What I Watched Today

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

Fear the Walking Dead

A man goes inside an abandoned house, kicking garbage out of his way. He lights a lantern. We see it’s Dwight. He looks at a framed photo of Sherry and himself in better days, and flashes back to Daryl telling him, make it right. He tries to rest, but is unsuccessful, so he whittles. He hears something and checks the house. He hears a man coughing in one of rooms, slips into the room, and grabs the man in the dark. The man says he thought the place was empty, but Dwight says, it’s not. The man asks if Dwight lives here, but Dwight says, it doesn’t matter. The man tells Dwight that his name is Jay, and Dwight asks if he’s going to walk out, or does he want Dwight to drag him out? Jay says he got robbed, and he’ll die if he doesn’t get what they stole back. Dwight says, there’s nothing valuable anymore, but Jay says, there is if you’re a diabetic; he had insulin in his bag. Dwight says, he’s full of sh*t. There’s no insulin left. Jay says, there was in his group. They had a guy who could make it, and he believed in miracles until the thieves killed him. They took everything, and with what he had he would have made it through the week. Dwight asks if Jay is messing with him. Does Jay expect him to believe this is a coincidence? Who told him? Jay asks, who told him what? and Dwight gets him down on the floor. He asks, who told Jay about him? Jay said he had a week’s supply. What happens after? Jay says he doesn’t know, but a week in hell is better than being dead. Please. He lost everyone. He owes it to them to make things right, however much time he has left. Dwight asks if Jay knows where the thieves are at, and Jay says he does.

Outside the old Sanctuary, zombies growl, and Dwight asks Jay if the guys who took his medicine are in there. Jay says, yeah, and Dwight says, good luck. He’s going to ask one more time, who told Jay about him? Jay asks why Dwight thinks someone else is involved, and Dwight says, the last time he helped someone get insulin, he ended up here. Jay says, at the factory? and Dwight says, they didn’t call it that then. Jay asks what it was called, and Dwight flashes back to when he lived there under Negan’s oppression. Dwight says, the Sanctuary. His life has been sh*t since he set foot in there. He doesn’t know if it’s Jay or the universe playing a sick joke on him, but he’s not going in there for anyone. Jay says, they’re not that different. His wife was everything to him. They killed her and their son too. Dwight came back alone, and Jay thinks Dwight lost someone too. If they don’t help each other, what are they even doing here? Dwight thinks a moment, and says, all right. He’ll meet Jay back at the house. Dwight looks at the zombie chained to the perimeter fence, and walks around, checking out the lay of the land.

Dwight sneaks inside, and creeps around. He sees windowed double-doors, a light shining behind them, and flashes back to Sanctuary life again. He goes into the room and rifles through the bags. He finds the insulin and finds a picture of Jay with his wife and son. He runs to the exit and sees the symbol for infinity etched on the wall. He looks through the furnace door window at the flames inside and sees the iron hanging next to the furnace and remembers Negan burning his face with the iron. A gun cocks and a voice says, turn around, a-hole. Dwight turns and guard Phil asks what he has there. Dwight says, they took someone’s medicine, and he’s here to get it back. Phil says, somebody did a number on Dwight’s face, and Dwight says, he’ll walk out, and Phil will never have to see his face again. Phil says, Dwight stole from them, and needs to be made an example. They’ll start on the other side of his face. In a lightening swift move, Dwight grabs Phil and shoves – no, shoots – him into the blazing furnace. I’m in awe. A bullet grazes Dwight, and a man asks what the hell he thinks he’s doing. A bunch of men run in and their leader Marty says, they’ll find out. Dwight jets out of the building, and wonders where Jay is. He calls to Jay and zombie Jay comes out from behind the bushes. Dwight knifes him in the head, and says, Daryl should have killed him when he had the chance. He tried make it right. He guesses he couldn’t. Daryl should have killed him. Please come and do it now. He cries – aww – and yells, please! A car approaches and pulls up. Sherry gets out, and asks what Dwight is doing here. She came to find him. June gets out and says she needs him. He passes out.

Inside somewhere, Sherry stitches Dwight up, and he says, they need to get out. Sherry asks, what happened? Who did this? The guy outside? He says, no, and she says, then who? but he says, it doesn’t matter. If they’re seen, those guys will kill them. June says, they’re almost done, and tells Sherry, pinch, pierce, then pull. Dwight asks if June shouldn’t be doing this, but June says, it’s better this way. Dwight says, they need to go, but June says, they’re not leaving without him. Sherry says, a fight is coming, and Dwight asks, what kind of fight? June says, one they can’t win without him, and Sherry says, Troy has a score to settle. He wants to take PADRE from Madison. Dwight says, sounds like her fight, but Sherry says, Madison is MIA, and Victor is in charge. Dwight says, he’s still alive? and she says, a lot has happened since he’s been gone. He asks what it has to do with him, and Sherry says, he’s trained a lot of kids. June says, they trust him and will listen to him, but he says, nothing he does or says to them will help them do any better. He asks why Dove is here, and Dove says, PADRE is the only home she’s known. Without it, she’s got nothing. Dwight gets up, and says he can’t help save those kids. He couldn’t save his own son. June says, that’s not his fault, but he says, it doesn’t matter. Every time he tries to make something right, someone gets hurt. Sherry says, that’s not true, and Dwight says, the guy outside needed insulin, just like her sister. He asked Dwight for help, and he died. The best thing he can do for PADRE and the kids is leave here alone. Sherry asks if he thinks she wanted to come. She came for their son. He says, Finch is gone, but she says, PADRE isn’t. He says, that place is the reason Finch is dead. Why fight for it? She says, maybe something good can come from something bad, and he says, it won’t. She says, they have to try, and he asks, why? She says, Finch’s life needs to mean something. Making PADRE is how they can honor him. Dwight says he can’t go back. He’ll honor Finch in his own way. He gets up, and Sherry asks what he thinks Finch would say if his father walked away from kids who needed protection, and he says, it’s not because he doesn’t care. It’s because he does. He leaves, and June says, it’s fine, but Sherry follows him out.

The three of them go outside, and June radios Dove. Dwight asks, what’s wrong? and Sherry says, Dove has been missing since they woke up. June asks Dove to tell her where she is, when a truck pulls up with Dove driving. June says, she looks hurt, and Sherry runs to the cab. Dove is slumped against the steering wheel. Dove sits back, insisting she doesn’t need help, but June says, she looks wounded. Dove lifts her shirt and shows June a bullet wound, and June checks her out. June says, there’s no exit wound. They need to get the bullet out right away. Sherry asks, who did this? and Dove says, someone tried to steal the truck. They were looking for someone that burned their friend. Dwight says, they have to get her inside, and June says she needs anesthetics. They have to get the bullet out and the wound cleaned before Dove goes into septic shock. Dwight points out that she said we, and June says, they need medical supplies. Marty says he should have known Dove would be with them, and he and his guys come out of the woods. Marty says, sorry about the girl, but what after Dwight did to Phil, it feels like a beautiful karma. Sherry asks what he’s talking about, and Dove says, Dwight’s the one who burned their friend. Marty says, Dove doesn’t look so hot. Maybe they can help. They have top notch medical supplies, but of course Dwight already knows that, since he was inside. Sherry asks Dwight, where? and Dwight says, the Sanctuary. Marty says, tick-tock. What’s it going to be? June asks what he wants in exchange, and Marty says he wants the satisfaction Phil deserves in finishing what he started, and he intends to give it to him. If Dwight hands himself over, he’ll get the girl patched up. Dwight lowers his gun, and Sherry says, nice try, a-hole. There’s a shootout, and Sherry says, they’re going to the Sanctuary now. Dwight says, that psycho will follow them, but Sherry says, they’re on foot. The Sanctuary is 20 miles. They’ll be in and out before Marty knows it. Dwight says, another kid needs surgery. When does it end? June says, they have to help Dove, and Sherry says, they have to go now. Zombies begin toddling out of the woods, and Marty shoots at them. Dwight drives the truck out.

They bring Dove into the Sanctuary, and Dwight tells them, be careful; there could still be people here. Sherry flashes back to Negan, and Dove coughs. Shots ring out, and Dwight shoots back, but runs out of bullets. Zombie Phil scrabbles at the furnace window from inside the furnace, and June says, they need to move. She grabs supplies, and she and Sherry shove stuff in their bags, while Dwight checks the place out. He tells them, the place is clear, but they have to hurry. June says she needs lidocaine. The best they can do is inject anesthesia around the wound. Dwight and Sherry keep flashing back to their time at the Sanctuary, and June tells Sherry to clean the wound. She gives Sherry a syringe and tells her how to do the injection. Dwight says, June should do it, but June says she told him that she can’t. He wonders if it’s about what happened in the train car, but she says, it’s more than that. She tells him, as soon as it’s numb, start the extraction. Dove says she doesn’t want Dwight removing the bullet. He couldn’t save his own son, and he’s not doing the same with her. They feel a rumbling, and the building shakes. Dwight looks out at the tons of zombies who have gotten through the fence and are now pounding at the building. He says, the gunfire must have drawn them. The fence is broken, and they’re piling in. June says, it’s not going to work. The bullet is too close to one of Dove’s arteries. They might do more damage taking it out. Sherry says, the place is hanging on by a thread, and Dwight says, he’ll stay and hold them off for as long as he can. He runs out.

Sherry follows Dwight to the ammo room, and says she knows why he wants to stay and fight the zombies. He doesn’t plan on surviving. He says, maybe Dove is right, and they’re here because of him, but Sherry says, that’s defeatist bullsh*t, and Dwight says, it is what it is, honey. Dwight loads his gun, and she tells him that it doesn’t have to be this way. He says, the guy he tried to help lost more than insulin. He had a wife and kid. He shows her the photo of Jay with his family, and says, he’s about Finch’s age. He tried to help and landed them back in this hellhole. This is not a coincidence and it’s not defeatist mentality. She asks him to tell her what it is, and he points to an infinity symbol on the wall. He says he drew that when they were living here. He put them all over the place, where Negan couldn’t find them. It was them forever. It kept him going and made him feel like they could turn something bad into something good. Maybe they can, but not if he’s with them. He’s so tired of making people suffer for it. Sherry says, so he’s going to kill himself? and he says he’s going to clear the walkers. Maybe they can save Dove and honor Finch. She calls him a selfish a-hole and locks him in the room. She says, he doesn’t get to give up like this, and she leaves as he pounds on the door.

Outside, there’s a multitude of zombies, and June hears metal creaking. She says, they have to wait until the building is more stable and they need extra hands. Dove says, it’s not about June’s finger (the one Shrike removed) or what happened on the train. What’s the real reason? June says, it’s not important, but Dove says, June is a nurse. She’s got a bullet in her, and every minute they wait is a minute she’s closer to dying. June says, Dove isn’t dying. What happened to them isn’t going to happen to her. Dove asks, who’s them? and June says, Finch, Hannah, and her daughter Rose. Dove says, June has a kid? and June says, yeah. She would have been Dove’s age. Dove asks, what happened? and June says, she had pneumonia. June went out to look for medicine, came back and… it just was too late. She cries and says she couldn’t save her daughter, just like she couldn’t save Finch. Dove says, now she knows PADRE was right. June can’t protect her; none of them can. She can’t exactly say why she wanted to get away, but she didn’t come here for Red Kite. She wanted to get as far away from PADRE as she could. She was running away. June says, she told them it was the only home she’d ever known, and Dove says, was. It’s gone now, and people like June are in charge. They just let the kids down. That’s what people do who can’t get over their own sh*t. Metal bangs, and June radios Dwight and Sherry, asking, what’s happening? Do they copy? Outside battling zombies, Sherry says she’s working on it. She just locked Dwight in their old room. June asks, why? and Sherry says, PADRE needs him. The kids will follow him. They know he’s right. June says, what about her? and Sherry says she’ll keep the zombies at a distance, but June says, she can’t on her own. Sherry says, just do what she came to do; help Dove and get Dwight back to PADRE. The zombies have been pushing at the fence between them and Sherry, and it suddenly comes down, right on top of Sherry. Sherry’s gun and radio are just out of reach, and June keeps trying to get her.

Inside, Dwight tries to get out of their old room. He breaks a chair. The zombies are right on top of Sherry, along with the fence, their snapping faces just inches from hers. Dwight looks at the infinity symbol, while June keeps trying to radio Sherry. This is all very intense. Dwight hammers at the door, and the zombies keep piling on the fence. Sherry flashes back to memories of Finch. June gets into Dwight’s room and tells him that Sherry needs him. He runs out, and Sherry flashes back to burying Finch. Dwight is there, pulling the zombies off the fence, and slicing and dicing them.

Dove stands in the bathroom and groans. She’s broken a mirror and is about to take the bullet out herself with a shard. June – who’s having quite a busy episode – says, Dove will die. She needs help. Dove says she’s not getting it from them or June, and starts to cry. She’s about to cut herself, and June says, no! Stop! Dove drops the glass and falls to the floor.

Sherry asks how Dwight got out, and he says, June let him out. Sherry says she had it covered, but he tells her that she was lying to herself about honoring Finch and keeping him alive to fight for PADRE. It’s bullsh*t. She says, he’s wrong, and he says, is he? Or did she lock him up because she was planning on doing the same thing? Sherry asks if he thinks she wants to die, and he says he knows she did. She doesn’t really believe good can come from bad. She wants to, he does too, but she can’t. She says, if that’s true, she doesn’t know how she can go on living. Marty comes back and says he had the feeling he’d find them here. Sherry and Dwight run back in, and Marty goes in shooting.

The building is still shaking like crazy, and June checks Dove’s pulse. Dwight says, their friends are here. The door is locked, but it won’t hold. Sherry says, they have to go somewhere safer, and June grabs supplies. She gets on one side, Sherry on the other, and they help Dove up and out of the room. Everything starts to crumble, and zombies are coming in. June says, they’re surrounded, and Sherry shoots as many as she can. They see Marty coming, and June says, they’ve got to get out, but Dwight says, there’s nowhere to go. The zombies are getting the better of Marty and his friends, and I laugh. Light fixtures and beams start falling, and Sherry and Dwight nearly get creamed, but they jump aside at the last second. June stabs a zombie coming for her and Dove. Zombies continue to stream in, and Marty gets Dwight up against the furnace, Phil still scratching at the window. Marty says, remember how he told Dwight about giving his friend the satisfaction? He thinks he’s going to enjoy this more than Phil. He starts to open the furnace door, but Dwight grabs the iron and whacks him away with it, into a waiting zombie’s open arms. June says, they have nowhere to go, but Dwight says, the fire’s out. Let’s go inside. The building begins to collapse.

Inside the furnace, Dove asks, what happened? June says, the building is collapsing, and Dove says, it still hurts. This is never going to work. Sherry isn’t so sure this will help, but Dwight, keeping his lighter going so they can see, says, maybe it can. They hear metal clanging, and he says, the furnace is stable and will protect them from whatever is happening out there. June can do the surgery in here. June says she can’t, but he says, yes, she can. She asks how he knows, and he says, Sherry was right. Maybe something good can come from something bad. Maybe that’s the reason they wound up here. They needed each other to see it. Prepping Dove, June says she doesn’t want to hurt her, and Dove says, then don’t. Sherry says, June can do this. What happened to her, and them, doesn’t have to happen again. Maybe they just needed to work through the bad to get to the good. She half-smiles at Dwight, and June asks if Dove trusts her. Dove says, ask her again after the bullet is out, and June says, fair enough. She takes out her supplies, and Dwight keeps the lighter going.  

The oven opens and they come out. It’s practically the only thing left standing. There are a few errant zombies wandering around, and zombie Marty lies on the floor pinned there by another zombie. Dwight says, holy sh*t. It’s over. He asks how Dove is doing, and June says, she’s still resting. She’s going to be okay. Sherry looks up, and there’s a finch perched on what’s left of a wall. Are they trying to make me cry? June says, they should probably hit the road, and Dwight asks how she’s doing. June says, better, and he says he never should have left. Maybe they can turn the place into what it’s supposed to be, the way Finch wanted it to be. Sherry says she thinks they can.

Dwight says he made something for June, and gives her a finger he’s carved. He says, back in the train car, before it went the way it did, he asked her to be part of their family. He ran away, but he’s here now, so the offer still extends to her, and Dove as well. Sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck, Dove says, thank you, Red Kite, but Dwight says, she’s family. It’s Dwight. She says she’s Odessa, and he says he likes it. They should go. They have a lot of work to do. June and Sherry get into the truck, and Dwight looks around for a moment, then gets in. They pull away.

A song plays from a 45 on a turntable, something about sailing to Spain. Over the radio, we hear Russel say, nothing yet. Sorry. Troy says, his daughter is alive and well, and they will find her. We see it’s Victor’s turntable, and a little girl screams as she’s let down the hall by a man and a woman. She’s also blindfolded, and she says she hates this place. Where is she? Where’s her dad? They bring her to Victor, and in German, the man says, they found her for him. The woman asks, what does he want them to do? and Victor says, he’ll handle it. He tells the girl that he’s going to remove the blindfold. He does, and she asks, who is he? What does he want with her? He says, his name is Victor, and her eyes get huge. He says, it’s a good thing found her. She asks, why? and he says he’s going to help her. And she’s going to help him. She says, do what? and he says, save PADRE. He tries to touch her face, but she jerks away, and he smiles.

Next time, a stuck herd of zombies; Madison thinks she sees Alicia; Victor says, it’s not about him or her, but about PADRE; Troy wonders what makes them think he’ll make a deal; Victor gets attacked by zombies; Troy says, it doesn’t end well, and Luciana says, for you.

🕰 I’ve Fallen Back and I Can’t Get Up…        

Join me tomorrow for soap and yachting in the Med. Until then, stay safe, stay working through the bad to get to the good, and stay not letting anyone down because you can’t get over your own sh*t.