Fear the Walking Dead, Season 1, Episode 6 - An Intimate and Fitting Conclusion, for Now
Despite a jarring transition into the final stretch of the first season, Fear the Walking Dead closes out with a surreal picture of the end of the world, putting a stamp on its attempts at approaching the tale on a deeply personal level.
It was the intent from very early to have this unorthodox family developed into a small group that we knew a little more intimately than we perhaps would have. Where The Walking Dead took seasons to completely flesh out its characters, Fear clearly wanted to make it a priority.
The result of that is some characters who are deeply compelling and full of potential, and others that received their just screen time, even if it often felt like they didn't deserve it. Nevertheless, the final episode raises the tension and ensures there's enough drama by the end of it that not one person is unaffected by the proceedings. And that's as it should be.
Travis (Cliff Curtis) truly came into his own by the end of this episode, though it'd be foolish to think this leads to a drastically different character come season 2's premiere. The fascinating development here is that a character such as he will despise himself, most likely, for the actions he took in the finale. It's a testament to the show that I can confidently say that, regarding the character, because his development was spot on (if at times frustrating for audiences).
We see more of Strand (Colman Domingo) in this episode, and probably too much. The character is overly melodramatic, with a pompous tone that honestly threatens to make his demeanor intolerable going forward. Hopefully there's something more to him, because it certainly seems that way.
The major turning point of the episode early on, which was easy to predict from the past episode, was the release of the walkers holed up in the stadium. Daniel Salazar's (Ruben Blades) role in releasing them all seems utterly stupid, especially considering how well he's been crafted to appear the single most intelligent member of the group. I guess we can put it down to desperation, heat of the moment kind of thing. But it's clear that opening those doors was his plan from the closing scene of episode 5.
Fear's intent on taking the story and projecting it directly onto the characters on a deeply personal level is no clearer than in the final 10 or 15 minutes of the episode. Slowly boiling down its first season, it gives a sense of closure and also a sense of a new beginning, albeit in a melancholy manner. The final scenes contrast the early chaos with a beautiful ocean side view, but a pace that ensures the episode feels longer than its 50 minutes.
There was always going to be a major death in the episode. That's standard fare for the franchise. That they defied expectations and made that particular death beautiful is indicative of what the team has tried to do with this series. This wasn't a 'blink and you'll miss it' zombie feed. This was a man and a woman, one sobbing, the other hovering of her, a gun in his hand.
That particular moment, and the aftermath in which two characters mourn by the sea, demands that we as an audience consider the severity of that situation, and the emotional magnitude of what Travis had to do, after everything he's already done. With all said and done, its quite clear that Travis represents the old world and the new, transitioning us into the truly dead world of The Walking Dead through his own severely altered beliefs and actions.
This is the quickest, most intense episode to date, and it owes a lot of that to the slow build of the previous 5 episodes. While 6 episodes is arguably not quite enough time to truly invest in these characters, particularly due to their characteristics and the tendency to act in questionable ways, the development prior to this episode certainly gave the events that transpired an elevated gravitas.
Season 1 told a complete story. It told us of the collapse of civilisation in an isolated region. It never tried to be bigger than it was, and rarely left the confines of a military-controlled neighbourhood. As the future beckons, there's confidence to be had in the show's ability to continue to stand on its own, and with new eyes the characters may begin to resemble the kind of characters we can truly root for when everything goes to hell.
In the end, it's an intimate conclusion, cementing a group of characters that we for good or bad will follow into the foreseeable future. At times shaky, the first season is nevertheless closed out by a solid display of intense horror storytelling, capped by some truly stirring character work. The last shot of the ocean is possibly the last lively frame we'll see in a show that's only going to get bleaker from here.
