TV Review: Fear the Walking Dead – Season 4, Episode 15

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Season 4, Episode 15: I Lose People…

PLOT: While Morgan tries to lead one group of characters out of a hospital surrounded by zombies, others are dealing with the homicidal Martha out in the countryside.

REVIEW: I Lose People… was a somewhat extended episode of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, although I couldn’t tell you why, because it felt like it only had enough worthwhile moments for half a regular-length episode. I spent most of its running time feeling frustrated by how dull the episode was; this is the penultimate episode of the season, it’s leading into the big finale, shouldn’t it be more exciting than this?

Sure, this was a death episode, where we said goodbye to Jim (Aaron Stanford)… but while I liked Jim and think it’s a shame that Stanford isn’t going to be around on the show for longer, did we really need so much time dedicated to watching this guy slowly succumb to his zombie bite? We just met him a few episodes ago and his most prominent characteristic is the fact that he enjoys beer. He hasn’t exactly been an important element of this show, so his slow death wasn’t an emotional viewing experience for me. In the end, it only allowed the Fear makers to lift an idea from Robert Rodriguez’s GRINDHOUSE zombie movie PLANET TERROR. There a dying character revealed his barbecue recipe, here Jim reveals the secret of his brew.

For a while, I was thinking the most rousing moment in the episode would be a shot of a truck driving through shallow water – when Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) use the SWAT truck to save the stranded by flood, trapped by alligators Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) and John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt). If there’s one thing I was thankful for when watching I Lose People…, it was the fact that this episode finally brought almost all of the characters back together after the showrunners made the ill-advised decision to keep them separated for the second half of the season. They just need to find Althea (Maggie Grace) now, and we’ll have collected the whole set.

I’m glad to say the truck driving through water was not the pinnacle of excitement, as there were some nice zombie moments near the end of the episode, along with a sequence involving a fire truck ladder being used to rescue a character stranded on a roof that felt like something you would have seen on an action show in the ’80s. 

The jump Morgan Jones (Lennie James) makes onto that ladder wasn’t so thrilling to me, but there was a moment during that sequence where I was actually startled. It came right after Luciana (Danay Garcia) dispatches a zombie with an axe. As she’s moving on from that kill, another zombie slams into her from behind, and for a second I thought she had been bitten. If that happened, I would have been pissed. There are only three returning characters left on this show, and we need them all to stick around.

I Lose People… also had some moments with the homicidal, zombie pet keeping Martha (Tonya Pinkins), but she wasn’t in top form in this episode. Hopefully she’ll be making up for that in the next / finale episode, as this one does leave her in an interesting situation… And after taking way too long to have Jim die, it also leaves him in an interesting situation.

After getting off to an intriguing start that shook things up in a major way (a shake-up I’m increasingly seeing as unfortunate), Fear the Walking Dead’s fourth season has been dragging toward a conclusion in its second half. When Morgan presents the idea of leading the other characters to Alexandria, Virginia, where the characters of Fear’s companion series The Walking Dead are set up, I kind of want to see it happen. Take them to Alexandria, merge the characters into The Walking Dead, and let’s just call it a wrap on Fear at this point. I don’t see much reason for this spin-off to keep going anymore.

I know a mixing of the two shows that marks the end of Fear isn’t likely to happen, though. So I can only look forward to next week’s season finale with hope that it will be a lively one, and that it will leave me with an understanding of why Fear should even continue to exist now that it’s a substantially different show than it was before.

BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: The moment that briefly made me fear that Luciana wasn’t going to make it out of this episode alive.

GORY GLORY: Some zombies met their ends with blows to the head, and there are a couple impressive kills in that scene where Luciana almost bites it because a zombie almost bites her. She takes one walker out with an axe to the head, then the one that nearly got her gets impaled through its head.

FAVORITE SCENE: Sarah (Mo Collins) finds a strongly worded letter Althea left behind, one that even includes the “C-word”. But Althea didn’t just write “C-word”.

FINAL VERDICT: