Fear the Walking Dead, S2 Ep13 – Date of Death

Lots of family drama in this episode of Fear the Walking Dead as we explore two key parent-child relationships in the show. The whole episode almost felt like a regular drama. There were hardly even any walkers. Only terrible human beings in the form of Chris’s new “friends.”

The light Madison switched on briefly in the last episode attracted 43 new people, Travis among them. They have a brief emotional reunion as he tells her what happened between him and Chris. The latter decided to go and survive with his new douchebag friends rather than stay with his father, and this really took its toll on Travis.

The two main clashes here were generational and ideological, between the younger, more impulsive generation and the older, careful, and compassionate one. It’s clear that in the vicious world of Fear the Walking Dead one has to be more cold and calculating, and one of Travis’ main problems even in the first season is that he clings hard to his human decency and selflessness (like when he takes care of James) when he ought to take a more pragmatic view. But surviving doesn’t mean becoming monsters like the douchebag group and what Chris is shaping up to be. There has to be a balance struck between the two. And only then can one somehow make it through the madness of the zombie apocalypse.

Travis makes it to the hotel, and at the end of the episode so do a couple of the douches, but Chris’s fate is left a mystery. Did his friends betray him? Is he dead? Or did they leave him behind somewhere? We’ll find out soon enough.

Meanwhile there was more bonding between Madison and Alicia, because the former is determined to make up for years of neglect. She realized that she had been paying more attention to Nick because she felt that he needed it, that he had the same fragile nature as his father. And since Alicia was the stronger one, she did not need as much attention. But in a revealing conversation, Madison realizes that she needs to do more for her daughter, who was strong because she had to be. She shares the painful truth about the death of Alicia and Nick’s father and now the poor girl has to process this new, devastating piece of information in addition to contending with everything else.

Nick is still out there somewhere and there are 43 people (and counting) who arrived at the hotel seeking refuge. There may be safety in numbers but that also depends on the kind of people you have with you. We haven’t seen a lot of walkers on the show of late, and that only means that there will probably be a massacre in next week’s two-part season finale for Fear the Walking Dead. Keeping my fingers crossed for that.