Not everyone loved the opening eight episodes of the Chambliss and Goldberg era of Fear the Walking Dead, but at least they were forward moving and dramatic, which is more than can be said of the last couple of Fear episodes, which have been listless and inert. In this week’s episode, “Weak,” the characters spent the lion’s share of the episode literally walking around looking for better reception on their walkie-talkies, which felt a bit like a “Can you hear me now?” Verizon commercial set in the zombie apocalypse.
Honestly, it didn’t make much sense, either. First off, instead of driving back to where he came from in Texas — the house where he last left Strand and Alicia, or the bridge where he last left John Dorie — Morgan parks on the highway about 50 miles away and starts calling out for his friends on the walkie-talkie. Why not just drive back to the mansion Strand was staying in and call on the walkies from there? I get that the storm might have spread the characters around, but how far could they have gotten? Charlie was on foot; June and Al only drove down-river to find the zombie hitch in the stream; and Strand and John set about looking for Charlie, who — again — was on foot. It’s not like they traveled across the entire state in the two days that Morgan was gone — in general, the best place to start searching for someone is the last place you saw them, not 50 miles away wasting an entire day walking around trying to find better walkie-talkie reception.
Last week, the Filthy Woman could hear Morgan on that walkie-talkie from hundreds of miles away. This week, June and Al couldn’t hear Morgan from a mere 50 miles away for no real reason whatsoever. Meanwhile, the armored van ran out of gas, and instead of walking until they found more gas, Al insisted on staying with the van. Why? Morgan walked from Virginia to Texas, and Al can’t walk a few miles to the nearest abandoned gas station? However, after June finally forces the issue, a new character named Quinn steals the armored van — was he carrying around diesel fuel on his person? — but then Quinn also quickly runs out of gas because he was apparently only carrying around one of those one-gallon jugs of diesel fuel, in the off chance that he stumbles across an armored van.
Anyway, he steals the van, and then Al is under the illusion that she can chase down an armored vehicle with a pick-up truck, which is a bit like a dog trying to chase down a mountain lion. What are you going to do when you catch him? But no matter! Quinn runs out of gas and June — who needs to get antibiotics from the van for a suddenly ill Althea — confronts Quinn on foot. Quinn holds a gun to her head, then she pulls the gun off him and holds the gun to his head before sending him on his way. However, there’s no medicine in the van for Al, because Al lies about there being antibiotics in the armored van because she doesn’t care about getting better, she only cares about getting her van back, and she is willing to risk June’s life to do so.
June, however, isn’t too angry about Althea putting her life in jeopardy to fetch some non-existent medicine because June is on a new kick where she’s decided that she’s not going to abandon people anymore, even people that put her life at risk for no reason. Thankfully, there’s an overturned bus nearby that has antibiotics for Al’s illness, which she recovers from about 20 minutes after swallowing the pill. Five-year-old antibiotics are miracle drugs.
Where were we? Oh yes: Morgan is still walking around trying to find reception on his walkie-talkie and finally makes contact with June and Althea after he climbs to the top of a water tower. June and Althea leave the armored van behind and drive the pick-up truck to Morgan, where they meet Morgan’s new friends, who spend most of the episode sitting inside the rig of an 18-wheeler and razzing each other. Once they reunite with Morgan, June feels bad about pulling a gun on the guy who pulled a gun on her, so she reaches out to Quinn on the walkie-talkie (which is suddenly working just fine — loud and clear — from the exact same spot where it wasn’t working for Morgan a few hours before) and ask Quinn to meet up with them. It’s almost like the walkie-talkies are a bad plot device designed to create manufactured obstacles.
Quinn tries to meet June, but Quinn is tricked by the Filthy Woman into stopping at the wrong mile marker, where the Filthy Woman sics her zombie, Pervis, onto Quinn. Afterward, the Filthy Woman disposes of Pervis and makes Quinn her new zombie pet, which is a thing she does.
What is the Filthy Woman’s plan? To kill Morgan and company, apparently. What’s her motivation? That’s not exactly clear, but on The Talking Dead, the showrunners offer the impression that the Filthy Woman is suffering from the same kind of dissociative personality disorder that Morgan suffers from. In other words, she’s lost all her marbles, and she’s killing others because she apparently believes she’s the Darwin of the zombie apocalypse, compelled to kill the weak so that only the strong survive. At least it’s an ethos.
Importantly, she also has Al’s armored van, and therefore, all of her videos, so she knows a lot about the people she is pursuing, which closes the loop on the theory we floated earlier this week. I’m not sure how she plans to use that information, but I think her ultimate plan may be to turn Morgan and Company into her pets and start her own zombie zoo. In The Walking Dead pantheon, lady who refuses to shower and turns humans into pet zombies doesn’t exactly rank up there with The Governor or Negan.
Next week, the focus finally turns back to Strand and John, who we haven’t seen since the season premiere nearly a month ago. They’re apparently going to drift in slow-moving water on a handmade raft for much of the episode. It remains to be seen whether walkie-talkies will make an appearance.
