Season 2, Episode 3: Ouroboros
PLOT: Boat troubles give our heroes the opportunity to sift through the wreckage of Flight 462 on a zombie-infested island.
REVIEW: Way back in the third episode of Fear the Walking Dead's first season, an episode called The Dog, Nick (Frank Dillane) looked up at the sky to see a plane heading for a crash landing. The sixteen episode web series Fear the Walking Dead: Flight 462, which also aired on AMC during The Walking Dead season 6 commercial breaks, filled in the story of that plane, and that short really did nothing for me. I felt that everything of value in it could have been whittled down into a few minutes and tacked onto a cold open sequence of a regular Fear the Walking Dead episode. That could have been done for this episode specifically, since this is when the paths of Nick and 462 again converge.
We had been told that a surviving character from Flight 462 would be joining the cast of Fear, and as Ouroboros gets started it seems pretty clear that the 462 passenger who's going to be sticking around a while is Michelle Ang's Alex. Fans had previously known the character as Charlie, and it's not clear why her name was changed from one gender neutral moniker to another. Brendan Meyer's Jake Powell had sort of been the emotional core of Flight 462, but the poor guy's not doing so well after the crash. I suppose he could be kept around to gradually heal and sport a severely scarred visage, but if there can be only one it's definitely Alex who should become a major player on this show. She's a tough character who walked into the Flight 462 episodes with a knowledge of zombies and a clear willingness to dispatch them, and if handled correctly she could become the closest thing this show has to the particular brand of badass that populates The Walking Dead.
Of course, you can take the fact that Michelle Ang is now listed with the main cast while Brendan Meyer is credited as a guest star as an indication of their individual staying power, but we know from the games played with Steven Yeun on the last season of The Walking Dead that these shows aren't above toying with the audience through their cast listings.
While Alex and Jake deal with the predicament the plane crash has left them in, the characters we've been following since season one continue to be pursued in the least thrilling chase in memory. There are .50 caliber machine gun-toting villains coming after their boat the Abigail, but the pace of the show isn't reflecting that. This time mechanical troubles cause the Abigail to sputter to a lengthy stop, but there's still no sign of baddies on the horizon.
It may not allow the human villains to arrive on the scene just yet, but those mechanical issues did allow Nick, Daniel (Ruben Blades), Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), and Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) to take a trip to the island where the Flight 462 wreckage and luggage has washed up on shore, a trip that culminates in some nice, bloody zombie action. There's still something about the tone of Fear the Walking Dead that makes even its action sequences seem less exciting to me than similar sequences on The Walking Dead, but it's always nice to see this show attempt to step it up a bit. While battling the zombies, Daniel caps them like the capable character we know him to be, Alicia fights her hardest, it remains disturbing every time Chris kills something, and Nick climbs higher on his ascent into the hero role… And we get to see the moment when these characters discover something the characters of The Walking Dead have known since their first season: zombies aren't interested in you if you're covered in the guts of their brethren. This moment of realization was presented in kind of an awkward way, with Nick stepping close enough to a zombie to be within kissing distance, but it brought a smile to my face when I figured out just what the hell he was doing.
There was also a nice step forward taken in the mystery of Abigail captain Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) in this episode, with Daniel passing along the "secret destination" information to Madison (Kim Dickens). Our heroes are still going along with Strand for now, but that massive douchebag move he pulls in the final moments brings up some interesting possibilities for the next episodes.
Fear the Walking Dead's version of an action-heavy episode, Ouroboros wasn't the most thrilling 42 minutes of television, but through its events this series continues to show signs of improvement.
BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: Sure, it's goofy as hell that Nick manages to tumble into the pit where he finds a zombie stuck in the ground with crabs crawling in its stomach, but that doesn't take away from how cool that image of the zombie is.
GORY GLORY: Nick ends up a bloody mess while hacking his way through the zombie horde, providing not only a great visual but also hope that he might be changing outfits more often. I'm getting tired of that shabby get-up he's been wearing since the first episode, geriatric shoes and all.
FAVORITE SCENE: "This is the worst. It'll never hurt worse than right now. And every day will be a little better. This is the worst it's gonna be." And what happens next.
FINAL VERDICT: