There was some hope last week that AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead might actually be getting interesting, that perhaps we’d written it off too quickly as a crass and shoddy cash-grab capitalizing on the astounding success of the original show. But then it took The Walking Dead itself four full seasons before it turned into a compelling drama. We should have known better. This week’s episode, “Cobalt” (once meant to be the title of the series), was possibly the weakest yet, and exacerbated the show’s representation issues, introducing another morally repugnant Black character (the flashy, beguiling Strand, played by Colman Domingo, who played Ralph Abernathy in Selma) and revealing that its most prominent Latino character is actually a psychopath.
On top of that, the only undead we got a good look at was some slacker donut shop zombie who apparently still felt enough residual sense of responsibility that she didn’t want to leave the store.
It starts in a holding pen at that mysterious medical facility, where they apparently put potential troublemakers like Nick (Frank Dillane, disappointingly subdued this week), Strand, and poor Doug Thompson (John Stewart), the muscle car nut who had the breakdown last week. After goading Doug into freaking out, so that he’s carted away, Strand sets his sights on Nick. Sadly, he doesn’t try to drive Nick crazy. He apparently senses that Nick has ninja skills or perhaps zombie-imitating talents that will come in handy, so he bribes a guard to prevent Nick from being carted off. Strand’s appearance is brief, but he manages to surpass both creepily cheerful Lt. Moyers (Jamie McShane) and quietly psychopathic Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) as the most interesting character on the show.
Back in town, Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) is raising a ruckus, throwing bottles at the chainlink fence that separates her from the National Guard, demanding to see Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spindola), who was dragged out of their temporary home for “medical treatment.” Eventually, her guardsman beau Adams (Shawn Hatosy) shows up, and convinces Ofelia to let him take her home.
This turns out to be part of Daniel’s bizarre plan, and the next time we see Adams, Madison (Kim Dickens) finds him tied up and gagged in the basement, with Daniel preparing to torture him. See, it turns out that Daniel was not an innocent kid back in El Salvador, but a torturer for the government. Sure, he was young, and sure, he claims they forced him to do it, but seriously? Are we still supposed to root for this guy? Even though he slips right back into torturer mode at the first sign of trouble? Daniel tells Ofelia some cockamamie story about trading Adams for Griselda and Nick, but really Daniel just wants information. And he gets it! Who says torture doesn’t work? Weak-kneed liberals, that’s who! It turns out “Cobalt” just means that the military is going to evacuate the L.A. basin the next morning, “humanely terminating” everyone left in the medical facility. Or in all of L.A. It’s not clear. Still, nothing that drastic seemed imminent, so it’s a good thing Daniel still remembered some things about torturing people, right?
Madison happens upon all this while she’s looking for her teenage daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey), who has run off to get into mischief again. Of course, Madison promptly forgets she has a daughter once she gets involved in Daniel’s nutty plans. Alicia recruits Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), Travis’s (Cliff Curtis) equally forgotten son, on a little day trip to the wealthy part of town, where she tries on a sexy evening gown (the closest Carey’s gonna get to Emmy’s red carpet, I’m afraid) and the two of them smash up the place because nothing matters anymore and now they are rebels without a cause. You would think they could at least make trashing a rich people home look fun, but it all seems kinda pro forma.
Travis has the most exciting adventure, convincing Moyers, who has a rather capricious attitude toward his protective duties, to take Travis to the medical facility, with a couple of key pitstops. First, Moyers tries to goad Travis into blowing away the aforementioned donut shop zombie with a high-powered sniper rifle. Travis declines. What a wimp, this guy. Though I have to say it was pretty gutsy of him to even approach the military after essentially witnessing them gunning down civilians at the end of the last episode. What was the point of that scene if Travis didn’t learn anything from it? In any case, next up, the squad Travis is riding with gets called to help out a SWAT team pinned down at the local library. That turns into a clusterfuck, all off-screen, Moyers vanishes, and some other guardsmen bring Travis home. Sorta anticlimactic.
Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) is at the medical facility, helping out Dr. Exner (Sandrine Holt), patching up wounds and such, and hey, while you’re at it, would you mind shooting Griselda in the head with this captive bolt pistol (normally used to put down cattle) after Griselda suddenly dies of septic shock from her ankle injury. Liza gives lip service to caring about what happened to Nick, but mostly seems like an adaptable sort. She doesn’t really flinch at the notion that this is how things work nowadays. She’s apparently a good little soldier, just like Daniel was, back in El Salvador, all those years ago.
There’s only one more episode left this season, and the ratings are dropping, maybe because people like their zombie shows about bad parents to have more zombies in them, and less teen angst. Season Two is going to be 15 episodes, so they’ll have to come up with a lot more story, or take another six scripts and stretch them out the way the parent show does.
Recommended Reading
“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”
“Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First”
“Fear the Walking Dead: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!”
“Fear the Walking Dead: I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Help”