On the mid-season premiere of Fear the Walking Dead, we learn a lot more about Nick’s back-story, and spend a large amount of time with him as he makes his way north towards Tijuana. Check out Josh’s recap of Season 2 Episode 8, titled Grotesque, followed by our thoughts!
- His thoughts on Grotesque, Episode 208 of Fear the Walking Dead
- Her thoughts on Fear the Walking Dead, Season 2 Episode 8: Grotesque
Fear the Walking Dead returned to AMC last Sunday, for the second half of Season 2. This episode was very Nick focused. We see Nick wake up, still covered in walker blood, and he finds some dead people. One of the servants from the house from last season talks to Nick, and tells him she is going South to find a boy’s father. She tells Nick to come with them, but he ultimately decides to go North to look for more people like himself and Celia. She warns him the road will be dangerous due to the gangs that way.
She gives Nick some supplies to survive his journey, and he sets out. He trudges through the Mexican landscape, on foot, adding more walker blood to himself, I assume to blend in. He walks for a very long time. And walks some more, and then some more.
Eventually he comes across some cars, and decides to inspect. But it is pretty uneventful, and he moves on to…more walking.
Night falls, and he finds a building to take shelter in. Unfortunately, this was a bad decision though, as he is woken up suddenly to a woman who only speaks Spanish, who is hitting him with a baseball bat, and screaming. Nick flees, because either he doesn’t want to hurt this lady, or he isn’t able to take her, and he is forced to leave his supplies behind.
He continues more walking, coming across more vehicles. Some walkers are inside, and Nick decides to investigate a vehicle, finding a small amount of water. He keeps looking inside, and finds a radio, which he goes for despite it being dangerously close to the walker’s chompers.
A vehicle then pulls up, with several armed men, who begin going through the vehicles. They eliminate some of the walkers, when Nick’s radio starts making a hiss. Nick makes a run for it into the brush, and the men begin shooting at him. He is able to lose them unscathed. He has ended up in a fairly open field, and continues….walking.
Eventually Nick comes across some cacti. After being poked by one, he decides to try to get some liquid out of them. After some more poking and stabbing, he bites into one, only to puke it up a few seconds later. Since the cactus plan didn’t go well, he has another idea–drinking his own urine. Tasty. More walking happens, and night falls again. He finds a vehicle to sleep against. Turns out sleeping is not a good idea for Nick, as this time some dogs have attacked Nick. They get a good bite on his leg, and Nick’s escape was climbing onto the vehicle he had been lying against.
Nick is saved by his walker friends though. A horde has come, and the dogs attack them. But the sheer numbers take out the dogs, turning them into piles of meat. Nick seems to relish their death as he has a sort of smug look on his face as the dogs are torn apart. The horde begins to move on, but they hear Nick shifting on the car. They come to the car, but are drawn away when they hear a car horn and gun fire in the distance.
Nick climbs down from the car, and heads to the dog meat. He decides to have a snack himself. One walker seemingly has lost its legs, and is crawling to Nick. Nick takes it on, removing its belt, and using it to tourniquet his legs. After doing so, Nick joins this horde of walkers, marching along with them. He seems to be hallucinating, hearing the walkers talk to him, including seeing and hearing his dead girlfriend as a walker say to him, “I will take you home”. Nick continues walking with the dead north towards Tijuana. Some men pull up, and they are sporting some automatic weapons. They begin taking shots at the walkers, as Nick continues marching on, watching walkers fall around him. One of the men seems to get spooked, and drops his ammunition, and eventually is swarmed by the mass of walkers. Nick watches as the man is torn apart, and then continues marching.
A trio, 2 men and a woman are watching Nick from afar, and the woman says, “It’s not him”. One of the men wants to help him, but the woman, named Luciana, doesn’t want to assist. Nick falls down, seemingly in some trouble. But mother nature has smiled on Nick for now. As night falls, water falls from the sky, and Nick drinks the rain he can.
Nick then wanders into town, hobbling on one foot basically. He wanders into a drug store, but seems unhappy with what he finds. He continues on, into another building. He finds some duct tape and make-shift bandages. Luciana and her men find Nick, and they ask him in Spanish if he is infected. They give him some water, and then take him to someone that can “help”.
He is taken to a doctor’s office, and he can hear commotion outside, but before he can investigate, the doctor comes. He speaks English, and inspects Nick’s leg wound. The doctor and Nick talk about dying, and Nick says he “wouldn’t mind that”. The doctor tells Nick death should not be feared, but it shouldn’t be sought. The doctor then uses some disinfectant to clean his wound, which is painful. The doctor then asks Nick where he came from, and why he came here. Nick says, “I want to be where the dead aren’t monsters”.
The doctor then opens up a door, and Nick sees there is a town flourishing outside. Nick heads out, and mingles, and attempts to play soccer with some kids.
Flashbacks
We gets some flashbacks of Nick, who is hanging out with that girl that we see turn into a walker in the very first episode of the show. She seems to be trying to convince Nick to turn on his parents in hopes for a lighter sentence. She tries to get Nick to get angry about his parents. Nick begins to lay into his dad about being tired all of the time, and never showing Nick how to be a man–or at least not anymore. Nick breaks down and the girl comforts him.
In another flashback, it looks like the girl might be released, and Nick comments on her parents when he seems them, as they look well off. Madison has shown up too, and Nick and her speak in private. Madison tells Nick that his father was in a head-on collision, and died in the crash. Nick seems very shaken from the news, and lets out a scream. The girl hears this, and sees Nick crying.
We later see Nick and the girl, and they are talking about Nick’s father and a book he liked. They are also about to get to high. The scene is a familiar one. It is the one where we first meet Nick, and the girl is turned into a walker. Nick begins to prepare the drugs as the girl gets a tourniquet going for herself.
His Thoughts on Fear the Walking Dead, Season 2 Episode 8: Grotesque
This episode of Fear the Walking Dead was a very slow paced episode. We basically had Nick walking a lot, which I imagine could partially be a metaphor for how everyone in this universe is “The Walking Dead”. It seems a little on the nose, but that is fine.
There are a few questions I have for the show. One, did Nick leave his belongings behind because that woman was too difficult to take down, or did he simply not want to hurt her? She certainly seemed tough, but I think Nick could have figured out something rather than get beat by the bat a few times, so that he would not lose his pack.
Speaking of strange decisions, the man who is overcome by walkers when he is trying to reload his gun puzzled me. He could have easily gotten up and moved away from the walkers rather than fumble for his bullets he dropped. That whole scene was very perplexing to me. Did he happen to see Nick in the crowd, saw that he was alive, and was puzzled as to why he was able to walk with them? I just really can’t imagine he would be able identify Nick from the couple dozen walkers trudging down the road. I also thought it was strange how Nick continued to march forward while the gun fire whizzed around him. I guess he could not run, as they would figure out he was human, but he could have fallen over, feigning death. I guess I can let this go though, as he was so dehydrated and wounded that he probably wasn’t thinking too clearly then.
As for this town, now that one of the main characters has arrived there, it is only a matter of time before the place burns down. But until then, I am curious to see what this society is about. I have a feeling they might be butting heads with the more militaristic group we saw on the road when Nick was on his journey, but we will have to see how that plays out.
Finally, I guess this episode was supposed to also illustrate Nick’s resolve and determination, as he was able to make it quite a distance with little/no supplies and many tribulations to get over. I also thought his quote, “I want to be where the dead aren’t monsters” really hammers home one of the themes of The Walking Dead–the dead aren’t the real threat, it is other people. I assume this will be playing out in this new town that Nick has found.
Her Thoughts on Fear the Walking Dead, Season 2 Episode 8: Grotesque
At the end of the mid-season finale of Season 2, we found our group separated into different groups: Travis tracked down Chris and is going to stay with him, Strand picked up Madison, Alicia, and Ofelia, but Nick declined to go with them, choosing instead to venture off on his own. Now it appears that Fear the Walking Dead has chosen to take a cue from its parent show, The Walking Dead, and decided to make episodes focusing on just one particular character (or group) — for example, like when the show had done episodes focusing on The Governor’s backstory, or Morgan’s backstory. In this case, we get a Nick episode. This was a bit surprising to me, as I thought for sure we would see what each of the groups were up to, all within the same episode. But they decided to go a different route, apparently.
I didn’t really like those Governor or Morgan episodes, because I thought that it was such an extreme step back from the story, interrupting the momentum that had been building up. In this case, since it wasn’t only backstory, but instead present time mixed in with backstory, it was a little more interesting. But at the same time, I still sort of felt like it was an interruption in the story, in that we don’t see what anyone else is up to except for Nick. After such a climax at the end of the last episode, I was curious to see what happened after everyone went their separate ways. But instead, we just got Nick.
The episode itself was alright, just not really all that exciting. I’m wondering how the rest of the season will be split up between the groups. Will each group get an episode focusing on it, or was it just this one Nick episode that got that treatment? I’m sure we’ll meet plenty of new characters in this town that Nick has found himself in, which will expand the Fear the Walking Dead lore even more. Let’s hope these new characters are better at decision-making than the characters we’ve already been introduced to.
Scenes from Fear the Walking Dead, Season 2 Episode 9: Los Muertos
Preview of Season 2, Episode 9 of Fear the Walking Dead
I don’t understand why there’s so much hate or negative regard towards this show.
I think after so much of Walking dead, this is a nice change of pace story wise and overall feel
This show is an awesome companion to TWD! Thanks for the epic article!
Nicely done.