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

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Season 2, Episode 2: We All Fall Down

PLOT: Being pursued by a boatload of potential villains, the passengers of the Abigail seek refuge on an island inhabited by one very suspicious family.

REVIEW: Fear the Walking Dead threw me a curveball. Given the ending of last week's episode, I expected this week's to be more of an intense chase on the high seas. After all, the Abigail is being pursued by a faster boat containing people who may have gunned down a boatload of innocents. I thought we'd see a lot more of the Abigail chugging along with the bad guys gaining on her. Instead, the show went in a more old fashioned television direction, dropping our heroes into a situation with a new batch of characters, getting them wrapped up in their story, then having them move on at the end, likely never to see them again. (Definitely never seeing a couple of them again.)

As much as I want to meet the people on the boat looking for the Abigail, this standalone side-story episode worked for me because the family found living on this wildlife refuge island are quite an interesting bunch, and the Clarks and Manawas got to have some very intriguing interactions with them. I especially enjoyed the scenes between Travis and  island dweller George, discussing the zombie apocalypse as well as New Zealand culture. I like that this show has allowed Cliff Curtis to play his own ethnicity for a change, opening the door for these references to Māori customs.

The information George has drives home the fact that the world is crumbling even more. In George A. Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD, there's a suggestion that one way to deal with the zombie problem may be to drop nukes on all the major cities. They're not going with the nuclear option, but bombing is the solution the military has gone with here, dropping napalm on all the big cities along the west coast. The U.S. border is closed, ranger stations are shutting down from California to the continental divide… It's the end of the world as we know it, and I love stories like this. Fear the Walking Dead has the opportunity to show civilization crumble piece by piece, and the more they have scenes like this, the more entertainment I'm going to get out of it.

Beyond Travis and George, we have Madison delving into the mysterious behavior of her fellow mother, little Harry's odd talk of "power pills", Alicia talking about the "Ring Around the Rosie"/Great Plague connection (this has been dismissed as an urban legend, but it's a fitting subject for a zombie show), and one of the most disturbing elements of this episode, teenage Seth showing Chris, still brooding over the loss of his mother and angry at his father for killing her as she became a zombie, how he deals with the zombies who show up at the island's beach fence. Chris seems really into killing things at this point, and if he doesn't get it together soon I have a feeling he's going to become a villain himself.

While strange things are going down on the island, we have my two favorite characters bouncing off each other back on the Abigail, with Daniel keeping a close eye on the boat's owner(?) Victor Strand, hanging over him "like the spectre of death" and questioning every little thing about him. The more Daniel doubts him, the more it's becoming clear that Strand is deceiving his passengers in some way, and this storyline is fascinating to me.

There were two searches in this episode that I was quite happy with the outcome of. First, it was good to see Nick, checking in on the "at risk youths" of Catrina Island, sifting through pharmaceuticals and not popping any of them. We don't need to see him do any more of that kind of stuff, especially now that he's taking on more and more of a heroic role. Secondly, not only did Daniel's search of the Abigail turn up some clues to Strand's secrets, it also gave us the awesome sight of him holding a machine gun that he will hopefully soon be firing. The sly way he draws and points his gun during the final moments of the episode was also extremely badass.

Another thing that brought a smile to my face was the sequence set to "Coxcomb Red" by Songs: Ohia, which Alicia is listening to on her headphones. Whether it's Songs: Ohia or Magnola Electric Co., I've been a fan of the late singer/songwriter Jason Molina's work for several years, his music has been included in the soundtrack to some really rough times in my life, so it was great to hear one of his songs make it onto a high profile show like this.

The ending of this episode was a bit of a bummer, but I'm glad it went that way. We already have enough young people on board the Abigail, we didn't need the addition of the character the Clarks and Manawas were trying to bring on.

We All Fall Down wasn't at all what I expected to be watching this week, but as it came to a close I found it to be a wholly satisfying episode. Now the Abigail's travels continue, and it looks like things are going to get even worse and bloodier for our heroes. I can't wait to watch them endure the hardships ahead.

BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: With a picturesque sunset in the background, zombies wash up on the shore of Catrina Island and start making their way across the beach, only to be stopped by a chain link fence. That was a wonderfully moody cold open.

GORY GLORY: My pick for the best moment of bloodshed would have to be the scene in which a little zombie starts tearing into the throat of an adult.

FAVORITE SCENE: George bringing apocalyptic news to Travis as he talks about losing contact with park rangers and the bombings of Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, etc.

FINAL VERDICT: