Episode Title: We All Fall Down
Original Airdate: 4-17-16
The survivors decided to make port for the night to try to shake the other boat that mysteriously started following them. Travis, Madison and their kids find a family led by a survivalist on a small island. He tells them that all the major cities have fallen. After talking to the wife, Madison is convinced she wants to leave with them. It turns out the wife has MS, but wants her two small children to leave and have some sort of life, whatever it may be. Meanwhile Nick, snooping for drugs, finds what he theorizes are poisonous pills the father is keeping around in case things become bad enough the family can die together. Nick just happens to be right, because as the wife and husband argue over their younger kids leaving, the daughter takes one of the pills, dies and reanimates, biting her mother. The husband tells them to take the younger son and leave, but their teenage son stops them on the dock, as his reanimated mother shambles toward them. He retrieves his younger brother, then shoots his mother in the head as the survivors sail off.
Though it wasn’t particularly exciting or intense, this was a pretty interesting episode. I’d certainly call it unsettling, but people who cut themselves off like the family on the island always come across that way to me. Don’t get me wrong: I’m pretty damn antisocial, but there’s something scary about people who want to be that far removed from society, especially with small children.
Words cannot express how thrilled I am that the two children did not make it onto the boat with our main survivors. The teenagers are bad enough, but to throw two kids into the mix would have been downright torture. I’m sorry for whatever happened to them (the sons’ and dad’s fates are still unknown) but grateful I don’t have to endure even more poor decision making.
I really don’t think this show could handle more cast members at this point anyway, since they don’t seem to have the regulars doing much at this point. The moments between Daniel and Strand were fine, and clearly we’ll be learning more about Strand, hopefully soon. But poor Ofelia. Please give her something to do! The most any of the teens did this time around was Nick connecting to the island kids and realizing their dad would very likely “Jonestown” the whole family, plus being responsible for the daughter finding the pills as she walked in on him putting them back. Clearly we have enough expendables already.
So it was a decent episode, but also it’s becoming painfully obvious that the overlarge cast is a burden at this point.
Channel: Superhero 