What I Watched Today
(rambling, random thoughts & annoyingly detailed recaps from real time TV watching)
Fear the Walking Dead
John cleans his gun while he watches Meet John Doe. He loads the chambers with bullets. He messes around with some Scrabble letters, and sees a zombie outside. He shoots it through the open door from where he’s sitting, and takes a slug of whiskey. He spells out goodbye June, and puts the barrel under his chin. He shoots another zombie, and takes another drink. He repositions the gun, and says he’s sorry. Yet another zombie toddles along the shoreline, and he shoots it. He puts his head down on the table, and bangs the table with his fist, scattering the letters.
John paddles a canoe under a bridge where a bunch of zombies are contained by blockades. They look down at him like they’re watching a parade. He takes a look at the blockades, then walks to a boarded up gas station. He sees a few zombies bouncing against the side of the building, and shoots them. He looks inside, then opens the door. He says, I don’t want no trouble, but it’s trouble you want, I got some for you. Cowboy talk. He quietly walks through the mini-mart. It seems empty, but he sees some blood on the floor near the restroom. Dakota comes out, and he asks what the hell she’s doing there. She says, running from her sister; him? He guesses he could say the same thing, and asks if she passed the crowd on the bridge. She pushes open the restroom door, and John sees Morgan sitting on floor. He says, hey, John, and Dakota asks how John found them. He says the path to the bridge kept washing up to his cabin. The river has a way of bringing people back to life. He tells Morgan that he looks better, and Dakota says she put up the barricades, and patched Morgan up as good as she could. She heard shots, and didn’t think they’d make it. John says, neither did he, and she asks how he survived. He says he had help. He doesn’t know who, but when he came to, he was patched up and they’d moved on. Somebody else helped him later, and now he has to add Dakota to the list. Dakota says, it wasn’t hard. Somebody stocked the shelves with everything they needed. (Trivia: It was June a long time ago.) Morgan says, it’s good to see John, and John says, he feels like he’s looking at a ghost. Morgan says, Virginia sent the Rangers after them, and they ran. He, Alicia, and Charlie got separated by the herd. He should get back on the road. John says Morgan’s not going anywhere, not like that. Where is he going? Dakota says, Morgan has a place he’s rebuilding, and they hear something at the front of the store.
Dakota moves toward the front, taking Morgan’s battleax pokey weapon. John pulls her back again, and Ranger Marcus walks in. He says, anybody home? but they stay quiet. Marcus walks toward the back, grabbing a candy out of a dish as he walks past. He looks at the old VHS tapes, and looks at a chart on the wall. He sees John’s name, and gets on his radio, asking Hill, does he copy? He’s not going to believe this. He thinks Ranger Dorie has been there. He tells Hill, stand by. He’s coming for higher ground. John motions Dakota to go further back, and Marcus leaves.
John tells Morgan, he’s gone, and Morgan gets up. Dakota says John should have shot him, but John says he didn’t need to. Morgan says, he’d be like the men they’ve tried hard not be, and John suggests they get out of there. They’ll be safer in his cabin.
John gives Dakota and Morgan dinner, and Dakota asks how John learned to cook. John says he spent summers there when he was a kid. When in Rome… He tries to replace the door with a new one, but it doesn’t fit right. Morgan says, the place they’re going is in a dry river bed. There’s water nearby, and plenty of fish. They need someone who knows how to cook. John says June cooks better than he does, and Morgan asks, how long has John been there? John says, a couple of weeks, and Morgan asks, where’s June? Why isn’t she with him? John says, it’s not worth talking about, and asks where the place is that Morgan settled. Morgan says, it’s 40 miles north, and John says, that’s a ways to go on foot, but he has enough gas in the truck to get them there. Morgan says he was hoping John would come. They could use somebody with his skills. John says, what might those be? and Morgan says, the plan keeps shifting. They can’t make clean trade with Virginia, but she’s going to want her sister back. Dakota asks if he wants to use her as bait, but Morgan tells her not to worry; he’s not going to let Virginia get to her. This means a fight. John says, it’s going to be difficult… Oh, that’s why Morgan needs him. Morgan says, it will be different this time. They’ll be fighting on their own turf, and on their own terms, for their family. Dakota holds up a piece of something, and asks what it is. John says, nothing, and she says, it looks like blood. He says, it’s part of a knife handle, and she asks, what knife? He says, the one that killed Cameron, and Morgan says, the Ranger that Janice was with? John says he thought if he could find the rest, it might lead to who killed Cameron, but he couldn’t find it. Dakota asks why he still has it, and Morgan says John is doing it again. John says, what? and Morgan says, what John told him that he did before, when he was a cop. He hid himself away. John says, the world is different this time, and Morgan asks, why is that? Ginny’s voice comes over the radio, asking if Morgan is there, and John says, don’t answer. Grace says, it’s me, and Morgan says he’s there. Ginny says she thought that would do the trick, and he says he wants to talk to Grace. He asks if Grace and the baby are okay, and Grace says, she’s okay; so is the baby. We see Ginny has a gun on her, and Grace says, it’s been about seven months. She thought he was dead; they all did. Ginny takes the radio back, and asks if he heard that. Grace is fine. Morgan tells her, call the Rangers off. She’ll get everyone killed, including her sister. She says the Rangers are going to find him, but in the meantime, she wants to know her sister is safe. If anything happens to her, it’s not just Grace and the kid; it will be the whole damn coop. We see Sarah, Luci, and June in some kind of jail, and Ginny says, they’ll talk soon. Morgan tells John and Dakota, they need to get out of there. Get to Virginia before she does something. June washed up the last time John holed himself away; now they did. If that’s not the universe telling John to come back, Morgan doesn’t know what is. John says he doesn’t care to kill anyone, and Morgan says, call him a ghost, and he is, but he’s only there to free Grace. He wants to give this baby a chance in the next world, where life might be precious. He thinks they can do it. It won’t be the way they want it, but they can end it. John says, it ain’t right; it just ain’t. He’s sorry. He can’t do it, but he’ll help them cross the bridge. It’s the only way. Morgan tells Dakota, they’ve got to pack up.
They load truck, and Dakota asks if John has enough ammunition to kill all the chompers. He says her guess is as good as his; there’s only one way to find out. Someone shoots at them, and Morgan slides under the car, while John and Dakota fling themselves into it. Morgan comes back out, and sees it’s Marcus on a horse. Before Morgan realizes it, he’s lassoed and being drug through the woods, bouncing behind the horse and rider. John tells Dakota to turn the car around, and shoots at Marcus. She tries to start the car, but says she thinks a bullet hit the engine. John shoots again, and Marcus falls from his horse. John and Dakota run to Morgan, and John asks if Morgan is all right, then checks on Marcus. Marcus looks dead already, and John shoots him in the head. No zombification for you.
John buries Marcus, and Morgan says he’s sorry. John says, what for? Morgan is the one who got dragged through the woods by his neck. He’s racking up a lot of miles, and almost got killed. Morgan says, but he didn’t; John stopped it. John says she should have taken a shot at Marcus earlier. Morgan says, but he didn’t. John has to know why Morgan needs him. He needs John to keep them from becoming like Ginny. John says, that’s not the only reason, and Dakota says, they’re going to need another car. John says he saw another vehicle by Bill’s, but Morgan says, not with the Rangers looking. There might be more when Marcus doesn’t check in. He points, and says, what about that one? and John says, it’s been collecting rust since he was a kid. Morgan uncovers an old truck, and Dakota asks where it came from. John says, it belonged to his dad. They were going to fix it up together. Morgan says he’s spent time in one garage or another making cars in worse shape than this run again. It needs a battery and a distributor cap, but he thinks he can get it running. John says, it’s not too late, and Dakota asks what he means. He says, it’s something his daddy used to say. It’s not too late to learn something, to do the right thing, to fix a mistake, and apparently, it’s not too late to get an old Chevy truck running. Morgan says he saw some cars one cabin over. It’s less likely the Rangers will be there. Morgan tells John to take Dakota, but John says he can handle it. Morgan says he’s not sure if he can. If Virginia comes looking for Dakota, and brings more Rangers, he might just get everyone else in trouble.
Dakota sits on the roof of the truck, while John fiddles with the engine. She asks if John got his tools from the warehouse, but John says they belonged to his pop, who sent them to him the summer they were supposed to fix the Chevy. Dakota asks why his dad didn’t bring them, and John says, he never showed up. He moved to a cabin of his own up north, away from everybody. John got the occasional birthday and Christmas card, and a phone call once in a blue moon, but John never saw him again. He asks her to hold the battery, and she asks why John’s father left. Did he kill someone like John did? John says, no. He did the wrong thing but for the right reasons. She says it seems like his dad was punishing self, and John says, may be. She says, just like him. Morgan is right, isn’t he? That’s why John is there. John tells her, come on. He’s got to get one more thing. He calls her a know-it-all, and she says, what happened with Janice… He doesn’t have to feel bad about how life is now. People kill; people die. He says, it should mean something, and she asks, why? He says, if it doesn’t mean something when you die, it didn’t mean much when you were alive, and she says, so? He says he’s glad Morgan is taking her to that place. She’s starting to sound an awful lot like her sister. They get to a big shed, and John knocks on the door. When he doesn’t hear anything, he opens it. She says there’s nothing in there they need for the truck, and John says, who told her that he needed something for the truck? She asks why he needs a door if he’s coming with them, and Morgan appears. He says, John isn’t coming; is he right? He shows John the Scrabble letters, and says he found these. There are only so many words they spell out. John says they weren’t meant for Morgan, and Morgan says he knows they were meant for June. John says he was going to tell Morgan after they cleared the bridge. He’s going to keep his word, and get them across, but then he’s coming back. Morgan says, because of what he had to do to Marcus? but John says he doesn’t know why he didn’t kill Marcus before. He doesn’t know why he’s not meant to live in this world. If he’d only kept his nose out of it, Cameron would still be alive, and so would Janice. Morgan says, it will be okay. John went looking for a door to shut himself away, and found them. Does that tell him anything? Like the man who walked halfway around the world and found himself at John’s campfire. Morgan found John, and everyone he thinks of as family. He found Grace, and that wouldn’t have happened if John hadn’t insisted he sleep in the truck bed that night. John gave him a family, and has to help him get back. John says he will, the best way he knows how. He’s going to get them across the bridge, and stay out of their way. Morgan says there’s no door that’s going to keep them away, not him or June, and John says, it’s not a door to keep people out. It’s to keep the past from getting at him before he does what he needs to do. He just wants it to be over.
John sits with his gun, and Morgan comes in. He says he got the truck running, and John says, that’s good. Morgan sits, and says, it wasn’t that long ago, he was in a place like John is now. John says, when he works himself up to it, the past washes up, and steals his nerve. Morgan says it’s not John’s time; it’s not how should go out. That night at the gulch, whoever saved him, left him that. He shows John a note that says he still has things left to do. He says, it wouldn’t mean anything unless it was all of them. If he’s going to get everyone there, he had to make a change, or he’d lose all of them. John knows he’s not his dad. He doesn’t have to make the same mistakes his dad made, but he can come with them. Morgan found his way to keep going, and thinks John will find his. John says, don’t count on it, and shoots a zombie through the open door. He says they better get up there, and he and Morgan start to go outside. John sees the discarded doors, and says they might need the doors after all.
At the bridge, we see the front of the truck is rigged with the doors to keep the zombies at bat. John says, they could get tangled in the wheels, and asks if Dakota can get it across. She says her daddy let her drive in the church parking lot on Sunday afternoons, and he says he’ll talk her through it. He leaves her a gun in case the zombies get lucky. John goes to the truck bed, and Morgan unties the blockade. John says, ready, and Morgan opens it. John shoots the zombies as they come through, and Morgan runs back to the truck bed. John says, now, and Dakota starts the truck. She drives to the blockade, pushing it down. Zombies clamor at the car windows, as John hits them back with the butt of the gun. He and Morgan get as many as possible, and John tells Dakota keep going. She continues on, and Morgan gives a zombie a nice spike though the mouth. The doors help shovel them back, and John tells Dakota, pretend it’s one of those Sunday drives. Morgan pushes them back, and the truck stalls. Dakota asks, what’s going on? and we see a zombie wedged under a back wheel. John tells her to put it in first, and clear it. Now the zombie’s arm is getting ground into the wheel well, and John shoots it. The rest of the zombie follows its arm, and is now wedged above the tire. I say, oh, fu…dge.
Dakota asks what’s wrong with the engine, and Morgan says, it’s the alternator. He’ll go. John says, Morgan is in no shape, and moves to the front of the truck, while Morgan whacks stray zombies away. John gets between the doors and fencing attached to the front, and opens the hood. He says he’ll tell Dakota when. We can see Morgan is in pain, but he still fends off the zombies. One gets near John, and pins him half into the engine. Dakota grabs the gun, and tells John to move. She shoots the zombie through the windshield, and John pushes it onto the ground. He jumpstarts the engine, and tells Dakota, now. The truck starts, and John closes the hood, jumping on top of it. He shoots whatever zombies get through, but one pulls at him, and he smashes it with the gun butt. There are two clingers on the car, and Dakota tells Morgan to get down. She takes off, telling John to hang on, and hits the side of the bridge, knocking the zombies into the river, John kicking the last one off. Brilliant scene. Morgan stabs a few stragglers in their wormy little heads. Success!
They look back at the zombie carnage on the bridge, and John says, that is ugly mustard. Morgan says, yes it is, and they sit for a moment. Morgan gets out of the truck bed, and comes around the front. He tells John, when he was working on the truck, he found something. He hands John a photo of a little boy with a grown man, and Morgan says, that’s John isn’t it? And his dad. John says, his dad was more in his life than he cares to admit. He wonders why his father didn’t come by that summer, but thinks he’s starting to get it. He’s not coming. Morgan says, then John is stuck making the same mistakes as before; the same mistakes his father made. It’s like a loop. Morgan takes out the radio, and John asks what he’s doing. Morgan asks if Virginia can read him, and Virginia asks, what’s the plan? Is he ready to talk? He says he is, but not like this. He wants to meet in person. There’s a general store called Bill’s… John tries to grab the radio, telling Morgan, stop it. Morgan says, there’s a cabin John told them about, and Ginny says, she’s been there; John has terrible taste in movies. Morgan says he’ll wait there for her. He tells John, now he can’t go back, and John says Morgan had no right to do that. It’s not his choice to make. Morgan says it wasn’t his choice to have John chase him down the road when he had a busted leg, but John did it all the same. He’s alive now because John did. John can hit him if he likes, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to stand by and let his best friend kill himself.
Morgan says he’s going to try and get a signal; hear where Virginia is. He doesn’t want to cross paths with her on his way out. John continues to work on the engine in silence, and Dakota says he’ll have to talk to Morgan eventually. John says, the clip that was holding the wire fell off. That’s why it stalled. He wants to fix it before they get back on the road. He tells her, it’s a little red clip, and they both start looking. She picks up his hat, hands it to him, and thanks him. He asks why she’s thanking him, and she says, for letting her drive, and trusting her with a gun. She doesn’t feel like she needs to be behind locked behind walls all the time. She casually kills a zombie, and says he should come, but he says, it’s not a good idea. She says she thinks it would be; she likes being around him. He can’t go back to the cabin. He says, sure he can, but she says her sister will be there. He says if Morgan leads her to the place he’s working on, it could get messy real quick. He can be waiting for Ginny, and end this. Dakota says he can’t do alone, but he says Ginny won’t be expecting it. Dakota says, she would; she is. She’ll have Rangers with her. Even if John kills her, the Rangers will kill him. He says, then his death will mean something. He finishes the zombies off who aren’t quite undead dead, and says, as it should. Dakota sees the red clip on the ground, and says she found it. She picks it up, and a zombie grabs her ankle, causing her to fall. She stabs it with a knife she has handy, and tells John, it’s okay; she’s got it. He sees the knife, and asks, what is it? What is she hiding? He walks over, and pulls the knife out of the zombie, and asks where she got it. She shakes her head, and says she found it, but he says, don’t lie to him. Oh my God. She killed Cameron; Virginia was covering for her. Dakota says she didn’t know Ginny was going to kill Janice, and John asks why she pushed him to investigate. She says she knew Ginny wouldn’t let it get back to her, and if it seemed like Ginny was hiding something, people would start to doubt her. John asks why she killed Cameron, and she says he figured out how she was sneaking in and out, and he told Ginny. He took away the one way she had to get out of Lawrence. John says, and she thought he deserved to die for that? She says, it’s no different than what everyone else is doing to get what they want. It’s what her sister does; it’s what the Rangers do. He understands. John says he doesn’t understand, but she says, it’s how things are. She can’t. She turns the gun on him, and says he ruined this for her. He says he’s not going to tell anyone. He’s not going to hurt her. He puts his gun in his waistband, and she says he’s lying. He says he knows she’s been through a lot. He gets why she wouldn’t believe him, but give him a chance to show her they can get past this. He can help her. Morgan said he needed a reason to live, to keep going. Maybe it’s her. Put the gun down; she doesn’t want shoot him. She doesn’t want to do that to herself. She doesn’t want to live with that. It’s not what he wants for her.
To the surprise of all of us, she shoots him, and he staggers back. She says, she’s sorry. It doesn’t always have to be something. She pushes him off the bridge. What a fu…dge.
He’s going to live somehow, right? Right? And am I wrong that this was totally out of character for what we know about Dakota? A hot minute ago, she was telling John that he needed to make up with Morgan, and she liked being around him.
John hits the water, and we see blood run from him. He floats to the bottom, and there’s a song part. I feel cheated. He sees the photo on the floor of the river. and picks it up. He looks at the sun above the water, and swims up. He pulls himself onto a door floating in the water, and says, not today. He floats down the river.
When Morgan comes back, Dakota turns the gun on him. He asks what she did, and she says she didn’t want to do it; she had to do it. He asks where John is, and she starts to cry, because she’s an a-hole. He asks her again, and she says, John is floating down the river with a bullet in his chest. Morgan sees the knife in Dakota’s hand, and says, it’s her knife. She killed the Ranger. She says he’s going to take her to the place he’s building, and let her be a part of it, like he was before. He grabs her, and puts his battleax pokey weapon up to her throat. She says he’s not going to hurt her, but he tells her not to be so sure. She says she’s the reason he’s alive. She saved him at the gulch. He says, that’s not what happened. She says, Virginia left him to die, and he dragged himself to the church. The dead followed him, and were on top of him, about to eat him, but she was there. She killed them. He says, that’s not possible, and she says she followed Ginny and the Rangers to the gulch. That’s a good thing, right? She fixed him up, and stopped the bleeding. She gave him antibiotics and painkillers. He says, no more lies, and she says he doesn’t know her, but she heard his message. He needed to do this thing. He still has things left to do. She wrote the note and left it for him, and she was right. She’s seen it. He has to. She had to do it. He says, now what? and she says, he has to kill her sister to have the silly paradise he has to build. He’s grieving because he’s the only person left who can end her. He says, that’s not what he’s about, and she says, it is. It’s the only reason he’s still there.
Ginny gets to the cabin, and says they cleaned the place out. Where the hell are they? She asks June, where? but June says she doesn’t know. A Ranger asks if she’s sure she doesn’t know their whereabouts, when Morgan radios Ginny. She tells him that he’s late, and he says, John has been hurt, and needs help. Her sister did it. June asks where John is, and Ginny asks where her sister is. Morgan says, John is coming down the river. Help him if Morgan can’t find him first. He’s trying to get to him. Please help. Then they can talk. Ginny tells her Rangers, find Ranger Dorie.
Alicia is walking with Charlie and Dwight, and says, this is it. Morgan comes over the radio, and tells Dwight, get the damn wall ready. They might be bringing the fight with Virginia to their own doorstep. He needs to get Shari. They’ll need all the firepower they can get.
June tells Virginia, send more Rangers, and Ginny say she already has. June says, if Virginia wants her to help, she needs to know what happened. Morgan comes on the radio, and June grabs it. She asks, what’s going on? June looks out the door, and Ginny grabs it back. John has washed up on shore, and June runs out, calling to him. She stumbles, and falls to the ground just as she gets to him. He pulls himself along, and we realize his eyes are milky. He reaches for her, and puts his hand on hers. She stays there a moment, then stabs him in the head with a knife. I guess that’s love?
This season, Virginia says, bad things are about to happen, Daniel says it’s not safe, we meet a new group, John Glover joins the cast, and says Alicia doesn’t know what he’s setting out to do. He looks kind of like a mad professor.
👌🏻 Interesting tidbit. Jenna Elfman was on Talking Dead tonight, and said because of the pandemic, they had to sit on this episode for a year and half before it was actually filmed.
📰 Latest Additions…
New blood will be coming to FTWD this season.
https://www.cbr.com/fear-walking-dead-john-glover-keith-carradine-nick-stahl-cast-season-6/
⚰️ Dead News…
What’s to come in season 11.
What came last week with Here’s Negan.
🐉 Celebrating the Game…
HBO has plans.
https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/game-of-thrones-iron-anniversary-hbo-celebration/
🎉 After the Party’s Over…
Whether you called it a weekend, or just another two days on the calendar, I hope you changed it up a little. Until it’s time to sail away, stay safe, stay keeping it simple, and stay making sure it all means something.
What I Watched - TV With Theresa 