame of reference to it.  It doesn't exactly make Nick a Rhodes scholar for him to have heard of it.   

Edited April 18, 2016 by nodorothyparker

[MrsRafaelBarba]

How could the mother have possibly made it to the boat dock so quickly? Everyone ran to the boat as quick as they could - when they left the mom was still being chewed on. She must've died instantly, turned immediately, somehow found her way down the steps, made it out the front door, and then onto the dock? No way in that short amount of time???

I think FEAR took a page out of the George Romero Zombie handbook with that scene.

In the original Dawn of the Dead, it was stated that the undead possibly retained some memory of their human life.

When the pilot Steven died/reanimated, he lead the horde to where they were

camped in the Mall. Mind you, he and Peter had built a wall to hide the entrance and starcase leading to the hideout.

This was also shown in TWD pilot, with Morgan's wife Jenny.

Shambling up to the house where they were holed up.

Where she died, after being infected.

I believe that's why Survival Mom Walker shambled down to the dock.

JMO.

Edited April 18, 2016 by MrsRafaelBarba

[rab01]

By the by, I feel like we need a name for their little group, like CDB - only way snarkier. 

Now that's a worthy challenge!

 

The plague

The blank leading the bland

Ship of fools

SS botox

 

Anyway, this episode followed such a TWD trope -- the group comes to a decent situation that falls to shit as soon as they find it.  I get why it happens so often in both shows - they want you to see what a "surviving in the ZA" situation might look like and they want to give you a hit of tragedy and pathos at the the end of the episode.  But ....

 

We know that the show can be better than that -- because in the first season of TWD it NEVER happened. Every situation was already fucked before CDB got there. Doing that more often is less predictable, more tragic, scarier and strangely more hopeful all at the same time -- both shows go back to doing that more please.

[Nashville]

What did she say, "We're just biding time"? Yea, isn't everyone??? What, are you worried they're going to be bored? Would you rather they have a life of adventure on the high seas??? The entire time, I thought something hinky was going on, and I imagined the dad was abusing them in some way, and that's what made Mom desperate enough to send a signal to a passing boat. Because, really, that boat could have contained ANYONE. She could have just let a gang of wandering assholes know that there were people living on that island. But no, she's just worried they're going to die there. Well, honey, people are dying EVERYWHERE! I mean, her husband has more knowledge than most. They KNOW that the entire coast has been decimated, and even going inland the government is burning and bombing, leaving and cleaving. WHAT does she think is out there for her kids that's going to be any better than what they have going on there??? 

Ummm... this was actually one of the things I didn't have a problem with.

Look at things from Mom's perspective. Even if the fences hold out, the garden holds out, and they're not hit by killer raiders - if nothing horrendous happens to disturb the status quo, in other words - then they'll continue survival as a single family unit. What's their likely best-case scenario?

• Mom has MS; she's most likely the inaugural plot in the family's own personal Boot Hill.
• If everybody else stays reasonably healthy, Dad is next up on the hit list due to age.

This leaves two brothers and a sister alone on an island.

Either they live out their days until they drop off one by one, die, and that's the end of the family and the story - or not, which gets into some distinctly oogy sister-wife and brother-husband territory....

Attractive as the island presents, the only alternatives it offers for a single family are a single generation of lives lived solely for survival until eventual death, or creation of an incestuous hellhole. Mom's only alternative for her young children are to get them off the island with some by-passers - and many of those candidates might not be as nice as this bunch.

[lulee]

It's good that he is actually allowed to be Maori for a change - although it seemed a really odd way to bring it up in the show! - and being Australian I would have liked if he kept his Kiwi accent (Aussies like to claim any successful Kiwis as our own ) but given how hard it is to get a Green Card in the US it would be a pretty unlikely scenario for him to have been raised in NZ but have citizenship in the States.

Green cards certainly aren't easy to come by but not impossible to get either. As someone who's always lived in the middle of the U.S. and especially from my time working at universities, I wouldn't find it farfetched for someone from New Zealand, for instance, to become a citizen. If they wanted to make extra plausible, they could have thrown in a few lines about him coming on a student visa, marrying Liza, and staying. I know an Aussie who did just that, and just on my street I have neighbors from Ireland (recently became a U.S. citizen), India, China, and Saudi Arabia (not sure of their citizenship statuses).

Not sure how walkermom caught up. I guess our group must have stopped in the yard to argue, left fences open, and made a lot of noise so she followed.

I don't want our group to be unrealistically competent but they need to keep getting gradually more with it, preferably at a good pace.

[Nashville]

By the by, I feel like we need a name for their little group, like CDB - only way snarkier.

My nomination is Los Angeles Refugee Troupe - LART for short.

[oakville]

And regarding Nick knowing about Jonestown, it's very well known, I'd be more surprised if he didn't know. Just because he's an addict doesn't make him stupid, he often drops little nuggets of trivia. Hell, I'm Australian and was only 5 when the Jonestown massacre happened and knew immediately what he was referring to. It's as famous as Heavens Gate, Waco and Helter Skelter.

That's a good point. However, I am amazed that anyone in this family knows anything about historical events. They don't seem to care that any of their friends or families are dead.

 

I did like that George was trying to contact other Ranger stations. It was very useful information for Travis.

[rab01]

Ummm... this was actually one of the things I didn't have a problem with.

Look at things from Mom's perspective. Even if the fences hold out, the garden holds out, and they're not hit by killer raiders - if nothing horrendous happens to disturb the status quo, in other words - then they'll continue survival as a single family unit. What's their likely best-case

...

Attractive as the island presents, the only alternatives it offers for a single family are a single generation of lives lived solely for survival until eventual death, or creation of an incestuous hellhole. Mom's only alternative for her young children are to get them off the island with some by-passers - and many of those candidates might not be as nice as this bunch.

 

Nashville -- I love that you always look at things from the extremely long-term view. From the nearer term perspective, the mom's conversation with Maddie struck me as insane. Yes, her kids will need to eventually find other people but why should that be any time in the next decade? They are two weeks into the apocalypse, in a relatively out of the way part of the western seaboard with a chance at a sustainable lifestyle. In five years, they can boat off to other places looking for other survivors or maybe some people will come along who want to join them and expand the farm, or start fishing regularly.   None of them know how zombies work yet (we don't either) but who's to say that all the zombies don't die out in five years?  Let her kids become adults and then leave.  As for her diagnosis, MS can be a terrible disease but it's usually not a FAST disease.

[nodorothyparker]

Until something better presents and they inevitably lose the sweet yacht by doing something stupid and royally pissing off Strand in the process, I'm going with the ship of fools.

[oakville]

Now that's a worthy challenge!

 

The plague

The blank leading the bland

Ship of fools

SS botox

 

Anyway, this episode followed such a TWD trope -- the group comes to a decent situation that falls to shit as soon as they find it.  I get why it happens so often in both shows - they want you to see what a "surviving in the ZA" situation might look like and they want to give you a hit of tragedy and pathos at the the end of the episode.  But ....

 

We know that the show can be better than that -- because in the first season of TWD it NEVER happened. Every situation was already fucked before CDB got there. Doing that more often is less predictable, more tragic, scarier and strangely more hopeful all at the same time -- both shows go back to doing that more please.

 

Agreed. Someone on the show should watch the old Survivors-BBC show from the 1970's. On that show, the survivors would find other communities that were trying to rebuild after an apocalypse. They weren't all run by sociopaths.

[SoSueMe]

Did walker island mom bite island dad on her way out of the house ? Or did she let walker Willa munch down on dear old dad ?

Either or both?

[oakville]

Ummm... this was actually one of the things I didn't have a problem with.

Look at things from Mom's perspective. Even if the fences hold out, the garden holds out, and they're not hit by killer raiders - if nothing horrendous happens to disturb the status quo, in other words - then they'll continue survival as a single family unit. What's their likely best-case scenario?

• Mom has MS; she's most likely the inaugural plot in the family's own personal Boot Hill.
• If everybody else stays reasonably healthy, Dad is next up on the hit list due to age.

This leaves two brothers and a sister alone on an island.

Either they live out their days until they drop off one by one, die, and that's the end of the family and the story - or not, which gets into some distinctly oogy sister-wife and brother-husband territory....

Attractive as the island presents, the only alternatives it offers for a single family are a single generation of lives lived solely for survival until eventual death, or creation of an incestuous hellhole. Mom's only alternative for her young children are to get them off the island with some by-passers - and many of those candidates might not be as nice as this bunch.

 

 

It's possible that the family could have taken in others as the situation stabilized.

[SoSueMe]

There is just so much wrong with this show that I feel silly even mentioning something specific. But anyway, sounds like Strand is speaking to some unsavory criminal type on that phone, a criminal co-conspirator perhaps. But that begs the question, criminality in the ZA? Is that even possible? What is criminal in a survive at all costs world?

[piequinn35]

So the dad committed suicide but first, how did the girl get the pill?

[rab01]

There is just so much wrong with this show that I feel silly even mentioning something specific. But anyway, sounds like Strand is speaking to some unsavory criminal type on that phone, a criminal co-conspirator perhaps. But that begs the question, criminality in the ZA? Is that even possible? What is criminal in a survive at all costs world?

Not a silly question at all because the "mystery" about Strand is the Maguffin of the season. Strand is too smart to think he owes anyone anything in this world so the meet-up has to be for mutual benefit, not something idiotic like delivering the boat to its original owner.  (Oh wait, this show is written by a less than infinite number of monkeys locked in a room so who knows what will happen.)  Since the military napalmed every major US city, I'm going with criminality is irrelevant and, in this world, I'd be less scared to meet a crime boss that an army general.

 

By the way, Kirkman was right to never show or talk about this period in the world.  Can anyone here imagine the conversation when the President or a ranking General came up with as their plan -- "we'll napalm every one of our own cities to slow down the contagion"?  Wouldn't someone in the room have said: "why bother? People, even undead people, don't walk all that fast so why should we worry about zombies leaving metro areas"? "Let's just get the army corps of engineers started on lots and lots of walls and see what we can keep?  

Edited April 18, 2016 by rab01

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

 

How Much Of The World Is Gone By This Point On Fear The Walking Dead?
And more not-quite-burning questions about 'We All Fall Down.'