BWW Recap: Smoke on the Walkers on FEAR THE WALKING DEAD

"The only way to survive a mad world is to embrace the madness." - Wise words spoken by this Strand character. It was an intense finale for the first six episode arc of the new series mirrored, with some truly cinematic music and camera shots.

As we learned last week, the military was about to abandon the family in the neighborhood thanks to Intel scored by one Mr. Daniel Salazar. His torturee (is that a word?), Adams was pretty convinced they still needed him and convinced Travis to take him with them so he could get them into the compound. Travis quickly released him for his services much to Salazar's chagrin. Alicia, Chris, Travis, Madison, Ophelia and Salazar piled into their cars and headed toward the compound. As Alicia and Chris took refuge underground, Salazar released the arena walkers onto the military so the family could break in and rescue Liza, Nick and Griselda (who, unbeknownst to them, died last week).

Inside, as the power grid goes down, Strand takes his opportunity to escape with Nick as they leave all their fellow prisoners behind. Strand looks to be some form of a con man which Nick, predictably, admires and all Strand wants to do is get out of there and find "Abigail." During their escape, Strand finds the soldier who had been blackmailing him and takes his cufflinks back from him before stripping him of weapons as he leaves the soldier to die. Strand and Nick get trapped in a hallway with walkers just as Travis and Madison arrive on the other side of the door. As we're about to watch Nick die (finally), Liza arrives with a key card and let's them through the doors. All together again, the family makes their way back to the garage after Liza informs a distraught Salazar and Ophelia that Griselda has passed away. When they arrive in the garage, the car is gone, but Chris and Alicia are hiding as some soldiers beat up Chris and stole the car. Adams appears again and wants to kill Salazar, but at the last minute shoots Ophelia instead. Travis flies into a fit of rage and beats him to a bloody pulp. Strand invites them all to his house on the beach where it will be safer than the desert. Upon arrival, it is a beautiful mansion and Strand reveals to Nick why he brought them there. They look through a telescope out onto the ocean and it is Strand's yacht, Abigail.

Ophelia is recovering from being shot in the arm as Liza reunites with Chris. She heads to the beach, Madison follows her to the coastline where Liza reveals she has been bitten. She gives Madison the gun and asks her to shoot her as Madison had asked her. Neither lady would like Travis to do it knowing full well it would break him. Travis arrives and after comprehending it all, he shoots Liza.

Did it break him? It sure seemed to. That may have been his last sense of hope. Everybody was pretty defeated by the end. Dr. Exner, who it seemed stayed behind to kill herself, Chris and Travis both destroyed by Liza's death, Madison who still blames herself for Nick's problems, Salazar and Ophelia grieving for Ophelia, it was a pretty hopeless beachside mansion. Nick is still annoying me. I hope that his character evolves in the next season as I would really like to stop rooting for him to die. Instead, we lost dear Liza. I do not see this setting well with Chris or with Travis as all of them are starting to realize loss in the first degree. Alicia lost her boyfriend, the Salazars lost Ophelia and now Travis and Chris have lost Liza. With such a small cast, they sure aren't pulling any punches with killing them off quickly. So where to next? Are they going to head to Catalina for refuge or are they going to keep heading to the desert? I guess we will have to wait.

And there we have it, the first six episodes. It was definitely a slow build, but it has a completely different feel to it than THE WALKING DEAD and I do like that they are completely different shows. Maybe because I am a Los Angeles resident and see these places on a daily basis makes me more frightened watching this show, but I definitely enjoyed it and will definitely be back for season two.

In the meantime, next week we head back to the East Coast to see how in the world Rick and crew are going to get out of Alexandria!

Here's a preview for next week's Season Six Premiere of THE WALKING DEAD:

Photo Credit: AMC

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