Episode Title: Sicut Cervus
Original Airdate: 5-15-16
This is week the survivors finally make it off the Abigail and into Mexico, but not without some blood shed, losing Strand’s friend Luis in the process. Once at the compound, it’s everything Strand promised, but with secrets. Unfortunately, he finds his partner Tom has been bitten, with death and turning imminent. At first Strand considers dying with him, so the housekeeper, Celia (Luis’s mother) brings them poisoned communion wafers to help the process. Strand changes his mind and puts a bullet in Tom’s head.
Speaking of Celia, she’s into collecting the Infected in the compound’s wine cellar. She’s of the belief that they’ve simply moved onto the next step in life, all rooted in some religious fanaticism. When Daniel is the one to discover this, he definitely does not approve. Celia also poisoned an entire church with the same batch of communion wafers because the priest wanted his congregation to kill said Infected, a congregation that turned and the Survivors had to fight their way through to get to the compound, and presumably, the cause of Tom being bitten.
After a chat with Travis about killing Reed, Chris slips even further from sanity. He stands by and watches as Madison gets pinned during the churchyard massacre, which does not go unnoticed by Alicia. When she confronts him about it, Chris ambiguously threatens her. Later that night he sneaks into Madison and Alicia’s room and grabs a knife off the bedside table, just as Strand’s gunshot wakes up the women, catching Chris in an awkward position.
I don’t have a lot to say because it looks like we’re just repeating the Farm from The Walking Dead. I have no doubt that Hershel wasn’t the only living person storing the undead, but that doesn’t mean we have to see it again in this universe. Celia’s reasons are different than Hershel’s, and her killing an entire church was crazy cold, but it’s all too familiar and unnecessary. Even the little boy feeding the dog to the Infected was painfully copied. I don’t see this as an homage to the original; it’s just a tired ripoff. At least the discovery was made much more quickly than on the Farm, so they’re not dragging it out.
I’m wondering if next week’s mid-season finale will end the same way as TWD’s Season 2 mid-season finale. I will be angry if it does. Hopefully they won’t be rehashing all the The Walking Dead’s plots.
Channel: Superhero 