Check out Violet’s recap of the third episode of Fear the Walking Dead, titled The Dog, where Travis tries to get home to Madison amidst the chaos! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of Fear the Walking Dead, Season 1 Episode 3: The Dog
This episode picks up where the last one left off, with Travis, his son Chris, and his ex-wife Liza hiding out in the barber shop with the shop’s owner, Daniel, and his family, while the riot continues outside. They realize that the shop next door is on fire, which is starting to burn through the walls, so they decide to run outside, where the chaos continues. As they run, some scaffolding falls on the leg of the barber’s wife, Griselda. They work together to lift it off of her, then carry her to Travis’s truck, which isn’t that far away. They get in the bed of Travis’s truck, except for Travis and Chris, then drive to the hospital.
However, when they get to the hospital, there’s a blockade around it, and police wave them on. They then see the police shooting at someone coming out of the hospital, and continue to drive past. Liza suggests going to another hospital, but Daniel says for Travis to take them home with him, and he’ll call his cousin to pick them up. As they drive, they see the power going out across the city.
Meanwhile, Madison, Nick, and Alicia stay holed up inside their house, waiting for Travis. Madison decides they’ll play Monopoly while they wait. It seems they have played this waiting game before, presumably for their dad. The power goes out. Alicia notices their neighbor, Mr. Dawson, outside, but Nick says they need to stay away from the windows. Madison doesn’t want to tell Alicia what’s going on.
They hear some noise at the sliding glass door, and it turns out it’s a dog. They let it in. It’s covered in blood that does not belong to it. The dog begins barking at someone outside. It’s a walker, stumbling toward them. They decide to go to their next door neighbor’s house to get a gun. But they leave the sliding door open.
They climb over their backyard fence and make their way through the neighbor’s backyard, where there’s a trellis maze, and go into the house. It seems like no one is home. While Madison and Nick find the gun, Alicia notices the walker go into their house through the open door. It sounds like the walker has attacked the dog.
Just then, they see headlights pulling up to their house. It’s Travis. They run back outside through the trellis maze so that they can warn Travis.
Travis enters the house, and Liza and Chris follow him in, despite him having told them to wait in the car. The house is dark, and he comes upon the walker eating the dog. The walker notices Travis, and walks toward him, as Travis tries to talk to him. But the walker pushes him over, and a fight breaks out.
Meanwhile, Alicia has gone back to the neighbors house to retrieve the bullets they left behind. She notices that her neighbor was home after all, and runs back outside.
Just then Madison and Nick come in the with gun, which the Daniel takes and uses to shoot the walker in the head.
As Alicia runs back through the trellis maze, her neighbor, who is now a walker, grabs her, and she begins to scream. Chris runs outside to help her, but she struggles against him, though makes it safely over the fence. Everyone runs outside to see what is going on. The walker, Susan, grabs at them through a hole in the fence. They wonder if Susan is sick, but Nick says she’s not sick, she’s dead. Alicia freaks out about Matt, denying that he’s like that.
Travis helps Chris clean up his face, and says he doesn’t think his nose is broken. Travis assures his son that they’ll all be alright.
Liza tries to treat Griselda, who needs pain meds. Daniel says he has called his cousin, who is coming for them in the morning. Travis wants to wait until the morning for his family to leave, but Madison wants to leave right away. They argue, and eventually Travis wins, but with the condition of “taking care of” the dead walker. He wraps up the body of his former neighbor and drags it outside to bury it. Daniel tries to convince Travis to burn it, but Travis doesn’t want to.
Travis and Liza talk in the kitchen, and it seems she has had some medical training. She talks about how Griselda’s leg will become infected, the infection will spread, and she will eventually die.
Daniel and his family stay in one of the bedrooms. His daughter, Ophelia, tries to convince him to go with Travis, but he says they are not family. She seems to suggest that his “cousin” is not really family either.
Madison tells Travis that she gave some of Nick’s meds to Griselda. They share a hug and Travis says he won’t ever leave her again.
Later, Madison and Liza talk, and Liza says they should support each other, for the kids. Madison tells Liza that Susan took care of her kids, and helped her out when her husband died. Madison also asks Liza a favor: if she ever ends up like Susan, she needs Liza to take care of it, because it would break Travis to do it.
The next morning, Travis finishes burying the walker’s body. He brings the trash cans out for pick up, as does another neighbor. When he comes back inside, he sees Daniel teaching Chris how to use the gun, which makes Travis upset.
The cars are all loaded, but Madison says she has one thing left to do. She goes outside to the fence with a hammer. Travis sees what Madison is planning to do, and tries to stop her, saying they don’t know what’s going on, and there might be a small chance that Susan can be helped. Madison relents, and gives the hammer to Travis.
Madison gets in the car, and Nick begs for more meds. He notices how few they have left, and Madison explains that she gave the rest to Griselda.
Ophelia once more tries to convince her father to go with the others, saying that her mother needs help, and needs to be with the nurse. But he refuses.
Alicia gets in the car with her mother and Nick, while Liza and Chris get in the truck with Travis, and they head out. As they drive away, Madison notices Susan’s husband Patrick arrive home, so she goes back to warn him. As Madison runs up and tells Patrick not to touch Susan, he doesn’t listen, and goes toward her anyway. But just then, some military guys rush in and shoot Susan in the head.
Soon, the military is swarming around the neighborhood. They interview Travis to find out the names of all the occupants of the house. Madison asks where they took her neighbor, and a soldier tells her that her neighbor was covered in the infected’s blood. He asks if any of them have been exposed, and she says no. He also notices the spot where Travis buried the walker, and asks about it, but Madison says their dog died, and he doesn’t inquire further.
Travis tells Madison things are going to get better now that the cavalry has arrived. We see the soldiers loading up bodies into the back of a truck. They also spray paint an X on the house across the street. Daniel sees this and tells his family that it’s already too late.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 1 Episode 3 of Fear the Walking Dead: The Dog
This episode seemed a cross between character development and action. We learned a little bit more about the characters and their backgrounds. One piece of information we learned was that Madison’s husband had died. Up to this point, we didn’t know if they were divorced or what. Apparently the family had stayed up late one night waiting for him to come home, but he never did. I suppose in time we’ll learn why. We also saw a little of the baggage that exists between Travis and Liza, and saw a little closeness between him and his son, Chris. Apparently Travis is very anti-gun for some reason, which feels like it may be a very specific reason, and I’m sure we’ll eventually learn what that reason is. Additionally, we learned a little more about the Salazars and their background. The parents are from El Salvador, and it sounds like they have been through a lot in the past. Daniel seems a little shady, as does this “cousin,” judging by Ophelia’s reaction. I wonder if this so-called cousin is still coming. On the other hand, Daniel appears to be the only one that is understanding the gravity of the situation, which seems to be based on some sort of past experience.
But yes, there was a good amount of walker action, and seeing the decline of civilization. It’s crazy how bad things have gotten in just a few hours. Why is that? What happened to trigger this sudden collapse? The hospital is blockaded and the cops are shooting up the dead patients, who have now become walkers. Presumably all hospitals are like this. Power keeps flickering in and out, though I’m not sure why that is. But at the same time, society seems to still be running well enough that Susan’s husband, Patrick, is able to drive all the way from Salt Lake City and not get blocked by traffic. (Though we do learn that the airports have been shut down.) Speaking of traffic, Travis didn’t encounter any either. This is LA, why no traffic? Even in the zombie apocalypse, I’m sure there would be traffic from scared people trying to get out of town. Are there that many people affected that hardly anyone is driving? Also, seemingly by habit, both Travis and a neighbor put out their trash cans for pickup, as if everything is normal.
There were some things that happened in this episode that I found hard to believe, though. One was that Travis’s truck just happened to be unharmed when seemingly every other car in the vicinity had been destroyed. Also, why would you leave your door wide open when you know there are dangerous creatures out there roaming around?? If a dog can get to your door, so can a walker. It also annoyed me how Madison wanted to continue to keep Alicia in the dark about what’s been going on. She really should just have told her, considering it’s a safety issue with her being oblivious. And what was up with that creepy maze in Susan’s backyard? Finally, I’m really not sure how the military just happened to show up at the right place at the right time. The families had just left, and just came back, and we saw no sign of the military driving down the block. How would the military even know to run into that particular backyard? There just wasn’t enough time for any of this to have believably, conveniently happened.
Anyway, as I suspected, they didn’t make it to the desert. Looks like they’ll be stuck at home for the time being, while the military sorts things out, for now at least. Although it looks like they have things under control, we as fans of The Walking Dead know better, and that something is going to happen. This isn’t going to stay contained. I am interested to see how things go downhill from here.
Josh’s Thoughts: Fear the Walking Dead, Season 1 Episode 3: The Dog
As seems to be a running theme for me with this show and The Walking Dead, the actions people are taking and some of the story points seem very unbelievable to me. For example, the dog that gets eaten–would a dog that is that freaked out by someone allow itself to be close enough that a walker could get right up to it and attack it? I have to imagine that a dog that is barking as loud as he was at the walker would keep its distance, unless it was going to lunge and attack, and even then, these walkers are so slow, I can’t see a walker coming out on top. It seemed very odd to me. I would be able to buy that if the dog approached a walker thinking it was friendly, and getting eaten, but a dog that is on alert does not just allow itself to get caught.
Then there is the guy taking out his trash. Who is taking their trash out after all the chaos going on? Even if you are just hearing about stuff through the radio or news, I would either be hightailing it out of town, or locking my doors. The least of my concerns is making sure the trash is out for the trash man–who is probably not going to be coming ever again!
On top of that–how did this military group come in and know to stop at this specific place at the end of the episode? I suppose they could have heard the commotion, and decided to stop, but still–it didn’t seem like there was enough noise to be heard to cause them to stop. Where were the military people going anyway? Was this place their destination? I guess I will have to hope this becomes more clear in the future.
But moving on to Madison–why was she bent on keeping this secret from Alicia? I did not understand that at all. I would think for her daughter’s safety, she would want to tell her at the very least that people are going crazy, and you need to be careful. To say nothing seems basically irrational. Yet when it comes to dealing with the walkers, she is more than willing to shatter their skulls even though she doesn’t know for sure whether or not they are dead or not. It just kind of bothers me how the logic of some of these people seems so flawed.
Then about the Salazars–I am not sure why the father and Daniel were having such a hostility towards each other. They both seemed to help each other out, why did it turn into practically a competition? It seemed like they both wanted to keep score. You would want to have hope that if something like this really happened, the good people would do things out of the kindness of their own heart, and not have to keep score.
Despite my overall negativity towards the episode, there were some good moments to the episode. The tension that Daniel and the Salazars had to deal with getting to the truck was good (though it was pretty convenient that the truck was still intact, considering everything else in the area). I also enjoyed the moments at home when Madison and the family were dealing with the walkers (aside from my complaint about the dog).
Overall, I wish the show would make the characters more believable rather than doing things in the show that are either for shock value or to push a plot point forward. For me, if I am presented with a show that seems to be advertised as a gritty, realistic type show, when things appear unbelievable because of actions that people take or events that take place, it really takes me out of the show altogether. But I will continue on to the next episode, and see what this military has planned, and see how quickly their ideas fall apart.
Scenes from Fear the Walking Dead, Season 1 Episode 4: Not Fade Away
Here are scenes from the next episode of Fear the Walking Dead, titled Not Fade Away:
I must be the last person on Earth who just isn’t that interested in zombies, lol. But I do think the story of how the whole zombie apocalypse got started could be really interesting. I watched the first episode, but I haven’t seen this episode yet. Like you, I want more information than they seem to want to give up! Maybe, we’ll get it eventually…