Heart To Hearts
After last week’s stand-alone piece involving Althea, we return to Fear The Walking Dead with the whole gang back together. There’s some good character interactions here but the episode lets itself down with a questionable ending, underlined by poor CGI and logic that’s plagued this show for a while now. We begin with the kids watching cartoons, chuckling along at the pranks, except Dillon who winds up reading Little Prince. They all receive a morale boost when Morgan and the cavalry arrive and everyone reconvenes, including Althea. With bits of plane tucked away across multiple trucks, they’re tasked with a solitary mission to bring them all together – fix the plane so they can head over the mountains. With his new metal pole in tow, Morgan practices his stick moves outside but it doesn’t feel right so he tries switching it for a wooden mop. Upon trying to take the mop head off though, Alicia catches him and they have a good chuckle about it. However it’s no laughing matter when the plane fails to start and after rallying the troops together and telling them they need to start again, Grace tells Morgan on the radio there’s going to be another meltdown unless he acts. She needs his generator and with broken propeller blades, things seem bleak. Begrudgingly, Morgan agrees to hand it over. This causes a ripple of discontent to grow among the kids as Annie decides her group of kids should leave, unhappy with the idea of leaving this area. Alicia pleads with her to stay and it’s here where we learn more about the camp site they came from. John Dorie has a heart to heart with Dwight and these two have surprisingly good chemistry as well. With the subject of love in common, they head out to look for Dwight’s wife, Sherry. Luck strikes and they come across a clue, John finds a letter in an abandoned car asking Dwight to stop looking for her and start living his own life. John then lies to him, telling Dwight nothing’s in the car while he starts to gain hope in finding her. As things appear bleak, Strand appears with Charlie in a hot air balloon. As everyone marvels at the sky, it’s unfortunately too late as the kids have already taken off. Predictably, things go awry with the balloon and between terrible bouts of CGI and some questionable editing, the hot air balloon crash lands thanks to a lack of fuel. Morgan tells them not to kill the walkers due to the contamination so Charlie and Strand stare at a group of zombies approaching instead, where we leave the episode. Despite the fact there isn’t a whole lot of plot development this week, the first 3/4 of the episode is actually pretty good. The heart to hearts and little pockets of friendships opening up really help solidify the group together. John and Dwight in particular have good chemistry and their common ground helps align them, although if I’m honest the cliched ending with John hiding the letter and setting up later drama between them feels a little unnecessary. Morgan gets a little more character growth this episode too, even if his most interesting trait happens to be a stick. The problem then comes from the ending which reeks of deus ex machina. The hot air balloon carrying propeller blades is a clever idea but also one that feels like it’s come completely out of left-field. Correct me if I’m wrong of course but there’s been no hint or mention of a hot air balloon throughout the season and whilst the beer bottle is a nice touch, tying it in nicely to the truckers, it also feels a little too convenient. Especially given the timing of them running out of fuel and falling to the ground as quickly as they do. Still, our whole gang’s back together now and with the threat of radiation looming ever closer, Fear looks set for an action-packed series of episodes to follow.
