Season 5, Episode 10: 210 Words Per Minute
PLOT: Grace fears she may be starting to feel the effects of her radiation poisoning during a Good Samaritan mission in a shopping mall.
REVIEW: Just one week after we got an episode of AMC's Fear the Walking Dead that felt like an homage to genre legend George A. Romero's film DIARY OF THE DEAD, since it was presented (like DIARY was) as if it were a documentary, here we have an episode of Fear that can't help but bring to mind another entry on the Romero filmography, DAWN OF THE DEAD. Of course, that's not because the episode is anywhere near the quality of DAWN OF THE DEAD, which is one of the greatest horror films ever made. It just draws comparisons to that classic because they both happen to be zombie stories that take place within shopping malls.
The mall setting isn't the only thing that might stir up extra interest in 210 Words Per Minute among horror fans. This episode also happens to have been directed by Ron Underwood. Underwood directing an episode of a TV show isn't rare, he has worked on a ton of shows over the last fifteen years, taking the helm of episodes of Reaper, Heroes, Burn Notice, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Once Upon a Time, Hawaii Five-O, Magnum P.I., and MacGyver, among many others. What makes Underwood's involvement with Fear the Walking Dead worth taking note of is the fact that he made his feature directorial debut back in 1990 with one of my all-time favorites, TREMORS. The director of TREMORS bringing us an episode of Fear the Walking Dead that's reminiscent (in a way) of DAWN OF THE DEAD, that's a special event.
The episode is primarily set in the mall because of the Good Samaritan project Morgan Jones (Lennie James) has gotten this show's characters wrapped up in. Morgan, his fellow The Walking Dead crossover character Dwight (Austin Amelio), and Morgan's new friend Grace (Karen David) are drawn to this place by a radio message from a man who has been staying in the mall but has been bitten by a zombie and wants Morgan and his cohorts to dispatch him once he turns. Trouble is, the guy proves tough to find once they infiltrate the mall, which happens to have a lot of zombies wandering around inside of it.
This mall may be the most unrealistic thing we've ever seen in a Walking Dead show, since we're a couple years into the zombie apocalypse at this point and the place hasn't already been picked clean, but okay, I'll look past that. The Fear characters pick up some supplies while they're there, but this episode doesn't use the mall for much in the way of wish fulfillment fun. Instead, the characters are mostly interested in the Urgent Care clinic that's in there, because Grace wants to use the equipment on hand to try to see what the radiation poisoning she believes she has is doing to her.
It's a shame that Grace was introduced to us this season with this terminal affliction already seemingly guaranteed to make her time on the show short, because she is a very likeable character, a good addition to the cast. 210 Words Per Minute gets its title from Grace and her tendency to listen to audiobooks at double speed (something I can relate to, since I speed up most audiobooks and podcasts I listen to), and the episode basically serves as a lamentation of her impending death.
Grace has seemed like a potential love interest for Morgan ever since some of their earliest interactions, so it's no surprise that romantic feelings the two share for each other start to come to the surface during this mall mission. But since it seems very likely that Grace is going to be dying soon, there's a heavy element of tragedy to the situation. After the death of his wife and son early in the apocalypse, Morgan might be able to build a new life with Grace… but he can't, because she's not going to be around long.
With a group headed up by Matt Frewer as a fellow named Logan rampaging through the countryside in search of oil fields Morgan's group has access to, Dwight eventually heads out on his own to set up a confrontation with one of Logan's people. Dwight knows all about being lackey to a villain, he used to murder people while following the orders of The Walking Dead bad guy Negan, so it was interesting to watch him interact with someone who is currently serving as a lackey to a villain. He lets this person know they have a choice: continue being an A-hole, or find another way.
As intriguing as the Dwight subplot was, the heart and soul of 210 Words Per Minute was what went on at the mall between Morgan and Grace. While I wish that more Fear characters from the show's early days had been present in this episode – all we got of them was a couple scenes with Daniel (Ruben Blades) – I didn't have a bad time watching it. It doesn't end with things in a happy, hopeful place, but it was nice while it lasted.
BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: Faced with the threat of a bunch of zombies riding up an escalator to the floor of the mall they're on, Morgan and Grace stand at the top of the escalator and kill every zombie that comes up. When Grace figures out how to reverse the escalator, Morgan is nearly pulled down into the crowd of zombies.
GORY GLORY: A lot of zombies get exterminated in this episode, but there's a memorable moment up front when Dwight axes a zombie through a door. He doesn't axe it in the head, though. His axe hooks it in the shoulder, allowing him to pull the zombie forward and repeatedly bash its face into the door frame and boards holding the door closed.
FAVORITE SCENE: TREMORS director Ron Underwood got to shoot a sequence where a character uses a monster-luring method pioneered in TREMORS II when Morgan uses a remote control car to lead the mall zombies in the direction he wants them to go.
FINAL VERDICT: