What I Watched Today

(rambling, random thoughts & annoyingly detailed recaps from real time TV watching)

Fear the Walking Dead

June tacks up signs on the trees that say: Turn Back. PADRE will take your children; PADRE is a lie – turn back. She stabs a zombie in the head, and keeps walking. She sees someone wrote, They took my daughter. Please help, on one of the signs. She hears someone contact Warbler on the radio, saying they have a lead on an egg; it might be a mess. Using binoculars, she sees a boat come through the canal or whatever it is. She shoots the two people in the boat with tranquilizing darts. Using surgical tools and skills, she cuts their index fingers off and sets the boat free. Back at her cabin, she puts the fingers in a jar, and hears Warbler say, they’ve been hit. That a-hole got us. When he finds that son of a bitch., he’s going to cut off both his hands. I love how he assumes it’s a man.

Walking in the woods, June sees another message written on one of her signs: Who are you? Where can I find you? She looks at an old billboard that says Coastal Railroad Museum, and on the radio, a woman says, PADRE 3; rescue complete. A man responds, en route to you now.

June deposits more fingers in the jar, when a man comes to the cabin. He says he just wants to talk, but June draws her gun. She asks how he found this place, and he says he followed her. He’s the one whose been writing on the signs. His name is Adrian, and he needs her help. The Collectors took his daughter Hannah from him a few years ago. June says she doesn’t know Hannah, and he says, but June knows PADRE, and he knows she can help him. He tells her to ask whatever she wants, but she says she doesn’t want to get to know him; she doesn’t want to know anybody. He asks what they did to her. Did they take her kid? Did she take kids for them? She tells him, get out and don’t come back, but he shows her Hannah’s picture, and says, it was taken when she was 7; she’d be 12 now. He shows her a friendship bracelet he’s wearing, and says, Hannah made one for each of them. She says she can’t help him, but he says he’ll be back every day. There are a lot of like-minded people who could help with what she’s doing. They’re forming an army to take PADRE. She tells him that if she sees him here again, she’ll kill him, but he says he thinks she’s just trying to scare him. She says, if PADRE’s had his daughter this long, he’s not getting her back. They use the people you care about the most against you. He says he’s not going to stop looking. She can either kill him or help him, but he’s not giving up. She backs him out the door, and shuts it, but he says, they know who she is now, and he’s not giving up.

June looks at the photo of Hannah that Adrian left, and packs a bag, including the jar of fingers. She leaves the photo behind.

June tranquilizes three more people in another boat, and is about to collect more fingers, but she unmasks one of them, and it’s Dwight. She unmasks another, and sees it’s Sherry. She says, sh*t. She hears a gun cock, and a boy tells her not to move. June says she didn’t know there were kids on board, and the boy says he hid under the tarp. He tells her that he’s going to call PADRE, and picks up a radio. He says, PADRE 2; we got attacked. A man addresses the boy as Finch, and asks, where’s Whistler? Finch says, dead; she killed him. He asks about Red Kite and Starling, and Finch says, she knocked them out. He asks the location, when Dwight and Sherry start to come around. June grabs the radio, and Finch accidently shoots the boat, which deflates. Dwight asks if that’s June, and Finch says, she shot them. She was trying to steal their boat. Sherry says, June’s the one who’s been cutting people’s fingers off, and Dwight snatches her tool roll from her. Finch wonders why June is calling Red Kite Dwight, and asks if she used to be at PADRE. Dwight tells her that they think Finch has appendicitis, and needs surgery. She asks why he doesn’t take Finch to the clinic, and he asks where she thinks they were headed. The man comes on the radio again, and Finch tells Dwight to tell them where they are, but he says, no. June is a nurse, and is going to help him. Sherry says, his appendix could burst by the time they get him to the clinic on foot, but June says she doesn’t have the equipment. Dwight says, she’ll have to figure it out, and June asks, why is that? He says, if she doesn’t, he’s telling PADRE who’s been cutting off his Collector’s fingers. June says she just wanted to leave, and Sherry asks, why? June says, it wasn’t safe for her anymore, and Dwight asks Finch to step away for a bit, giving the boy an oar in case he sees Carrion, and reminding him to aim for the eyes. Sherry wonders what happened to June, and says, if she does the surgery, they’ll get her a boat, and she can go wherever the hell she wants. PADRE will never know it was her. June says, Finch is their kid, isn’t he? The one Sherry was pregnant with when they were found on the rafts. Sherry says, PADRE doesn’t know Dwight is his father. Dwight teaches all the kids combat, and she’s in the nursery. Finch doesn’t know he’s their kid. Dwight says, they’ve been following PADRE’s rules, and Sherry says, once the surgery’s done, they’ll take Finch back, and no one will be the wiser. June says she knows where they can do the surgery, but they can’t ask any questions. She’ll take them there and do the surgery, then they have to keep up their end of the bargain and get her the boat. Sherry promises they will.

They go into a railroad car that looks less than sterile, and see a zombie head in a clamp. Dwight asks if June is sure it’s safe, and she stabs the zombie head, saying, it is now. She turns on some machines, and preps Finch for surgery. Finch asks if it will hurt, but Sherry says, he won’t feel a thing, and when he wakes up, he’ll feel better. Sherry finds a binder that contains studies on people who have turned, and asks June, what is this; who are these people? June says, the deal was no questions, but Sherry says, the deal’s changed. Dwight says, she’s got to give them something, when they hear the cock of a gun. It’s Adrian, and he asks who the kid is. June says she’s trying to help him, and Adrian says, two Collectors from PADRE? June says, it’s not what he thinks, and he says, PADRE has his daughter Hannah. Sherry says, maybe they can help him, and Dwight says, this doesn’t have to end in a fight. He’s sure she’s fine. PADRE hasn’t lost a kid yet. If Adrian can tell him what she looks like, maybe they can figure out something. A man asks Adrian’s location on the radio, and while he’s distracted, Dwight reaches for the gun. It goes off, hitting a wall. Outside, zombies gather. Dwight holds a gun on Adrian, and crushes the radio under his foot. Adrian says, there’s lots of more of them, and they can’t be stopped. They won’t let them hurt any more kids. Dwight says, they brought him here to save his life, and June says, they have a problem. The bullet hit the control panel, and she can’t do surgery without power. Finch cries out in pain, and June says, there’s an emergency override in the back of the train. They can have power if it’s turned on. Dwight says he’ll go, and gives Sherry the gun. June says, he can’t walk through the train; it’s full of the dead. She used to work here. It was off the books. PADRE didn’t want anyone to know about the experiments they were doing. Sherry asks if they’re the ones in the binder, and June says, the woman in the photos is Shrike. PADRE wanted her to find a way to stop the effect of walker bites. She had an idea; a treatment. Radiation. It was slow and painful. It was worse than dying from the bites. PADRE tried to force June to administer the treatments. She couldn’t do it, so she ran. Sherry says, they have to get to the back of the train. Dwight looks up, seeing a trapdoor, and says he doesn’t think they have to.

Adrian tells June that he’s sorry, and she says she told him to stay away. He says, if he had, he wouldn’t have seen this place. It shows she knows more about PADRE than she let on. She says she can’t help him, and he says, can’t, or won’t? Her attacks aren’t stopping them. She’s barely slowing them down. If she wants to do something, help him find Hannah, or help the boy and get him out before those Collectors bring him back to PADRE. She says she can’t, and he says, she told him PADRE uses the people you care about against you. He’s sorry for what happened to her, but if she never gets close to anyone again, what’s she living for? The electricity comes back on, and Dwight radios, asking how Finch is. June says, he’s still sleeping, but the medication won’t last much longer. Dwight and Sherry climb to the top of the train, and Dwight asks Sherry, what’s wrong? She says, seeing Finch and hearing him call her honey. She can’t snap back to the way things used to be. They made a choice when they were picked up on the rafts. They’d play by PADRE’s rules because they thought it was the safest place for their son. After what she’s seen today, she can’t bring Finch back here. It doesn’t feel safe. June knows all of PADRE’s collecting grounds and all the places he would look. They’ll find a place, and once they’re settled, they’ll find a way to let everyone know the truth about PADRE. He asks if they can really be a family, and she says, they can. She saw it earlier. They can do this. He kisses her, and they fall through the roof of the train into a car. June radios, asking, what happened? The car is full of zombies, and Dwight shoots some of them, then he and Sherry climb up onto a luggage rack. He tells June that they fell into a car of walkers like he’s never seen. She tells them to stay where they are. She’s on her way, but he says, it’s too risky. He doesn’t have nearly enough ammo. June says she’ll figure it out, but he says, no. Finch needs her for the operation. If they don’t make it back, promise him that she’ll take care of Finch. She tells him, stay put; she’s coming. Adrian asks what she’s doing, and she says, they have to survive for Finch. He asks if she’s doing this because it’s what’s best for Finch, or because she’s afraid she’ll have to take care of him, and she draws her gun, telling him, don’t follow her.

June walks through a car where there are shelves containing jars of zombie heads, and chained up zombies who snap at her as she goes by. She says she’s so sorry, and keeps walking. The door to the next car is padlocked, and the zombies start to break free since the pipes they’re chained to are pretty beat. She starts to shoot them, falls, and the gun goes flying. She fends them off as best she can, but luckily, Adrian didn’t listen to her, and comes in, stabbing them in the head. She says she told him not to follow her, and picks up her gun. He says, good thing he didn’t listen, but she says, he should have. He says, they’re a lot alike. The only difference is, he still has someone to live for. She has to find hers. Like he told her, there are more people like them. Together, they can take down PADRE. She says she can’t help him, but he says he’s not doing it for himself; he’s doing it for Hannah. He’s going to find her whether June helps him or not. And when he does, he wants her to see that her father isn’t who PADRE says he is. They should keep moving. Finch appears with his oar, and says he’s coming with them. June says, it’s too dangerous, but Finch says he can handle the Carrion; Red Kite taught him how.

The zombies start reaching through the rungs on the luggage rack, when June comes in shooting. Finch gets one with an oar, and asks, how was that? Dwight says, that was good, kid, and Adrian and June stab the last of the zombies. Sherry asks what Finch is doing here, and he says he’s going to tell PADRE how he fought the Carrion, but Sherry says, they’re not going back to PADRE. Dwight says, they want what’s best for Finch, and it’s not there. Sherry nods, and Dwight says, they’re his parents. Finch says, they’re not, no, and Sherry tells him that she knows it’s a lot to take in right now, but she promises they’ll figure it out as a family. Finch doubles over in pain, and June says, they should get him back to the operating room. They start to move forward, and Adrian turns around, seeing a child zombie through the door window. He says, no. Hannah. He grabs June, and says, that’s why she wouldn’t help him; she knew. June killed her. June says she tried to save her. She treated Hannah for asthma when she first came to PADRE. She was just a scared kid. She missed her dad. She reminded June of her own daughter, and June wanted to take care of her and make her feel safe. Adrian says, she’s a liar, and June says, then she went out on a scout. She went off-island and got bit. It was on her back, and June couldn’t amputate, but she had to do something. He asks if Shrike put Hannah through treatment, but June says, it wasn’t Shrike’s treatment; it was hers. She saw someone survive a bite longer than anyone she’d ever seen. She’d been exposed to radiation, so June thought, if it worked for her, it might work for Hannah. She gave Hannah radiotherapy using equipment salvaged from the hospital. It stopped the infection, but the amount of radiation it took made things worse for her, and June wanted to end her suffering. Adrian asks why she didn’t, and June says, Shrike wouldn’t let her. Shrike wanted to let Hannah turn so she could study her. See how long it took. Adrian says, and June let her? but June says she didn’t have a choice. Shrike held a gun on her, and said, as long as her finger was on the trigger, June had to keep the experiments going or other people would pay the price. That’s how this whole place happened, because she tried to save someone she cared about. Other people suffered as a result, so she made sure Shrike couldn’t do to anyone else what she did to her, and she took Shrike’s trigger finger. June knew they couldn’t do the experiments without her, and knew as long as she stayed away from here, away from people, no one else she cared about could get hurt. Adrian lets June go, and looks at zombie Hannah, saying, she was all he had left. He understands now why June wants to be alone. He walks up to the window and puts his hand on the pane. He opens the door and goes in, and June says, no! He holds Hannah, telling her that he’s got her, and the zombies close in on him. The others look away.

June stitches up Finch, and says, he’s stable. He should be awake soon. Dwight thanks her, and she says she held up her end of the deal. They should arrange for that boat. He says, they will, but when it comes, they want to all get in it together. June says, that wasn’t the deal, but Sherry says, things changed. June says, for who? and Sherry says, when Finch wakes up, they want to take him away from this place. Dwight says, they want to try and be a family, and she asks what it has to do with her. He says, she’s family, and Sherry says, they understand why June chose to be on her own, but they can’t let her end up like Adrian. Dwight says, someone who doesn’t have anybody to live for. He told her before, he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her and John. He has a family because of that, and wants her to be a part of it. That is, if she wants to. She says, okay. Adrian saved her so she could find someone to live for, but she needs to put Adrian and Hannah to rest first. They’ve suffered enough. As she’s about to walk into the next car, a couple of PADRE people come in with guns, and steampunk woman says, hello, Blue Jay. June is knocked out.

Steampunk woman says, oh good; June is coming around. June asks how she found her, and steampunk woman says, they figured it was her as soon as the Collectors started showing up without to the island without fingers. She holds up her hand, missing an index finger, and even though she doesn’t say it, we know she’s Shrike. Shrike says, no one else could be so precise. When they heard the boat that was missing had a kid who needed surgery on board, she knew June would come here. Dwight asks, what’s going on? and Shrike says she assumes Blue Jay told them what this place was; how much promise it had. Sherry asks if that’s what she calls murdering people, but Shrike says, they were about saving lives. Dwight says, she’s full of sh*t, but she says, he’s the one who lied to PADRE about what they were doing today. He says he brought Finch here to keep him safe from a-holes like her, but she says, no one wants the children safe more than PADRE. They created this place so the children would be safe from Carrion. But Blue Jay ran off before she could perfect the cure. June says, everyone she tried it on died, and Shrike says, that was then. She has faith June will get it right this time. PADRE’s got something big and expansive planned. He wants these children to be as safe as they can be. June needs to pick up where she left off. June says she won’t do it, but Shrike says, she just needs a little motivation. One of the men grabs June, pulling her to the side, and another brings in Adrian’s snapping head, putting it in the vise, and pushing it closer to a sleeping Finch. Dwight and Sherry get up, saying, hey, stop it! Sherry yells for Finch to wake up, and Shrike presses a button. The head moves closer to Finch, and June launches herself toward it, but Shrike pulls her back. Dwight and Sherry continue to yell, and the head bites Finch’s shoulder. Sherry cries, and Shrike makes the vise reverse. Dwight says he’s going to kill her, and she asks why he would do that. She’s the only one who can save his life… Well, they are. She tells the men to get them out of here, and they take Dwight and Sherry out; Sherry wailing, and Dwight threatening to kill Shrike. Shrike tells June that she’d better get to work. She’s got a lot to catch up on. They’ve got new patients on their way at this very moment. There’s just one thing they have to do first. They have to make sure that Blue Jay can never hurt them. She cuts off June’s finger, and June screams.

Morgan rides in the back of a truck with Madison, and she asks if he knows where they’re being taken. He says, her guess is as good as his, and she asks why he doesn’t think he can be the person Mo needs him to be. What the hell happened? What’s holding him back? They may not be alive long enough for her to pass judgement on him. He says he keeps thinking about a thing he did – actually, a thing he didn’t do – a long time ago. She asks, what? and he says, it doesn’t matter. She asks if he can fix it, but he says, not the worst of it, no. She says, some of it? and he says, maybe. She asks what the hell he’s doing here. Mo needs him. He needs to do whatever it takes so he can move forward. He says he’s not exactly in a position where he can call the shots, and Madison starts to cough. She falls off the bench, onto the floor, and Morgan yells for the driver to pull over. She can’t breathe. A man comes back, and pulls Madison back on the bench. Another man says, get her a tank, and as he’s reaching to get one, Madison rushes both of them, and shoves them out the back door, tumbling out with them. She yells for Morgan to go, as one of the men grabs her. Morgan takes off into the woods, and she yells, do what you need to do!

Next time, Madison gets the zombie head in her face; a fight on the train; Daniel returns; and Madison says, it’s time to tell the truth.

🐷 That’s All Folks…

See you tomorrow for the usual. Stay safe, sane, and as serene as you can.