TV Review: Fear the Walking Dead – Season 5, Episode 12

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Season 5, Episode 12: Ner Tamid

PLOT: Seeking a home for a caravan of survivors, Charlie finds hope at a synagogue.

REVIEW: I enjoyed watching the twelfth episode of Fear the Walking Dead's fifth season, but I also have mixed feelings about it. For me, it's bad news whenever an episode of this show doesn't feature one of the characters we've been following since before the current showrunners took over with season 4. At this point, those characters have been whittled down to just Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Strand (Colman Domingo), Luciana (Danay Garcia), and Daniel (Ruben Blades) – and not one of them is present for Ner Tamid. Instead, this show is continuing to add new characters, as if we need more people to draw attention away from the few original Fear stars we have left.

The good news is that I liked the character who gets added into the show in this episode, Rabbi Jacob Kessner (played by the prolific Peter Jacobson). It's season 4 addition Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) who brings Kessner into the show, drawn to his synagogue by the glow of the "Ner Tamid" – the "everlasting light" that hangs in the synagogue and is meant to represent the presence of God. Kessner is keeping that light running with a dying car battery, but it's still enough to catch Charlie's attention.

Some could interpret that to mean that it was God who brought Charlie to the synagogue, and Kessner's religion does play heavily into the episode. Charlie clearly likes the idea of being directly guided by God, and finds it endearing that Kessner is upholding tradition by continuing to stick to all his duties as a rabbi even though he doesn't have a congregation anymore. I found that aspect of the character to be endearing myself. Kessner is alone in this synagogue, and we'll find out that he has a tragic back story involving the fate of his congregation. It's not quite on the level of Father Gabriel's back story with his congregation on The Walking Dead, but they have similar outcomes anyway, and both have something to do with religious figures failing to be strong leaders for their people.

Charlie and the other characters we follow on this show are now traveling around with a caravan of thirty-six people, and Charlie wants to find a place for them where they can all settle down. Before she even brings the idea up to Kessner, she's already convinced that the synagogue could be everyone's new home. Charlie's determination to make that happen even though there's nothing to indicate that Kessner would be happy to get thirty-six roommates is quite naive, but at least she also has an interesting reason for wanting to find everyone a home. Traveling in this caravan reminds her too much of the time she spent traveling with the group known as "The Vultures", a group whose bad influence even caused her to kill one of the show's most important characters early in season 4. 

Viewers who aren't into the "getting to know you" stuff with Kessner and/or don't care about Charlie's motivation for wanting to find a home will be glad to know that this episode also features plenty of zombie action. We see Kessner taking down zombies on a couple different occasions, but it's when Charlie's fellow season 4 additions John (Garret Dillahunt) and June (Jenna Elfman) join her at the synagogue that the episode really shifts gears. Barricades fail, zombies surround the synagogue, and the characters have to figure out how to escape from this mess.

This is basically the same thing that happened with Alicia and Strand in the previous episode; they met a new character and ended up getting stuck in a zombie-surrounded location with them (in that case it was a police station). And yes, Kessner plays a major role in getting the regulars out of this jam just like Wes (Colby Hollman) saved Alicia and Strand. But the action sequence that ensues here isn't really about the new character being a hero. Instead, it focuses on John and June as they try to reach the vehicle they parked just outside the synagogue fence – and to cross the zombie-filled parking lot, they use a ladder to make a bridge between the cars parked there.

Several minutes of this episode are primarily focused on John and June's parking lot adventure, and even though there were moments when I found it a little tough to believe that the zombies wouldn't quickly and easily knock the ladder out from under the characters, there were also moments that I found to be legitimately thrilling. John and June might be luckier than they should be, but they still run into some trouble. I don't say a lot of positive things about the changes the current showrunners brought to Fear the Walking Dead, but I do appreciate that they added cooler zombie action sequences into the mix.

Ner Tamid is mostly about Charlie dragging Kessner into the cast, but it also nudges the story about the villain Logan (Matt Frewer) and his search for oil fields forward a bit, and contains some nice moments with The Walking Dead crossover character Dwight (Austin Amelio) and season 4 addition Sarah (Mo Collins). It was a fine episode… but I'm still annoyed that it didn't feature Alicia, Strand, Luciana, or Daniel.

BEST ZOMBIE MOMENT: A whole lot of zombies try to get their hands and mouths on John and June as they cross the synagogue parking lot with their ladder.

GORY GLORY: A truck hits a zombie, which gets crushed under the truck's wheels. Since that truck was leading a caravan, several more vehicles come along to run over the zombie's body as well, flattening it to the ground.

FAVORITE SCENE: John and June's time in the parking lot is tops, but I also found the last scene with Logan to be promising, since I'm tired of his storyline, which is getting dragged out while also not getting a lot of attention.

FINAL VERDICT: