Fear The Walking Dead returned tonight with an episode that will be remembered for many reasons. It is one of those episodes that makes you question the production choices similar to that one episode where it was in the spannish language during the entire episode and I remember that episode being a good episode. With all of the members of the group finally making it across the mountains on the last episode, what will come next for them? Here is my recap and review of the mid season premiere of Fear The Walking Dead titled “Channel 4”.
Before I start, I would like to say that I love the production of the entire episode. I always love the found footage genre and most of this episode’s filming techniques reminded me of The Office and the grittier movie Cannibal Holocaust in terms of the camera zooming in and out and making motion along with the characters being interviewed as well as the monolouges that happens in place of scenes. Now that I got that out of the way, here is my review.
The episode begins as the tape plays the interview with Morgan as he talks about someone helping him back then followed by Alicia, Salazar, Grace, Strand, John, June, Dwight, Charlie, and finally Lucianna as they all talked about their previous situations before they all became together. At the same time, footage was shot of a walker approaching, a shot of the S.W.A.T van, the back of the open truck, etc. Morgan talked about the plane landing and not having to stop moving and helping other people ever since they landed there. As Althea was still interviewing Morgan, a walker comes and Althea takes it down. Althea is the. interviewed as she talks about how she got all of the cameras. Then, we see that John opens the truck to give Morgan the boxes so he can write messages on them. Sarah is seen filling the gas as she says that they got it from a few people in the oilfields. She also mentions that the gas is starting to go bad too. Sarah then talks about Logan wanting the gas for himself and then we see that the group left Logan behind. Dwight is filling the gas and talks about him doing the opposite of what he used to do and we then get a shot of him carving a chess piece along with him and Salazar playing chess. Salazar even mentions that Dwight would not let him give him a haircut.
Alicia talks about her being a sprinter as we get a shot of her and Morgan trainnig while Charlie and Strand filling up more gas (I noticed I said this a lot, but this is what happens). Strand then takes down four walkers with Alicia’s weapon. Althea interviews Strand and asks him about Alicia. After that, we get a shot of their current campsite and June mentions that everyone that they try to find is too far apart. Grace takes an invetory of how much food and supplies are left. While she does this, walkers break through the plastic gate as June takes them out. She also mentions on the interview that they had to keep moving to different locations because of this. Althea asks June about the wedding and June says that they are already married and John says that she has his heart. Grace is then interviewed and she worried every day that she wakes up to be sick before they meet and now she does not at all. While they are all driving, Morgan says on the interview that he never pictured that everyone would get this far. He mentions Tess and this is where I figured out that these interviews take place after they meet her. More on her in a bit.
They stop at Tess’ house that is very barricaded and Lucianna mentions that Tess tried to contact her husband on the walkie-talkie. Morgan tells Tess to come out, but she says that she does not know how many are outside. Before they trying to figure out what she is saying, a walker arrives to the house and then, an explosion happens as they all figured out that there are landmines underground on the inside of the barricaded area. Morgan asks how many more mines are buried underground, and Tess replies saying that she does not know.
Sarah plays and sings trucker music, and Charlie and Dwight says that is all she plays and Salazar hates it. Sarah says that the music is the anthem. Salazar also says on the interview that they should have shot Logan the second he opened his mouth. Back to Morgan as him and Tess are talking about her husband going to the drug store due to their son having asthma. Morgan tells her to come outside, and Tess sees the cameras from her window. Morgan wants Althea to turn them off, but she says that it is important that she still films so that way, people can see it. Tess also says over the walkie-talkie that she has not left that area since the apocalypse begun. Morgan tells her that it took him a long time to leave the place he was in as well at the beginning. As walkers were coming from the other side, John shoots them down with his revolver on his side.
At the drug store, June takes most of the medicine over there and tells Morgan that the inhailer is missing. Strand says that Tess’ husband must have it. Alicia finds a tree with a message on it and examines it. She says on the interview that her mom used to do things like that. A walker tries to get Alicia and Morgan takes the walker down from behind. Alicia also says that she has not killed since they got off the plane.
John continues to shoot down walkers from his side, to the other side and then John talks about him being a cop before the apoclapse begun on the interview. Morgan also says that him and John are relatable since they are not big talkers while they are on the job. Morgan tries to take down the walkers on the other side, but they break through and triggered the landmine explosions. John, Lucianna, and Morgan talks about the landmine situation on those interviews as well. We go back to the field as more walkers trigger minefield explosions. Morgan asks Tess if she was okay over the walkie-talkie and she says that she is. Strand on the interview says that the tree was not the only remarkable thing that they seen as they realized that the walker that approached Alicia was Tess’s husband as they also found the medicine in the bag too.
Morgan decides to run into the field at the moment due to the fact that he also thought about his wife and son as he explained on the interview. As another explosion happened right next to Morgan, he takes down a walker. But to only realize that he stepped on the mine and now he cannot move or else it will trigger an explosion. John checks on Morgan as he and Lucianna enter the field. Strand, June, and Alicia arrive as they see that Morgan has stepped on a mine. Morgan tells Tess that her husband is not coming back as he turned and for her to come out the house. June and Morgan talk about it being hard for Tess to say goodbye on those interviews. Althea wants to defuse the mine and John gives a smaller blade for Morgan to dig to see the mine. Althea then tells Morgan where the fuse is and she is 50/50 sure that it is the right one. Before he could continue, Tess comes out to give Morgan a pin for him to slide into the mine. He does this and lets his foot off the mine as it did not exploded at all until a few seconds later after Morgan left the area. Tess and her son finally come out the house and Morgan gives him the inhaler.
Later in the night, we get shots of them preparing dinner as Grace talks about the recipie she learned, and John making a joke about noodles and campfire. Tess and her son is then interviewed and seem to be happy to be surrounded by other people now. Morgan asks Alicia about practicing the next day, but she declines as she wants to know about who made the painting on the tree. Sarah, Dwight, Charlie, and Salazar arrive for dinner now and everyone is relaxing and eating like it is a normal night for dinner. I was happy to see this happen to be honest. In different shots of the interviews, everyone responds to the questions of how they want to figure out what could be next for them and what do they all need help with outside of the normal routine of the walkers. Then they all talk about what to do to help other people in seperate tapes.
After the final interview, the tape stops as we are shown a new character. Here, is when we find out that this character has watched all of the tapes that we seen. The new character fills gas in his motorcycle. Logan then arrives with his crew and they take his bag and gas. Logan then asks about the oilfield and asks the character if he was with Morgan’s group in which he said that he was not. After Logan takes his belongings, he gives him a walkie talkie and tells him to contact Morgan. His crew then shoots up his motorcycle leaving him without one for now as the episode ends.
This style of production for this episode is a risk and it could either have a good reaction, or bad reaction from the viewers. I personally liked it as I felt that it was unique. The interviews showcased more personality of all the characters in this one episode than some characters in other episodes. The episode had a simple concept of a mission of getting an inhaler and turned it into a situatiuon of how far would you go to get something for someone and they did just that while risking Morgan’s life. The explosions caught me off guard multiple times during the time that I watched the episode too. Also to note, there was not one score of music at all until after the new character turned off the tape. I liked this episode better than the mid season finale and hopefully, this plot with Logan moves very fast because I still do not know what his motivation is. Also, where did the kids go during this episode? And how did they get their vehicles back since they flew a plane over the mountains? Nothingless, still a solid episode!
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