TV Review: Fear the Walking Dead (Season 2, Episode 8)

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Season 2, Episode 8: Grotesque 

PLOT: In the aftermath of the midseason finale, Nick takes a long, treacherous walk through the Mexico countryside.

REVIEW: I was optimistic when I started watching season 2 of Fear the Walking Dead, as I felt a companion series to The Walking Dead that takes place on the opposite side of the United States and is set at an earlier point in the zombie outbreak had potential to be a solid, entertaining show. It just had to find its footing. Although I'm interested in seeing what's going to happen, I go into the second half of season 2 with some trepidation, feeling at this point like I have been burned repeatedly by the show's characters and storytelling. I have to stop thinking about the concept's potential and meet the show on its own terms, and I'm not exactly enthusiastic about it continuing down the path it's been taking so far.

Speaking of traveling down a path, that's what this latest episode was all about, and I don't think Fear the Walking Dead is going to win over any of its detractors by delivering a midseason premiere that's a slowly paced examination of one man's poorly planned 70 mile walk through the Mexico countryside. Often coming across more like an indie arthouse film than an episode of a genre television series, Grotesque feels like the show makers boldly standing up to those who criticize the pace of Fear the Walking Dead and saying, "You think we're boring? You're damn right we're boring."

The man taking said boneheaded trek is Nick (Frank Dillane), having cut ties with his family after the disaster they brought about in the midseason finale. His journey is motivated by a desire to find others who sympathize with the walking dead as he does, but one thing quickly becomes very clear – a person needs more than a lack of fear for flesh-eating ghouls and an ability to walk among them (when coated with zombie guts) to survive in a zombie apocalypse. He may believe that he can't die, but Nick is not a skilled survivalist, and everything that can go wrong during his walk does go wrong. It's brutal, but it's something that would work better as the B plot of an episode rather than being the focus of an entire episode. When Grotesque was giving me long shots of Nick walking or sitting by a fire and contemplating the night, I felt like my time was being wasted.

Dull though it frequently was, the episode did occasionally flare up with interesting events, like a sequence in which wild dogs attack both Nick and a horde of walkers, or a scene where some scavengers prove to be so laughably stupid that they can't even handle mowing down zombies for fun. There is also an intriguing turn of events toward the end of the episode that introduces new characters and a new location that I'm looking forward to learning more about.

Peppered throughout the episode are also a few flashbacks to a time before the pilot, flashbacks that deal with the loss of Nick's father while giving glimpses of his relationship with Lexi Johnson as Gloria, who we know will become the first zombie we ever saw in the series. Getting to see more of Gloria is a nice touch, but I'm not sure what the point of these flashbacks are. What do they convey that couldn't have just been told to us through a couple lines of dialogue?

Grotesque felt like a filler episode to me, and didn't do anything to calm the apprehension I have about this series. In fact, it just continued to make its issues more apparent. Here's hoping there will be more to next week's episode.

BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: Those dogs Nick ran into had a very bad attitude, and it was pretty cool when they started attacking the zombies that were also walking toward him. The dogs ripping into the walkers as the dead just kept moving forward, paying them no mind (for a little while), was a great visual.

GORY GLORY: There's a sequence where the walkers tear into a couple of morons that was presented in a way somewhat reminiscent of the gory feasts during the climaxes of DAWN OF THE DEAD and DAY OF THE DEAD. The zombies tear into the torso of a screaming victim and leave him and his buddy such a mess that the imagery truly does live up to the title of the episode.

FAVORITE SCENE: My favorite scene in here comes right before the zombie feast, when Nick doesn't break character while moving among the walking dead even though zombies all around him are taking shots to the head.

FINAL VERDICT: