‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Episode 3 & 4 Recap/Review

Guys, I won’t lie to you, episode 3 of ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ was so terrible that I didn’t even write a review for it. No one did anything and it was so disoriented that I just didn’t care enough to tell you guys how bad it was… I’m sure you already knew that. So if you read my review for the 2nd episode, you know I wasn’t pleased with that either; that means that so far the only episode I have liked was episode one… Until now. Episode 4 of AMC’s new show Fear the Walking Dead has finally returned to what made the pilot so good: the characters.

The episode opens with Cliff’s son Chris sitting on the roof of their house, filming their neighborhood that is now enclosed behind a protective fence. He monologues about the army and the newly quarantined area when he spots a flash of light coming from a house up on a hill outside of the protected area.   He believes it to be a survivor trying to get in contact with someone from the outside but no one will listen to him, not even his father, who tells him it must be the sun glinting off of something shiny. Speaking of Cliff, he’s been dubbed some sort of community leader by the commanding officer of the Army taking care of the neighborhood, and is asked to convince a fellow neighbor to agree to a health check for him and his family. Cliff pep talks the hell out of this guy and seemingly becomes civilian head honcho. Sadly this episode really isn’t one of Cliff’s most action packed appearances…

Cliff Curtis as Travis, Elizabeth Rodriguez as Liza and Lorenzo James Henrie as Chris - Fear The Walking Dead _ Season 1, Episode 2 - Photo Credit: Justina Mintz/AMC

Chris’ mom Liza is elsewhere in the community, playing doctor. She’s taking care of an elderly man with heart disease and it’s implied that she’s doing the same for many other people in the area. A government doctor comes into the picture and it’s revealed that Liza is not only not a doctor but she isn’t even a nurse. This government doctor has the elderly patient transferred out of the community to a mysterious hospital as well telling Ruben Blades’ character Daniel that she’ll get his wife the care she needs if she’ll go to this “hospital” as well.

Nick has a run-in with this doctor too, after a day of convincing his dumb mother that he’s already kicked his heroin addiction just by turning down the painkillers she got him to help the withdrawal process. Surprise, Nick didn’t kick any addiction and it’s revealed that he’s been sneaking into Liza’s patient’s house and siphoning off the morphine drip into his foot. This is when he meets the doctor, when he’s high as hell, and she knows it. She takes note quietly and leaves, though.

What has our favorite character Madison been up to? Beyond all possibilities, she actually does something awesome this episode! She ends up being the only person who looks into Chris’ friend beyond the fence and takes a little venture out into the world. Beyond the army’s “defense system” Madison finds dead bodies everywhere; the army eradicated the dead and left them to rot. Madison even finds a few bodies that look to be not infected and yet they’ve been shot through the head anyway. After a close call with an outside patrol Madison abandons her adventure to the house on the hill and returns home. This was by far the most interesting thing Madison has done in the show and this time she didn’t even try to touch any of the dead people! Go Madison!

Madison- Fear the walking dead

The climax of the episode really had me on edge when the army comes to pick up Daniel’s wife to transport her back to the hospital and when he tries to join her, the soldier declares, “We only have two names on this list, not yours, Nicholas Clark?” Nick tries to escape but is captured by the Army and hauled off while everyone close to him tries to stop them. The government doctor convinces Liza to join her at the hospital and since every mother in this show is so maternal, she jumps into the military truck and leaves without saying goodbye or explaining anything to anyone… That’s really the only complaint I had about this episode, though.

The episode ends with Madison blaming Cliff for Liza’s actions which led to Nick’s apprehension; in despair, Cliff climbs to the roof to be alone when he sees the flash of light coming from the house on the hill. This happens in the middle of the night so there’s no sun to make this happen. Cliff finally believes his son just as muffled gunshots and muzzle flashes also appear in the house, destroying hope further like this show does so well. Considering there’s only six episodes this season that means that half of the episodes so far have been subpar, I only hope that the final two are just as good as this one so the two that weren’t that great are only a smudge on the series’ reputation.

About Joel Reaves

Joel (Aka The LA Nerd) is an independent filmmaker and podcaster that loves comic books about zombies, really short walks to the bar, and redheads named MJ but he's definitely not Spider-Man so stop asking, okay? Jeez.

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