Fear the Walking Dead showrunner Dave Erickson is clearly trying to torture viewers over the fate of Chris, the zombie drama’s resident sociopath. Last week, Fear ended the episode with a shot of Travis spotting the lit-up marquee of the Rosarito Beach Hotel. His son, Chris, was nowhere to be seen, leading many of us to believe that Chris had died.
In this week’s episode, “Date of Death,” Fear circled back around to the events that led Travis to strike out on his own. Picking up moments after Chris shot the farmer in the episode two weeks ago, Travis tends to the bullet wound of Brandon, the least douche-y of Chris’ new gang of douchebros. Travis stitches Brandon up, but for reasons that are neither immediately clear nor any clearer by the end of the episode, the other two douchebros, James and Derek, are in a hurry to leave a place where food is plentiful, where there are no zombies, and where there is a farm capable of sustaining life. The douchebros are anxious to get back to San Diego, though Travis had already informed them that the city is gone.
“Well, that’s just, like, you’re opinion, man,” Derek says, basically.
Their anxiousness also means that Brandon only gets a week to recuperate from a bullet wound, which they learn is not long enough when they toss him into the back of a pick-up truck and he nearly dies en route to San Diego. That’s when the big secret comes out: Brandon, Derek, and James apparently pinky swore to each other that if one of them looked like they were going to bite it, the other two would put that person down before he turned into a walker. Derek’s shotgun blast to Brandon’s head proves how serious they are about pinky swears, although there was clearly some flexibility when it came to the “about to die” part, because Brandon had a nonfatal through-and-through bullet wound to the leg that needed only time to heal. Travis’ promise to stay behind and take care of Brandon, however, wasn’t enough to dissuade them to spare Brandon’s life. Chris tricked his Dad, took away his gun, and overpowered him so that Derek could put down poor Brandon.
The douchebros clearly have sociopathy in common with Chris, who decides in the end to ditch his old man and run off with his two new best friends. “I’m not broken,” he tells Travis. “I was just adapting. I’m good now… I’m better off without you.”
“Goddamn you, Chris!” Travis yells at his son as Chris drives away, in what he believes will be the final words he ever speaks to his son.
After burying the dead, Travis picks himself up and starts walking until he notices the lit-up Rosarito Beach Hotel marquee, reunites with Madison, and quickly reverts to his old, mopey self, yelling at Madison and beating himself up for letting his son get away. “I promised his mother I’d take care of him,” Travis says about half a dozen times in the episode.
He may still get the chance to take care of Chris, because the final shot this week is of Chris’ douchebro buddies approaching the gates of the hotel with two more men. Is Chris in the shot this time? It’s hard to know for sure, but after watching it several times, slowing it down, and lighting up the screenshot, it appears that he is indeed behind James’ backpack on the far right of this image.
That means that next week, Travis will be forced into a tough decision: Does he let his murdering, serial-killer son into the hotel, even if it means letting the two douchebros (and their new shifty-looking friends) in, or does Travis finally look out for the safety of everyone else in the hotel and tell his son to get lost?
Meanwhile, even after Travis allowed his son to overpower him so that Derek could kill Brandon, and even after Travis let his insane son back out into the world, it was Madison who somehow won the award for worst parent of the episode. Back at the hotel, Madison’s ill-advised decision to turn on the hotel lights last week may have meant reuniting with Travis, but it also means being forced to let 40-plus other red shirts into the hotel. While the rest of the hotel group tends to the newcomers, Madison inexplicably decides at that very moment and in the midst of a zombie apocalypse to take her daughter Alicia aside to tell her that her father didn’t actually die in a car accident. He killed himself, leaving a terse suicide note. “I love you, but enough is enough.”
Inspiring words. Impeccable timing.
In the end, “Date of Death” didn’t move the story forward much, it only relocated the players. Travis is in the hotel, Chris is at the gates, and Madison has a beat on Nick’s location. Until two episodes ago, the back half of the season seemed like it was taking promising steps forward. Now it looks like Fear the Walking Dead is taking the scenic route back to square one. There are two episodes left this season. Hopefully the show still has a few tricks up its sleeve.
